Note about Piano Duet Arrangements
There
are over a hundred piano duet arrangements by William Severson on this site.
They are numbered MPMP02XXX where greatest XXX is now above a hundred, and they
are mostly rags and popular solo music from the first decades of the 20th
century.
The
rags are emulating the practice on some piano rolls of rags of the period to
increase the brilliance and sonority by octave doublings but in a piano duet.
So these arrangements sound close to the original rags just with more
brilliance and sonority. The intention is not to change the rags but to
intensify their effect.
These
arrangements are written for and intended for performance. To this end
minimizing page turns is more important than size of the notes.
On
the accompanying audio tracks, tempo is a contested subject. Scott Joplin
insists that his rags are to be played slowly. But modern practice seems to
have speed contests when playing rags. Personally I take a moderate approach, I
find the more musical meat in a piece the slower I like it played. The rag and
rag era pieces that I have arranged are tagged with metronome marking of 62 to
92 for a quarter note. Of course,
your tempo is your business.
The
accompanying audio files are synthesized from the music by Finale 2012 using
the human playback and piano samples from Garritan Personal Orchestra and ambience of a recital hall added by
Garritan Ambience. The MP3Ős are produced by Mac iTunes from the AIFFŐs from
Finale. So far there are just short of 4 hours of audio files of that period
now on this site. In a real sense these audio files are equivalent to the
playing the piano rolls of the period. Enjoy.
Some
of these duet arrangemets have been used by tne Golden Age Ensemble in concerts
given in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The
arranger would like to hear about these arrangements from piano duettists as
many of these have not been used in performance due to ill health. His email is
Put
MPMP at the first of the subject line to pass the junk filter.
Modified
last on 12/6/14.