Collaborative piano education tends to discuss techniques of collaboration as primarily a musical skill. However, common understanding within the field regarding a collaborative pianist’s ability to work with others offers another aspect to this assumption. It goes without saying that pianists’ interpersonal skills largely affect with whom they will work, and how efficaciously pianists and their partners will work together. Correspondingly, how pianists work with others can directly affect the success or failure of the musical collaboration.

The first intention of this paper is to explain why interpersonal skills are integral to the creation of quality musical outcomes and so-called musical togetherness; it specifies interpersonal aspects innate and unique to a pianist’s experience. Next, this paper defines two crucial components of collaboration – empathy and active listening – and discusses how pianists can build these skills into their personal practice and rehearsal. It continues with an examination of the interpersonal implications of studio arrangement, body language, and verbal language from a pianist’s perspective. This paper concludes with ideas for how to test for these skills during the collaborative piano audition process, a class syllabus showing how these skills can be incorporated into the collaborative piano curriculum, and suggestions for further research about interpersonal aspects of collaboration.

The purpose of this research is to create a new piano reduction of Carl Nielsen’s Flute Concerto. Danish composer Carl Nielsen was born in 1865 and died in 1931. His compositional focus on orchestral writing made him renowned for his symphonies and concerti for flute and clarinet. Today his concerti are often performed by both professional musicians and students.

The first published piano reduction of the Flute Concerto was issued in 1952 by the composer’s son-in law, Emil Telmányi, who was a Hungarian violinist and conductor. This reduction was published by Samfundet til Udgivelse af Dansk Musik. In 2003, as part of The Carl Nielsen Edition, Edition Wilhelm Hansen published a new revised edition of the concerto. The piano reduction of this edition was written by Danish pianist Per Salo, and is the most frequently used by pianists today. This edition contains much information pertaining to the orchestration, but this often causes the piano part to become challenging or unplayable in many passages.

For collaborative pianists, playing concerti requires both the ability to imitate the orchestral sound, and to understand and show the main ideas of each passage. However, as this concerto is often performed in universities by flutists and pianists of different skill levels, creating a simplified version of the piano reduction will support many pianists by helping them to learn this music in a more approachable and easily performable context.

Every collaborative pianist encounters unrealistic and unsuccessful piano reductions of orchestral and operatic compositions on a regular basis. In some cases, the reductions were realized by the composers themselves, and therefore may contain all the notes from the full score, but might not be realistic piano reductions. Other times, the reductions may have been made by an editor who might arrange the piano part according to their own physical abilities, experience, or taste, but might ignore essential elements of the original orchestration. Alexander Glazunov’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 82 is frequently performed by students and professional violinists alike. The existing piano reduction of the concerto was written by the composer himself. However, the reduction has various issues that make performing this composition challenging for pianists. The main purpose of this paper is not the simplification of the existing reduction, but the creation of a new reduction that is more pianistic and approachable, yet more true to Glazunov’s dynamic and expressive orchestration. The first chapter of this project is an introduction to and comparison of currently available editions. An overview of the composer’s biography and the historical background of the composition comprise the second chapter. Chapters three, four and five are dedicated to each respective movement of the concerto, with explanations and details about certain editorial decisions. The appendix features a new piano reduction of Glazunov’s Violin Concerto in its entirety.

This project details specific placement and usage of the Clara motive in Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe. The analysis categorizes the motive according to its different shapes and relationships to the poetry in Dichterliebe. Four main permutations of the motive are discussed in great detail: the original motive, inverted motive, retrograde motive, and retrograde inverted motive.

Schumann (1810–1856) composed more than 160 vocal works in 1840, commonly referred to as his Liederjahr. At the time, Schumann and Clara Wieck (1819–1896) were planning to marry, despite the objections of her father Friedrich Wieck (1785–1873). Robert was inspired to write Dichterliebe because of the happiness-and anxiety-surrounding his love for Clara, and the difficulties leading to their impending marriage. Schumann used the Clara motive (C-Bb-A-G#-A), which incorporates the letters of her name, throughout the song cycle in special moments as a tool of musical expression that alludes to his future wife.

Eric Sams (1926–2004), a specialist of German Lieder, has made significant contributions to the research of the Clara motive in Schumann’s music (through his book The Songs of Robert Schumann). However, research into specific locations and transformations of the Clara motive within the Dichterliebe are still insufficient. A further awareness of the Clara motive’s inner working is intended to help performers interpret this song cycle.

Between the years of 1818 and 1833 the Austrian composer, teacher, and pianist, Carl Czerny (1791–1857) wrote one of his greatest compositions, the f minor Grand Piano Sonata, Op.178 for piano four hands. Overshadowed by composers like Ludwig van Beethoven, Frederic Chopin, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and possibly because of Czerny’s prolific pedagogical output, this work has received little scholarly attention and is rarely performed.

The aim of my paper is first to provide a concise background of the composer for better insight of his ideas and influences and, second to provide a theoretical framework and analysis of the composition to show how this piece is uniquely set in the musical backdrop among early nineteenth century piano music. Further, I will demonstrate performance concepts and ideas of the composition highlighting his instructional mastery. There are two components for this project including a research paper and a lecture recital.

I hope this project could bring more musicians and audiences to Carl Czerny’s serious and concert music as he categorized his music. He had been a great model of true artist, he composes, teaches and perhaps not the greatest promoter of his own music like the contemporaries. However, he devoted most of his life to development of music and the new generation of pianists, which is the most honorable of an individual.

Heinrich Heine’s collection of poems, Lyrisches Intermezzo, is well-known in music circles, largely due to Robert Schumann’s settings of sixteen of these poems in his masterwork Dichterliebe. Because of Dichterliebe’s place of importance in art song literature, many other settings of Heine’s sixty-five poems are often overlooked. Breton-born composer Joseph Guy Marie Ropartz composed Quatre Poèmes d’après l’Intermezzo d’Henri Heine in 1899, after having collaborated on a new French translation of the entire Lyrisches Intermezzo in 1890. This cycle is rarely performed, largely due to Ropartz’s relative obscurity as a composer, as the focus of his career was administration of two regional conservatories in France. The Quatre Poèmes were written fairly early in Ropartz’s life, but feature many compositional techniques that remain staples of Ropartz’s work throughout his career. It is an accessible work to many singers and audience members already familiar with Heine. The texts of the four songs are not simply translations of Heine’s original, but altered to adhere to the rules of French poetry. Examining the changes made in the text, both in language and structure, reveals information that will aid performers’ understanding of the poetry and of Ropartz’s choices in musical setting. The music of the work is greatly dependent on a single motive, an idée fixe, and considering the role of this motive in its various appearances is illuminating to the narrative arc of the cycle. This study seeks to aid potential performers and listeners of the Quatre Poèmes by expanding their understanding of the artists responsible for creating it, and by exploring the textual and musical elements that are the building blocks of this work.