Melodious Pieces Op. 149 No. 23

About this work

The Polonaise numbered 23 in Diabelli’s Melodious Pieces moves in triple time, pairing detached chords in the secondo with a high melody in the primo. Grace notes and runs of semiquavers keep the upper line moving, while the accents give the dance more shape than a succession of equally weighted beats.
Finding the polonaise step
The secondo can begin with the bass notes and chords alone, keeping the rests as clear as the attacks. The primo then adds the tune without pressing on every note of the quick runs. Accents and slurs show where a phrase leans and where it continues; an accented note does not automatically call for extra time.
As a rhythmic motif returns, the secondo’s chords change colour beneath the melody. Its quavers, longer notes and rests retain their pattern while the harmony shifts. Listen to the lower part to follow those changes, and agree on how far each crescendo should grow. The primo’s octave signs specify the register. Both players still share one pulse, however far apart their hands sit on the keyboard.
Score and playback
The PDF contains the secondo and primo parts for piano four hands on 2 pages. The MIDI provides a guide to the notes and rhythm. Alberto Simões typeset this score with LilyPond for the Mutopia Project. It is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence, which requires attribution and the same licence terms for adaptations.
Credits and files: Mutopia entry, source score and licence. Find more music on LesPartitions.info.