Melodious Pieces Op. 149 No. 25

About this work

In number 25 of Diabelli’s Melodious Pieces, the primo’s semiquavers circle around a few pitches before landing on a detached quaver and a rest. This Allegro gets its energy from the alternation of motion and silence. The secondo initially supports it with a more widely spaced line, before quick figures in that part enrich the exchange.
Supple runs and clear releases
Practise each short slurred group as one gesture, allowing the hand to release at its end. The following rest belongs to the motif; cutting it short in the rush to restart blurs the reply. Together, play a few bars very slowly to hear exactly which notes coincide and which answer each other.
The next section introduces double notes in the primo. The texture grows fuller, but the pulse need not become heavier. Keep shared pitches close to the keys and let the other fingers move without shaking the whole hand. Contrasts between piano and forte help shape the sections, especially when the secondo supports the change without covering the upper line.
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.