Tag Archives: duet

Halloween! Toccata and Fugue in d minor by J.S Bach

Posted by MaryO on

 

toccata-d-minor

 

Johann Sebastian Bach’s towering monument of organ music, with its deep sense of foreboding, will forever be associated with Halloween.

The piece is recognizable to most and has been featured in many films, including: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Black Cat (1934), Disney’s Fantasia (1940), Sunset Boulevard (1950), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), and The Great Race (1965).

This is arranged for very easy piano in PIano Maestro. Get a free copy of the sheet music at IMSLP or borrow a copy from the O’Connor Music Studio.  I have this arranged for organ, piano, duet, 2-piano, simplified…

If you want this in a book with other Bach transcriptions, amazon has this: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and the Other Bach Transcriptions for Solo Piano, arranged by Ferruccio Busoni.

Here, Virgil Fox performs it on his Allen Digital Touring Organ.

 

Diane Bish plays the Massey Memorial Organ at the Chautauqua Institution and talks about this instrument.

 

Mormon Tabernacle Organist, Richard Elliott, performs an eerie rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Toccata in D Minor” with the Salt Lake Tabernacle pipe organ, the Tabernacle Organ has 11,623 pipes. “Toccata” is often played in the full extent as “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” This piece is one of the most famous works in organ repertoire.

 

Fantasia (1940)

As a bar graph

 

Just because…one of my new favorites, a mashup of a different Bach d minor work and the Phantom of the Opera.  I bought it at MusicNotes last year, in case anyone wants to give it a try!

 

Music for Halloween: Jaws

Posted by MaryO on

Nearly everyone can figure out the first 2 notes to this spooky piece – just play the B and C notes really low on your keyboard!  It doesn’t seem logical that just two notes could cause such a sense of foreboding, but John Williams managed it. His soundtrack to Spielberg’s Jaws has been keeping people out of the sea since 1975.  This piece is available in Halloween Favorites (Big-note Piano) and many others.

From the movie:

 

John Williams conducts his theme from Jaws with the Boston Pops Orchestra at Tanglewood.

Piano interpretation by Giorgio Rizzarelli

Piano duet

For guitar

 

 

 

Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 9, 2023

Posted by MaryO on

 

Today’s piece is based on a collection of tales known as the One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights.

The story, which was written many hundreds of years ago, tells of a Persian king who married a young girl every night. Every morning he would send his new wife to have her head chopped off. He had already killed 3000 women in this way.

When Scheherazade heard about this, she wanted to spend the night with him. She spent all night telling him a story. At the end of the night, she stopped the story at an exciting moment, like a modern-day soap opera.

The next night she finished the story and began another one, which she again stopped when it was dawn. The king had to wait another night to hear the rest of the story. Scheherazade kept this up for 1001 nights. By then, the king had fallen in love with Scheherazade and he let her live.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s best-known work is Scheherazade, an orchestral piece that describes in music the stories told by Scheherazade.

The work consists of four movements:

The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship

The Kalandar Prince

The Young Prince and The Young Princess

Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman

Today, we’re focusing on The Young Prince and The Young Princess which can be found in Piano Pronto Movement 4

 

 

Piano duet

Orchestra

Flute ensemble

 

Gene Kelly dancing with a cartoon partner

 

 

The entire work

 

Daily Listening Assignments ~ July 2, 2023

Posted by MaryO on

 

 

toccata-d-minor

 

Johann Sebastian Bach’s towering monument of organ music, with its deep sense of foreboding, will forever be associated with Halloween.

Get a free copy of the sheet music at IMSLP or borrow a copy from the O’Connor Music Studio.  I have this arranged for organ, piano, duet, 2-piano, simplified…

It’s also available in Piano Maestro, Piano Pronto Encore and Coda

If you want this in a book with other Bach transcriptions, amazon has this: Toccata and Fugue in D minor and the Other Bach Transcriptions for Solo Piano, arranged by Ferruccio Busoni.

Here, Virgil Fox performs it on his Allen Digital Touring Organ.

 

Diane Bish plays the Massey Memorial Organ at the Chautauqua Institution and talks about this instrument.

 

Animated organ:

Glass harmonica

Accordion

Cartoon:

 

Who Slobbered On My Songbook? New VU Book For Summer

Posted by MaryO on

Composed for mid-primer piano students, Who Slobbered On My Songbook? is packed with piano pieces and activities that reinforce playing in the C 5-finger scales.

This laugh-out-loud resource follows the hilarious adventures of a homework-hungry dog who has been framed for chewy crime he didn’t commit.

Inside you will discover 7 piano solos, a teacher-student duet, warm-up exercises, note reading games, sight-reading and rhythm activities, a practice tracker, and a certificate.

 

If you want to check it out, the Studio has a couple copies.  As always, students who would benefit from this book will get a free copy.

Daily Listening Assignments ~ June 28, 2023

Posted by MaryO on

 

Korobeiniki is a nineteenth-century Russian folk song that tells the story of a meeting between a peddler and a girl, describing their haggling over goods in a veiled metaphor for courtship.

Outside Russia, “Korobeiniki” is widely known as the Tetris theme.

 

Piano duet:

 

Orchestral version:

 

For Boomwhackers:

Vocal:

 

Ragtime:

 

Balalaika:

 

Two bassoons:

The Red Army Choir:

Korobeiniki/Tetris is available in Piano Maestro on the iPad and I have several levels of sheet music for anyone who is interested.

Enjoy!

Daily Listening Assignments ~ June 15, 2023

Posted by MaryO on

liszt-hungarian

Today’s assignment is Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor. It is the second in a set of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies by composer Franz Liszt, and is by far the most famous of the set.

In both the original piano solo form and in the orchestrated version this composition has enjoyed widespread use in animated cartoons. Its themes have also served as the basis of several popular songs.

Above, Danish comedian and pianist Victor Borge gives every impression of having been asked to play a duet with someone whom he not only doesn’t know but doesn’t particularly like. Forced to come up with a mutually agreeable way of sharing the musical workload, he settles on the most difficult route possible.

It’s not clear why two pianists were needed for this performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2, S.244/2.  I think that they did it just for the fun of it.  The result is hilarious.

They’re not the only ones to tackle Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 as a piano duo.

We also have these guys:

 

The “history” of this piece in several cartoons:

This is very interesting:

As he often did, Horowitz arranged it more for his liking:

 

Finally, for real:

It’s Halloween: Toccata and Fugue in d minor by J.S Bach

Posted by MaryO on

toccata-d-minor

 

Johann Sebastian Bach’s towering monument of organ music, with its deep sense of foreboding, will forever be associated with Halloween.

Get a free copy of the sheet music at IMSLP or borrow a copy from the O’Connor Music Studio.  I have this arranged for organ, piano, duet, 2-piano, simplified…

If you want this in a book with other Bach transcriptions, amazon has this: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and the Other Bach Transcriptions for Solo Piano, arranged by Ferruccio Busoni.

Here, Virgil Fox performs it on his Allen Digital Touring Organ.

 

Diane Bish plays the Massey Memorial Organ at the Chautauqua Institution and talks about this instrument.

 

July 9, Daily Listening Assignment

Posted by MaryO on

 

Today’s piece is based on a collection of tales known as the One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights.

The story, which was written many hundreds of years ago, tells of a Persian king who married a young girl every night. Every morning he would send his new wife to have her head chopped off. He had already killed 3000 women in this way.

When Scheherazade heard about this, she wanted to spend the night with him. She spent all night telling him a story. At the end of the night, she stopped the story at an exciting moment, like a modern-day soap opera.

The next night she finished the story and began another one, which she again stopped when it was dawn. The king had to wait another night to hear the rest of the story. Scheherazade kept this up for 1001 nights. By then, the king had fallen in love with Scheherazade and he let her live.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s best-known work is Scheherazade, an orchestral piece which describes in music the stories told by Scheherazade.

The work consists of four movements:

The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship

The Kalandar Prince

The Young Prince and The Young Princess

Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman

Today, we’re focusing on The Young Prince and The Young Princess which can be found in Piano Pronto Movement 4

 

 

Piano duet

Orchestra

Flute ensemble

 

Gene Kelly dancing with a cartoon partner

 

 

The entire work

 

July 3, 2019 ~ Daily Listening Assignment

Posted by MaryO on

 

 

toccata-d-minor

 

Johann Sebastian Bach’s towering monument of organ music, with its deep sense of foreboding, will forever be associated with Halloween.

Get a free copy of the sheet music at IMSLP or borrow a copy from the O’Connor Music Studio.  I have this arranged for organ, piano, duet, 2-piano, simplified…

It’s also available in Piano Maestro, Piano Pronto Encore and Coda

If you want this in a book with other Bach transcriptions, amazon has this: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and the Other Bach Transcriptions for Solo Piano, arranged by Ferruccio Busoni.

Here, Virgil Fox performs it on his Allen Digital Touring Organ.

 

Diane Bish plays the Massey Memorial Organ at the Chautauqua Institution and talks about this instrument.

 

Animated organ:

Glass harmonica

Accordion

Cartoon: