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One of the books my daughter got is a book of piano duets. I have seen musical scores, but never duet pieces so I was surprised that one page has one player's part and the other has the other players part. Is it hard to see them/play them on different pages? It seems like it would be easier if both parts were on the same pages.

The traditional approach is exactly that! To have each player their own page. One of the main reasons is that having two piano players on the same bench means that no one is in the center, and thus not only they put each part in a different page, but also the pages are usually laid out in landscape format and not portrait.

The above goes for grown up pianists (regardless level), otherwise younger children or people with small bodies are more towards the center of the piano and can see better...

I've always been curious. Is there a standard for which person pedals? If they both do you're going to see tangled up feet and bruised shins.

Seems like the left hand person has a better angle if using the right foot to pedal.

And of course that made me wonder about organ duets. Nah, don't go there.

Left person almost always. Not only his/her right foot is in the right place, but they play the bass, so the pedal is more of an option for the 'left' part rather than the 'right'.

There are some duets which have been published in score, but parts on opposite pages is more common. It uses less paper, and makes it easier to arrange for a free hand to be available for page turns.

Gustav Mahler and Bruno Walter used to practice sight-reading by playing duets where one would play both right-hand parts and the other both left-hand parts. Since parts do not necessarily correspond line-by-line, this is extremely difficult!

I don't see how one can save paper like this... In any case I'd say that one can fit three systems (or even four if he's feeling too cheap) in a page. So in 2 pages one would be able to put in 6-8 systems of music. More crumped because of the actual portrait format, but still that's double than the 3-4 systems you get in landscape format, I think.

And for the page turns again I can't see a reason, since in any case both pages will end on the same bar at the end of their page (and on every system actually), so one can just take a look and arrange the page turns as best as possible...

*I think*

Thank you! That does make sense (no one is in the center) and about the pedal. She is just going to play with her teacher I think, her teacher thought it would be a good experience.

Maybe photo copy the pages and stick them so both parts are next to one another! A DIY version! I have done duets before and most of the time they are on the same page! Maybe its an error!

Good Luck!

The parts already are next to each other. I think you may have misunderstood the OP. She was surprised to find the secondo on the LH page and the primo on the RH page which is the standard format for 4-hand piano music. Maybe you thought she meant they were on different opening pages and the players had to hold a page open and peep on their side. Now that would be inconvenient!