Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What are some pieces where the the left hand is the melody and RH is the harmony?

i only know of one in particular, The Happy Farmer by Schumann, but I'm sure there are others.

The Chopin Prelude in B minor immediately comes to mind.

The Chopin Etude in C-sharp minor, Op 25, No. 7 has a left hand melody with a right hand counter melody - in certain sections, though not throughout.

The first section of the Chopin Waltz in A minor, Op 34, No. 2 has the melody in the left hand, accompaniment in the right hand.

The first section of the Chopin Polonaise in C minor, Op 40, No. 2 has the melody in left hand octaves, accompaniment in the right hand.

Variation II of the first movement of the Beethoven Sonata in A-flat, Op. 26 has the theme in the left hand, accompaniment in the right hand.

I'm quite sure there are many others, some of which may come to mind later.

Regards,

Chopin Etude Op.25-11 ("Winter Wind")

Parts of the Liszt Paganini Etude #6

A lot of Gottschalk's works

The last section of Sousa-Horowitz Stars & Stripes Forever (which incidentally also has the melody Between both hands in the center section)

A lot of other stuff which I will not attempt to conjure up.

some portions of Iberia have the left hand carrying the melody.

I don't think you'll find a piece that's completely left hand melody. In Liszt's etudes quite a few of them have sections with left hand melody, often very heavy chords with right hand having quick arpeggios.

Actually, three have already been named just by Chopin alone. Here are a few more that I can think of:

In addition to Prelude 28/6 that Evan70 mentioned, there's Prelude 28/22, too.

Besides Etudes 25/7 and 25/11 cited by BruceD and playliszt, respectively, there are 10/1, 10/5 and 10/8.

A case could be made that 10/7 and 25/6 fall into this category, too.

Steven

25/6, yes.

Liszt is a devil for that kind of thing. Practically all of his works have the hands interchanging melodies and also up to three staves. And what about J. S. Bach and in fact any fugal music for that matter? In fact, come to think of it the question should be "What are some pieces where the left hand is NOT the melody anyway?" :rolleyes:

The Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude is a prime -and very difficult- example.

I suppose any piece written for the left hand only must contain the melody in just the left hand =] I know Blumenfield wrote one of these, as did Scriabin. I'm sure there are more, but I'm unable to think of them now.

Come to think of it, much of Scriabin's work has some very interesting left hand parts; it's not quite contrapuntal, as in the two hands play opposing melodies, and it's not quite homophonic, as in one hand plays melody and the other harmonizes, but rather some intricate and extraordinarily unique combination of the two.

Not exactly what you're looking for, but there's numerous pieces for LH alone, so the LH would be carrying both the melody and harmony

Some examples are piano concerti by Ravel, Prokofiev, as well as some works by Korngold, Brahms, Bartok, and Blumenfeld.

I would add that a most beautiful sound (IMHO) is created if the melody is actually "in the middle" (i.e. tenor/alt), with figurations above and below. In this case, the melody is often divided into both hands (sometimes called a 'thumb melody' - a term often associated with Thalberg). It was often used by Liszt and contemporaries. Some famous (among probably thousands of) examples:

Schumann: Romance #2
Liszt: Liebestraum #3
Wagner-Liszt: Tannhauser Overture (the pilgrim's theme, when it appears in fff close to the beginning and the end of the piece)
Schubert-Liszt: Standchen, 2nd stanza (but RH only here so doesn't count I guess )
Rossini-Thalberg: Moses-Fantasy (fantastic arpeggios going all over the keyboard, with the melody unfolding in between)
....

The middle section of Moshe Milner\'s "Beim Rebn zu Mlave-Malke" comes to mind:



Also, variation #11 from Joseph Achron's "Symphonic Variations and Sonata on a Palestinian Theme" (a neat example, because it actually has the theme in canon in the left hand, a trick that Mikhail Gnessin did in one of his own variations on the same theme, "orah" for piano 4 hands, although not as well as Achron did here IMO)



Also, that piece by Gnessin that I mentioned, "Orah" for piano 4 hands, has the theme in the bass part for pretty much the entire piece, while the treble part just does fireworks.

"Le Tic Toc Choc" by Couperin - the melody is all in the left hand, mostly the thumb. If you play it correctly, it sounds like you just walked into a clock shop with 1,000 clocks ticking together.

Check out Grigory Sokolov playing this piece on youtube. His right hand approximates the speed of hummingbird wings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR6kpZzOGdo