Emánuel Moór (; 19 February 1863 – 20 October 1931) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and an inventor of musical instruments.
Life
Moór was born in
Kecskemét
Kecskemét ( ) is a city with county rights in central Hungary. It is the List of cities and towns of Hungary, eighth-largest city in the country, and the county seat of Bács-Kiskun County, Bács-Kiskun.
Kecskemét lies halfway between the ca ...
,
Hungary
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
, and studied in Prague, Vienna and Budapest. Between 1885 and 1897 he toured Europe as a soloist and ventured as far afield as the United States. His output amounted to 151 works including five operas, eight symphonies, four concertos for piano, four for violin, two for cello, a viola concerto and a harp concerto. Included in his works were also a triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano; chamber music; a requiem; and many songs. He died, aged 68, in Chardonne,
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
.
His best-known invention was the Emánuel Moór Pianoforte, which consisted of two keyboards lying one above each other and allowed, by means of a tracking device, one hand to play a spread of two octaves.
The Canadian pianist Max Pirani wrote a biography of Moór in 1959, with a preface by
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló (Catalan: ; 29 December 187622 October 1973), known in English as Pablo Casals,
Only about 60 of the double-keyboard pianos were made, mostly by Bosendorfer. Bechstein, Chickering and Steinway made a few.
Marie de Jarowslawska-Tutundjian e Vartavan(18 May 1887 – 20 November 1963) helped with early trials of the Duplex-Coupler. She played it on 3 November 1921 at the Palace of Montreux, and at least once again on 16 November 1921. Marie was a talented pianist who had been playing in public since the age of eight in Brazil. She lived in Lausanne, where she taught at the Ribeaupierre Institute.
Moór's second wife, the Scottish pianist Winifred Christie, performed on the instrument frequently in Europe and the United States and published (in collaboration with Moór) a manual of technical exercises for the instrument.H.A. Shead. ''The History of the Emanuel Moór Double Keyboard Piano'', Woking, 1978 Pianists other than Christie who used the Moór-Duplex included Wilhelm Backhaus, Alfred Cortot, Gunnar Johansen, Canadian pianist Max Pirani (1898-1975) and (more recently) Christopher Taylor.James Barron. 'Let's Play Two: Singular Piano', ''New York Times'', 15 July 2007, p. 23(L)
Ravel, Casals
Maurice Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
said that the Emánuel Moór Pianoforte produced the sounds he had really intended in some of his own works, if only it had been possible to write them for two hands playing on a standard piano.
Anatoly Brandukov, dedicatee of Moór's Cello Sonata No. 2 in G major, Op. 55, introduced the composer to
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló (Catalan: ; 29 December 187622 October 1973), known in English as Pablo Casals,
Timothy Baxter
Supported by a scholarship from Winifred Christie Moór, the Danish-based British composer Timothy Baxter (1935-2021), then a student (later a professor) at the
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the firs ...
, wrote his Six Bagatelles for double keyboard in 1964. The work was performed by Jeffery Harris on 24 August 1976 at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. Jeffery Harris held the Winifred Christie Moór Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music before Timothy Baxter. The scholarship stopped, when Winifred Christie died after an accident in her home. Baxter also made some arrangements for the instrument because of its interesting possibilities.
The Six Bagatelles were later arranged for two pianos with a first performance in Arcueille during the Festival Erik Satie on 17 May 2013, played by Elsa Sorvari and Viktor Bogino. They played the work twice more in 2013, once in Paris. The Bagatelles have since been performed in Denmark, and have been recorded by the pianists Anne Mette Stæhr and Ulrich Stærk.''Timothy Baxter, Vol. 1'', Claudio CC6025-2 (2015)
Thomas Edison National Historical Park
Thomas Edison National Historical Park preserves Thomas Edison's laboratory and residence, ''Glenmont'', in West Orange, New Jersey, United States. These were designed, in 1887, by architect Henry Hudson Holly. The Edison laboratories oper ...