Em Guarda

Composer Notes
    Chiquinha Francisca Gonzaga is one of Brazil’s most beloved composers.  In any time period she would be considered an extraordinary woman, but to have composed over 300 pieces of music and conducted orchestras in 18th century Brazil was nothing short of phenomenal.   Most of her compositions were lost or destroyed but many remain today.    Her choros, polkas, operettas, and Carnival songs permeate throughout Brazil even now.    It is an honor to edit and arrange her music for the music world at large.      Em Guarda is a cheerful, rhythmic dobrado-- a Brazilian genre that was derived from marches for brass bands.   

Performance Notes:
    This piece is written for a duet—one piano, four hands.    It can, of course, be played on two pianos with the four hands but the music is written with both primo and secondo ‘stacked’ on the same system.  When notated this way, both the primo and secondo pianists are fully aware of the music and can readily see the notation and keyboard position of the duet partner.   Another positive factor for this type of piano duet notation is availability of pianos in performance venues—it is quite common to have only one piano at the venue