Francisco Mignone's music for two pianos and functional juxtaposition

Abstract

Among the vast musical work of Francisco Mignone, there are seventy-four pieces written for two pianos. As piano I, integrate this collection not only his own compositions, but pieces for solo piano by other composers as Ernesto Nazareth, Zequinha de Abreu, Waldemar Henrique, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez. To compose this repertoire, Mignone used Funcional Juxtaposition as a working strategy, combining existing musical ideas from his colleagues with his own inventive process: the two pianos perform original pieces that dialogue and combine, can be performed as solo pieces. This compositional method sometimes confers functional ambiguity to the pieces, offering possibilities of individual interpretation to the parts originally composed by Mignone, and, when juxtaposed in duo, they are interpreted simultaneously. Through this paper we intend to reveal and argument how Mignone manipulated part of his work and illustrate the understanding of juxtaposition as a compositional strategy and interpretation of the repertoire in focus.