Unfinished Fragment of Ernst Von Dohnányi's Piano Quintet in E-Flat Minor, Op. 26 (Second Movement)

Ernst von Dohnányi (1877-1960), Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor, was born in Pozsnoy (now Bratislava), Hungary. Dohnányi wrote a total of thirty-eight published and unpublished chamber works including four piano quintets, only two of which are published. The first published Piano Quintet in C Minor, Op. 1, was written when Dohnányi was only seventeen years old, and it was praised by Johannes Brahms. Dohnányi's second Piano Quintet in E-flat Minor, Op. 26, was published in 1921 (the exact date of composition is unknown), but the manuscript has since been lost. The only remaining part of the manuscript is an unfinished fragment of the second movement that has been stored in the Special Collections room in the Warren D. Allen Music Library at Florida State University. The manuscript fragment includes the last page of the first movement and some 100 measures of an alternate second movement, titled Andante, alla marcia funebre. Throughout his life, Dohnányi seemed to be almost possessed by the main melodic line that he used in the fragment. This treatise presents an analysis of the unfinished fragment of the Op. 26 piano quintet and a comparison of the fragment with several other similar works.