When one encounters albums with titles such as "Romantic Piano Favorites" or "Best-Loved Piano Pieces," one often finds Rubinstein's Melody in F, the first of the two pieces comprising the composer's Op. 3. The second half of the set, the Melody in B, is rarely if ever encountered. The reasons for the disparity in the popularity of the two pieces become apparent after one hearing.

The Melody in F, marked Moderato, begins with a catchy sentimental theme that lingers in the mind long after the piece is ended. Rubinstein alternates this melody with variants of itself, thus allowing his thematic creation to permeate virtually the entire piece. The work blazes no new compositional trails; its wide popularity can be accounted for strictly by the sheer memorability of its melody. In its own day it was a salon bonbon with which young pianists around the globe tried to please their sweethearts or, perhaps, to woo new ones.

The second piece in the set, while it offers marginal appeal, lacks precisely what its companion possesses—a tune of the sort that the Germans call an "ear worm." It also features harmonies that do not blend into the musical fabric with the deftness that one hears in the F major Melody. While these pieces carry the opus number of 3, they actually were written later in the composer's career than that designation suggests, coming after the Op. 29 Two Funeral Marches.

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1.In F

Sugar-coated pop music may largely be a product of post-World War II America, but the style has ancestors across the Atlantic, some of the most important of which are the lighthearted, sweet-toned instrumental bon-bons composed by nineteenth and early twentieth century classical virtuosi like violinist Fritz Kreisler and, a little earlier, Henryk Wieniawski and pianist Anton Rubinstein. A standard of mid- and late-nineteenth century salon pianists, Anton Rubinstein's Melody in F major, Op. 3/1, (1852) has since been almost entirely forgotten—a fate to which almost all of Rubinstein's music has been subjected. Rubinstein was himself among the very greatest of pianists and, as a composer, he considered himself to be in the Beethoven line. Posterity differed, however, and Rubinstein's titanic piano concertos and symphonies were quick to be forgotten. Because they required only the service of a single pianist at home in a private den, the short salon pieces stayed in the repertory longer—up until World War I, young pianists throughout Europe and the United States commonly employed pieces like the Melody in F as they tried to please their sweethearts or, perhaps, woo new ones.

Still, the Melody in F is not a syrupy, soupy bit of aimless romantic fudge, as many now-forgotten salon pieces unfortunately are (or were). There is a happy bounce to its step, as the two thumbs play a simple melody inside the downbeat-offbeat pattern of the outer voices. It has a clear three-paragraph structure; short chromatic transition passages connect them, and at the end there is a nice coda. The Melody in F has a companion piece, the Melody in B major, Op. 3/2; the two were meant to be played together as a pair, but the B major piece was never as popular as the F major one.

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