Friedrich Kiel - Duet for solo piano, Op. 18 No. 3

Friedrich Kiel (1821-1885) - Duet for solo piano, Op. 18 No. 3 (1860)
If you were a German composer in the mid-nineteenth century, chances are you wrote at least several pieces of music in “canon-form” or “canon-style,” where a melody is chased by its twin that lingers just a few steps behind. It is easy to see why the vogue for canons arose from the same German musicians who prized academic fugue-writing as a show of skill and knowledge: canons are clever like witty plays on words, they pose a tricky set of problems for the composer who must harmonize beneath a mirror-like texture, yet when they are well-done, canons can be exceptionally pleasing and accessible (unlike most fugues) even in one hearing.
Cross this academic fad with a popular domestic genre at the time, the song without words, where a solo pianist imitates one or two singers with keyboard accompaniment, and you get something like this piece by Friedrich Kiel. Kiel was far from the first or last to contribute to the the solo piano canon-duet microgenre; Mendelssohn, Alkan, and Fauré (whose Romance sans paroles in A-flat is probably the most famous one) were among the crowd of composers who wrote fine examples. The formula is nearly identical in all of them-a brief introduction, a simple accompaniment, two voices spinning out a few minutes of catchy material, and a symmetrical coda.
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