Emánuel Moór (19 February 1863, Kecskemét, Hungary – 20 October 1931, Chardonne, Switzerland) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and inventor of musical instruments.

Moór studied in Prague, Vienna, and Budapest.
Between 1885 and 1897 he toured Europe as a soloist and ventured as far afield as the United States. Besides five operas and eight symphonies his output also included: concertos for piano (4), violin (4), cello (2), viola, and harp; a triple concerto for violin, cello, and piano; chamber music; a requiem; and numerous lieder.

His best-known invention was the Emánuel Moór Pianoforte, which consisted of two keyboards lying one above each other and allowed, by means of a tracking device, one hand to play a spread of two octaves.
The double keyboard pianoforte was promoted extensively in concerts throughout Europe and the United States by Moór's second wife, the British pianist Winifred Christie.

Maurice Ravel said that the Emánuel Moór Pianoforte produced the sounds he had really intended in some of his works, if only it had been possible to write them for two hands playing on a standard piano.

Moór and Christie also collaborated on a book of technical exercises for the instrument.



History
In the early 1920's A Hungarian called Emmanuel Moor devised a 2 manual piano with coupler so that the upper keyboard would play one octave above the lower. This opened the possibility of performing new sounds and compositions and with better facility for executing complex passages. A further device made chromatic glissandos possible and another produced harpsichord sound.

What can be done with a Moor piano
Few pianists appreciate that classical piano music is structured to be the art of the possible. The hand can only span or depress a limited number of notes. Examination, for example of Chopin's Marche Militaire, shows that when he seeks to develop the first theme by filling out the chords, he is forced to drop the grace notes because they would be unplayable. He could have filled out the chords far more and still kept the grace notes had he possessed a Moor piano.

What this instrument offers is restoration of facilities that were abandoned when the piano assumed the role previously held by the harpsichord. Organists and harpsichordists take it for granted that part of their performance skill is to blend the sound and compass of different registers of the instrument to make their performance interesting. The Moor piano offers that facility to pianists. Either of the two keyboards can be played simultaneously with the fingers of each hand. This extends the potential compass of each hand and the number of keys it can depress by a factor of up to two.

A further advantage is in the facility that the piano offers to play fast octave passages with single note depression. This leads to improved smoothness clarity speed and accuracy. The fast repeated bass octaves of the middle section of Chopin's Polonaise Op 52 become easy to execute.

Another advantage is that long leaps from one note to another distant one beyond the span that enables the artist to retain contact location can be simplified by playing the upper sound on the upper keyboard where the pitch is already an octave higher. Liszt's Campanella suddenly becomes easy. (It is said it can be played twice as fast on a Moor piano in demonstration of keyboard gymnastics.)

Ravel when he heard some of his works played on a Moor piano, with fuller chords in extended reguisters, exclaimed, "I am now hearing my composition for the first time as I intended it should sound."

Arrangements of major classical works and new works using the full potential of tthe Moor piano have been written.

Donald Tovey, perhaps the greatest musicologist of all time, extoled the huge potential of Moor pianos throughout his life and presented a learned paper on them in 1922.

The Early Beginnings
Moor himself built his first experimental piano using his local village carpenter to provide the woodworking skill. In 1921 the first grand was built by the Swiss piano company Schmidt-Flohr. By 1924 professional artists were showing great interest and other piano companies took up the project. In the lead were Bechstein and Pleyel who by 1929 had improved the function of the action by constructing important parts from steel instead of wood. Pleyel licensed others to build to their design so that by the late 1930's Moor double keyboard pianos had been made by Schmidt-Flohr, Pleyel, Aeolian-Weber, Chickering (one only), Steinway (one only) , Bechstein and Bosendorfer.

An intensive series of recitals showing the potential of the instruments was conducted throughout this period, not least by Winifred Christie later to become Mrs Moor. 21 of the important venues in Europe and America hosted these recitals which were given enthusiastically by some 42 of the most eminent artists of the day accompanied in concerti by 30 of the world's top class orchestras orchestras and lead conductors.. notably Eugene Ormandy and John Bararolli . Many wrote with great enthusiasm about the potential of the pianos. Tovey in particular carried the torch.