Thistle and Lace

About this piece

Kaitlyn Raitz wrote Thistle and Lace in 2018 as a duo for violin and cello, commissioned by the Lotus Chamber Music Collective in New York. Lotus players Tiffany Weiss (violin) and Sasha Ono (cello) performed it, and Raitz recorded it with violinist Lauren DeRoller. She later arranged it for two cellos for the Canadian cello duo VC2 (Amahl Arulanandam and Bryan Holt), who played it on her livestream series Floor Fiddle Fridays. The opening, marked 'still' (crotchet = 76), sets high double stops in the first cello against harmonics in the second. A section marked 'slightly forward' follows, with chordal off-beat writing and ringing open-string bass fifths, and then driving semiquaver double stops. Like much of Raitz's music it draws on folk idioms. The score and parts for the cello duo are sold as a PDF from her website.

Technical overview

A single movement of about 5½ minutes for two equal cellos. Cello 1 plays in tenor clef in the high register, mostly in double stops. Cello 2 has natural and artificial harmonics, open-string fifths, and accented repeated semiquaver double stops. Both parts need close ensemble on off-beat entries and subito dynamics.

Technical focus

• Ensemble Skills
• Double Stops
• Harmonics
• Shifting
• String Crossings
• Dynamics
• Hairpin Dynamics
• Rhythm