On Edge
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2014
- Publisher
- American Composers Alliance (American Concert Editions), ACA WHID 009
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About this piece
On Edge, subtitled 'Prelude for Violoncello and Piano', is a short, slow lyrical piece that Dolores White wrote in 2014. Its long, sighing chromatic phrases rise and fall over a richly voiced piano part, with the cello moving up into tenor clef at the climax. Timothy Holley's graded list of student cello music by Black composers (CelloBello) recommends it as a step beyond first and second position, and it is a useful bridge from spiritual settings into twentieth-century harmony.
Technical overview
A slow, expressive prelude (half note = 94) built from long slurred phrases in half and quarter notes, full of chromatic flats and naturals rather than a settled key. The cello waits six bars for the piano, then sings through the bass register and climbs into tenor clef in the middle section before returning. Meters shift between 4/4, 3/2, 3/4 and 2/4, and the dynamics swell constantly between mp and f, with tenuto and staccato quarter-note accents.
Technical focus
- Legato
- Shifting
- Dynamics
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Meter Changes
- Accidentals
- Ensemble Skills