Cello Time Duets: 30 Progressive Duets for Cello
by Kathy Blackwell and David Blackwell
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Cello
- Composed
- 2025
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (ISBN 9780193574199)
Purchase or download
About this piece
Thirty duets for two cellos by Kathy and David Blackwell, the authors of the Cello Time series, published by Oxford University Press in 2025. The book follows the series' stages (Starting, Jogging, Running, Sprinting and Sprinting Away), so it opens with open-string tunes and ends at about Grade 4. Alongside the Blackwells' own pieces are folk tunes from China, Nigeria, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland and the klezmer tradition, plus arrangements of music by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and Francesca Lebrun. Six short warm-up duets come first, some with an easier top part and a harder lower part, so the book works for teacher and pupil, two pupils, or a parent and child.
Technical overview
The Starting and Jogging duets stay in first position in D and G major, with open strings, crotchets and quavers, simple 3/4 and 4/4, and a left-hand pizzicato ending. From the Running section the parts add extensions, accidentals, 3-note slurs and low C-string bass lines. The last two sections bring a 6/8 jig, 4th-position shifts and longer legato lines, as in the Satie Gymnopédie.
Technical focus
- 2 Note Slurs
- 3 Note Slurs
- Accidentals
- C String Notes
- Detaché
- Dynamics
- Ensemble Skills
- Extensions
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Left-Hand Pizzicato
- Pizzicato
- Shifting