Little Dance for Clara
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2025
- Publisher
- Canadian Music Centre (unpublished, printed by CMC), RSN 83761; score 12 pp. and cello part 2 pp.
Purchase or download
About this piece
Susan Griesdale, a Montreal-born piano teacher, adjudicator and Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, wrote this short dance for cello and piano in 2025, with her own drawings of two dancers on the cover. Marked 'With Grace and Charm', it opens with the piano alone setting up a lilting one-in-a-bar accompaniment before the cello answers with short two-note figures. Cello and piano then take turns with the tune, and after a forte flourish near the end the piece closes quietly with two light staccato notes.
Technical overview
In D major and 3/8 at dotted quarter = 60, in bass clef throughout. The cello part sits in first position from A on the G string to D on the A string, apart from one slurred four-note run near the end that starts on a high E and needs a small shift. It uses two-note slurs, separate staccato eighths, marked down- and up-bows, a few accidentals (C natural, G sharp) and dynamics from p to f with long hairpins, and the cellist must count rests while the piano carries the melody.
Technical focus
- 2 Note Slurs
- 4 Note Slurs
- A String Notes
- Accidentals
- Collaboration with Piano
- D String Notes
- Dynamics
- G String Notes
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Rhythm
- Shifting
- Staccato