Galope e romance
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Cello
- Composed
- 2022
- Publisher
- Musica Brasilis (free download; rights held by the composer and licensed to the Instituto Musica Brasilis)
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About this piece
Joaquim Santos, a guitarist and composer born in São Luís, Maranhão, in 1951, played in the Camerata Carioca alongside Radamés Gnattali and has researched his home state's bumba-meu-boi and tambor de crioula traditions. He wrote Galope e romance for the Duo Santoro in 2022. The outer Allegro gallops on repeated staccato notes in an eighth-and-two-sixteenths rhythm, which the two cellos pass back and forth under a G major tune. In the middle, a Larghetto romance in 3/4 gives cello 1 a long singing line in tenor clef over slurred two-note figures in cello 2, closing on a quiet harmonic before the gallop returns and ends on a plucked chord.
Technical overview
G major, 4/4 at quarter = 94, with a repeated opening section. The galope is built on staccato repeated notes in an eighth-two-sixteenths pattern, often as double stops against open strings, so both players need a light, even bow at speed; the melody passages climb to 4th position on the A string. The Larghetto (3/4, quarter = 60) takes cello 1 into tenor clef and the upper positions for a long legato line full of A-flats and E-flats, ending on a high harmonic, while cello 2 crosses strings in slurred pairs; both parts finish pizzicato.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Double Stops
- Ensemble Skills
- Harmonics
- Legato
- Meter Changes
- Pizzicato
- Shifting
- Staccato
- Tempo Changes
- Tenor Clef