De bem com a vida (Choro-canção)
by Luiz Pardal
- 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
Luiz Pardal, a composer and arranger from Pará who teaches at the music school of the Federal University of Pará, wrote this choro-canção for the Duo Santoro in 2022, the same year as his modinha As asas são sempre leves. As in that piece, the score credits words by Jorge Andrade, but the cellos play without text. The tune moves in the dotted and sixteenth-note figures of the choro, crowded with chromatic passing notes, and the two players keep trading roles: one sings while the other walks a bass line of tenuto and accented notes across all four strings. A D.S. al Coda sends them back to the start before a short coda that comes to rest over a low C in cello 2.
Technical overview
Common time with no key signature and constant accidentals, in bass clef throughout; no tempo is printed. Cello 1 climbs into 4th position on the A string, and in the bass-line passages both parts leap from the C string to the upper notes within a beat. Sixteenth-note runs, dotted-eighth-sixteenth figures, tenuto and accent marks and a pair of triplets need a steady choro pulse, and the players must navigate a D.S. al Coda in the parts.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- C String Notes
- Dotted Rhythms
- Ensemble Skills
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Shifting
- String Crossings
- Triplets