Ondulações
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1916
- Publisher
- Musica Brasilis (free edition from the manuscript at the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro; edited by Thadeu de Moraes Almeida; CC BY-SA; ISMN 979-0-802320-02-4)
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About this piece
Homero de Sá Barreto studied at Rio de Janeiro's Instituto Nacional de Música under Alfredo Bevilacqua and Francisco Braga, was a friend of Villa-Lobos, and helped found the Escola de Música Fluminense in Niterói before his death in 1924 at the age of 40. He dated the manuscript of Ondulações ('Ripples') 14 September 1916; Musica Brasilis edited it from the copy in the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional. Over continuous rippling broken chords in the piano, the cello sings a slow F major melody in 12/8, made almost entirely of long dotted notes under long slurs. A single fortissimo bar in common time interrupts the flow halfway through, and at the end the cello rises into treble clef and holds a high A while the piano winds down.
Technical overview
Andante expressivo in F major and 12/8, with one bar of 4/4 marked ff, rall. and a fermata. The cello part is almost all dotted halves and dotted quarters under long slurs, so the work is bow distribution and sustained tone at p to f. The line climbs above the bass staff into 4th position, and the last bars move into treble clef for the A an octave above the open A string, which needs a shift into the upper positions.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Bow Control
- Collaboration with Piano
- Dynamics
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Legato
- Shifting
- Tempo Changes
- Treble Clef