Dopo Botticelli
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1985
- Publisher
- Canadian Music Centre (unpublished, printed by CMC; composer's manuscript), RSN 12763, call no. MI 3213 C855do
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About this piece
Jean Coulthard wrote Dopo Botticelli ('After Botticelli'), a suite for cello and piano, in the spring of 1985 for Isobel and Shauna Rolston. Its three movements carry Italian titles: 'Venus dal mare' (Venus from the Sea), a Lento misterioso prelude with an unaccompanied cadenza; 'L'angelo con il ramo dell'oliva' (The Angel with the Olive Branch), a cantabile aria; and 'Primavera' (Spring), an Allegro gioioso roundelay in 12/8 and 9/8. The finale twice pauses for free, quasi-cadenza passages, the second of them played sul ponticello.
Technical overview
A handwritten score with frequent changes of time signature, reading in bass and treble clef. The outer movements need quick sixteenth-note passagework, trills, glissandi, rapid changes between pizzicato and arco, and free cadenzas with accelerandos, while the Aria asks for a long, sustained cantabile line. Dynamics range from pp to sf and ff.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Collaboration with Piano
- Glissando
- Meter Changes
- Pizzicato
- Rubato
- Shifting
- Sul Ponticello
- Tempo Changes
- Treble Clef
- Trills