Retrato de D. Melancolia e D. Solidão no alpendre da velha casa
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Cello
- Composed
- 2021
- Publisher
- Musica Brasilis (free score and parts, licensed by the composer)
Purchase or download
About this piece
Antonio Celso Ribeiro, a composer born in Pouso Alegre, Minas Gerais, in 1962, wrote this two-movement duet in Vitória in 2021 on a commission from the Duo Santoro. The title means 'Portrait of Mrs Melancholy and Mrs Solitude on the porch of the old house', and Ribeiro based it on old photographs of a run-down house by a dusty road, where two elderly women sat on the porch in silence waiting for nightfall. In the first movement both cellos, in the treble clef and marked 'plangente', trade sighing phrases in shifting metres; in the second the first cello sings 'molto doloroso e cantabile' over slowly rolled pizzicato chords in the second. Paulo and Ricardo Santoro took it on their 2022 tour O Compositor é Vivo.
Technical overview
Slow (quarter note = 56 and 52), with the metre changing almost constantly among 3/4, 5/4, 6/4, 7/4, 8/4 and 9/4. In the first movement both parts stay in the treble clef from just below middle C up to the D on the fourth line, with 3:2 and five-note tuplets; the second adds a 7:8 thirty-second-note run and 5:4 groups for the first cello, double stops for both, and arpeggiated three- and four-note pizzicato chords for the second. The two parts are of similar difficulty.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Chords
- Double Stops
- Dynamics
- Ensemble Skills
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Legato
- Meter Changes
- Pizzicato
- Shifting
- Treble Clef
- Triplets