Intermitências III
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Cello
- Composed
- 2010
- Publisher
- Musica Brasilis (free score, licensed by the composer, CC BY-SA)
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About this piece
José Orlando Alves, born in Lavras, Minas Gerais, in 1970, studied composition at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and teaches it at the Federal University of Paraíba. He wrote Intermitências III (Intermittences III) in 2010 for the Duo Santoro, who played it on 24 September 2011 at the Centro Cultural da Justiça Federal in Rio de Janeiro, in Grupo Prelúdio 21's series Música do Presente. The duet keeps breaking off and switching between three kinds of music, each with its own tempo: a 'Soturno' (gloomy) block of sul ponticello tremolo double stops, a 'Scherzo' of pizzicato ostinatos and staccato double stops, and a 'Lento' of held notes and false harmonics, with left-hand and Bartók pizzicato scattered through all three.
Technical overview
Written entirely in bass clef and in the lower positions, with the tempo jumping among quarter note = 40, 60 and 120 every few measures and the metre among 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and 5/4. Both parts need chromatic double stops (often in measured sul ponticello tremolo), left-hand pizzicato, Bartók pizzicato, grace notes, false harmonics a fourth above the stopped note and sudden dynamic changes from ppp to fff. The two players must switch tempo and character together at each new block.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Double Stops
- Dynamics
- Ensemble Skills
- Extended Techniques
- False Harmonics
- Grace Notes
- Left-Hand Pizzicato
- Meter Changes
- Pizzicato
- Staccato
- Sul Ponticello
- Tempo Changes
- Tremolo
- Triplets