Brother Malcolm
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2009
- Publisher
- allEMusicPress (composer's imprint; score and parts from allEmusicPress@gmail.com)
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About this piece
Jean R. Perrault, a performer, conductor and composer born in Port-au-Prince, directs the orchestras at the University of Minnesota Duluth [1]. Betsy Husby and Alexander Chernyshev commissioned and premiered Brother Malcolm, which Perrault dates to 2009 [2]. It imagines Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X talking on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration. The opening words are 'Brother Malcolm, have you heard the news?', King's music is the more harmonious and Malcolm X's the more dissonant, and the anthem Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika is buried in the piece [3]. Tom Clowes and Marianne Parker filmed it for Crossing Borders Music as part of the First Blacks Chicago series [3]. Over high piano sixteenths marked ppp the cello enters softly in tenor clef, builds through held double stops to a fortissimo Pesante, and later plays a long sul ponticello passage before a pianissimo close [4].
Technical overview
Marked Deliberate at quarter note = 52, moving between 3/4 and 4/4 with rubato sections and accelerandos. Long stretches sit in tenor clef in the upper positions, with shifts back down to the low D. Sustained double stops at a slow pace, slurred sextuplet arpeggios, triplet descents, and a ppp sul ponticello sixteenth-note pattern held for about nine bars. Nothing is fast, but the player needs secure high intonation and close coordination with the piano through the metre changes.
Technical focus
- 6ths
- Accidentals
- Collaboration with Piano
- Double Stops
- Intonation
- Legato
- Meter Changes
- Shifting
- Sul Ponticello
- Tempo Changes
- Tenor Clef