Duo
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1935
- Duration
- 5'
- Publisher
- Cayambis Music Press, CMP 1405 (2018), edited by Juan López-Maya; piano score and cello part
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About this piece
Carmela Mackenna, from an aristocratic Santiago family, settled in Berlin in 1926 and studied composition there with Hans Mersmann. The ten years or so that followed were the most productive of her career [1][2]. She wrote this Duo in Germany in 1935. It is a single sombre movement that works something like a rondo: the opening section returns at the end, and its melodic shape feeds the central section [3]. The cello begins Molto espressivo at quarter note = 56 with a rising line full of flats, moves into a Poco più mosso, and later runs through staccato sixteenths under slurs and bars of 5/4. Juan López-Maya edited it for Cayambis Music Press in 2018, and Eduardo Franco and Juan Carlos Muñoz recorded it at the National Library of Chile [3][4].
Technical overview
One flat in the key signature with many added flats, 4/4 with occasional 5/4, quarter note = 56 rising to 64. The opening stays in bass clef but climbs to about the E-flat above middle C, so shifting is constant. Expressive slurred lines with triplets and dotted figures, slurred staccato sixteenths across the strings, frequent poco rit. and a tempo, and detailed hairpins.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Collaboration with Piano
- Dotted Rhythms
- Dynamics
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Legato
- Meter Changes
- Portato
- Shifting
- Tempo Changes
- Triplets