The Frail Variations
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 2007
- Duration
- 4'45''
- Publisher
- Free PDFs of the score and parts on The NIN Hotline's Know The Score pages, linked from the composer's site
Purchase or download
About this piece
Melissa Dunphy wrote these variations for a college music theory class. The assignment asked for augmented triads, augmented sixths, the Neapolitan chord, mode mixture and modulation to near and distant keys, the harmony of the late nineteenth century [1]. The theme is The Frail, from the Nine Inch Nails album The Fragile [2]. The cello plays it first in tenor clef, marked Lento, then turns it into a waltz and a Maestoso in 6/8. A fugue-like Moderato in 3/2 follows, with the cello leading off alone and the piano answering, before the tune returns low on the instrument and sinks to a long low G, under which the piano turns to the major [3][4]. The score, piano part and cello part are free [1], and an old video of a 2007 performance at West Chester University credits Dunphy as one of the two players [5].
Technical overview
Two flats throughout, and five short sections in 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 3/2 and 4/4. The opening Lento sits in tenor clef and reaches high B flat on the A string; the waltz has phrases slurred across two or three bars, ledger-line reading and one trill. The Maestoso is accented dotted figures from f to ff, and the Moderato in 3/2 is the hardest page, with sixteenth-note runs full of sharps and naturals across the strings. The cello part has no printed fingerings and few slurs in the fast writing, so a teacher will need to mark bowings.
Technical focus
- Accidentals
- Bow Control
- Collaboration with Piano
- Detaché
- Dotted Rhythms
- Hairpin Dynamics
- Legato
- Meter Changes
- Rhythm
- Shifting
- Staccato
- Tempo Changes
- Tenor Clef
- Trills