Three Viola Duets

for viola duo
(2019)

A PDF of this score can be purchased from SheetMusicDirect.
Rehearsal recordings of the three duets can be heard at the following links:
Duet 1 Duet 2 Duet 3

These three audience-friendly duets provide a challenge for performers. “Simplicity”, the first duet, is a pleasant melody with a repeating chord accompaniment. The chords are all triads, but they aren’t used in functional ways. Then, the “Crab Invention” is a complete crab canon that has the structure of a two-part invention with an introduction and coda. Finally, the third duet is a lightly energetic fugue. It starts with a repeated eighth-note accompaniment, but playful syncopations and meter changes are added. 

The “Crab Invention”, the second movement was composed first in March of 2018 for a canon competition commemorating the 333rd birthday of J. S. Bach. It won a prize, but seemed incomplete on its own. For this reason the first and third duets were added in 2019. The BACH motive is used in all three of these duets. It provides a shape around which the repeating chords are built in the first duet. Then in both the second and third duets, it is used in motivic and thematic ways. To commemorate the 333rd birthday of J. S. Bach, the number 3 is used to structure note groupings, meters, themes and phrases throughout the Crab Invention. In fact, the 33rd measure of the Invention’s Allegro is the middle of the entire crab canon. 

(Duration Ca. 9 min.)