Dual
The combination of cello and double bass has rarely been exploited in recent centuries for free-standing duets. Composers could be forgiven for wondering if two instruments with such similar qualities – if they were a comedy duo, they’d be Low and Lower – might not simply cancel out one another’s power.
Fortunately, this isn’t the case, and the great Yo-Yo Ma, for whom Dual was written, has often reminded us in recent years of the vitality and potency of this combination, often with his regular collaborator, double bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer. The cello and the double bass, being two strapping, well-built brothers from the same instrumental family, share a number of genetic traits – a warm, dark timbre in the lower register; a uniquely earthy quality to the very sound of the bow being drawn across the instrument – that are doubly satisfying when the two instruments speak together.
"The cello and the double bass, being two strapping, well-built brothers from the same instrumental family, share a number of genetic traits – a warm, dark timbre in the lower register; a uniquely earthy quality to the very sound of the bow being drawn across the instrument – that are doubly satisfying when the two instruments speak together."
Dual makes use of these two instruments’ special capacities to rumble, roar, pulse and croon. The title has a punning double meaning: the piece is a dual effort, since its very fabric is the friction that the rich, rough textures of these two instruments create when they come into contact. The piece’s harmonic fabric – harmonies that shift and revolve slowly within a pulsing texture, heightening the impact of each new change – unfolds in two-part, “mirroring” counterpoint.
But the piece is also a duel. As the tension grows and the harmonic development becomes more unstable, these two voices – which had for a while been progressing side by side, like race cars in parallel lanes – begin to shove and jostle each other for primacy. Even their successive melodies, which emerge like brief oases within the piece’s journey, have the flavor of competition to them, as if a miniature song contest were embedded within the piece.