Duologue for Horn in F and Marimba by Elizabeth Skola Davis

This piece is structured loosely around the ballet pas de deux, beginning with an entree (entrance), followed by an adagio or adage (slower section, variations for each performer, and a final coda recapitulating earlier themes. In this duet, I imagined the musicians as two principal dancers supporting one another as each takes the spotlight alternately before their final dance together. The horn's initial entrance is immediately picked up by the marimba, and then both pass the musical ideas back and forth. The central adagio features four mallet chords on marimba gently accompanying a wistful horn. Following that, the dancers once again move to more energetic rhythms brefore returning to the coda to repeat their first steps together again.