Program Note 

Twinned Suite has an unusual structural premise, subverting "rounded binary form" typical of baroque dance suites.   

Each movement divides into halves, subject to repeat, as in a baroque dance suite.   However, while violin and viola each preserve near-exact material upon repeat, they are shifted and re-aligned rhythmically in relation to one another, generating alternate counterpoint.  Specifically, their order of entry reverses per quarter, so where violin precedes viola in Quarter 1, viola precedes violin in Quarter 2, and vice versa (likewise in Quarters 3 and 4),

Perceptually (I generalize), the ear captures repetition via recognition of familiar gestures and themes, without registering (upon first listen), the exactitudes of reconfiguration.  Each movement approaches the formal constraint uniquely, variously demarcating the quarters or eliding them, while invariably developing as if through-composed, despite unbudgeable structural rigidity.  This apparent contradiction, between developmental fluidity and the repeats' fixed musical content, contributes to the suite's "dual nature."   

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The two internally mirrored movements, Pastorale/Reel and Burlesque/Nocturne, additionally take on hybrid forms, contrasting violin and viola, even as they participate in the same  procedure with respect to repeats.    

The idea of "twinning" has the apparent aspect of violin and viola as sibling instruments or fraternal twins, but also a double entendre that has metaphorical meaning relative to the above structure, drawn from crystallography: "a composite consisting of two (or sometimes more) parts that are reversed in orientation with respect to each other (typically by reflection in a particular plane)." 

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