Unlike many of her contemporaries, Coulthard steered clear of the cutting edge of the avant-garde, writing in a language that was often criticized for being conservative and out of touch (criticisms that often carried more than a whiff of misogyny in the background), but one that she felt called to all the same. (In her last works, she did experiment with various contemporary techniques, but they were never a core part of her repertoire.) Her cello sonata, written in 1947, very much exemplifies this style.