Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 05/18/2011, uploaded on 01/03/2012

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Brahms completed his first violin sonata during the summer of 1879. It is thought that Brahms at least worked on three or four others; however, the op. 78 G major Sonata for violin and piano is Brahms’s first published sonata for the instrument.

The unifying element of the work is a dotted rhythm figure, which, according to Malcolm McDonald, may have been derived from the opening of Brahms’s two op. 59 songs. The violin begins with this simple motif and the rest of the first theme seems to spring from the energy of the first three notes. The piano accompaniment of the first movement surprisingly avoids contrapuntal treatment which gives added melodic freedom to the violin.

It appears that Brahms had started the Sonata in G major as a sonatina for his godson Felix Schumann who was studying the violin. When Felix died, Brahms may have expanded the work and finished it as a memorial to Robert’s and Clara’s son. In a letter to Clara dated during Felix’s fatal illness, Brahms included an early sketch of the second movement’s E flat melody saying that it expressed his feelings for Clara and Felix better than words. The central episode is a funeral march in B minor and makes prominent use of the first movement’s dotted rhythm.

The finale switches to the key of G minor and uses the opening bars of Nachklang from the op. 59 songs as its principal melody. The movement adopts a rondo form but not without irregularities. The E flat melody of the Adagio middle movement makes a return as an episode, though modified to keep in character with the finale. A coda concludes the work in which G major is finally reestablished and fragments of the slow movement’s and finale’s themes are woven together.      Joseph DuBose

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Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, Op. 78 in G Major

Written during the summers of 1878 and 1879, Brahms' Op. 78 is the first of his three sonatas for violin and piano.  Composed in a cyclical fashion, the dotted rhythm on D, introduced by the violin at the opening of the first movement, links directly to the start of the third and final movement.  The middle movement embodies the height of the Romantic era with breathless gestures and sequences ascending by half-step.  Brahms' passion for absolute music (as opposed to program music) allowed him to leave open to the listener the true intention behind his musical words.  This piece was immediately beloved by audiences and musicians alike; the revered Clara Schumann once wrote to the composer: “I played it at once, and could not help bursting into tears of joy over it.”  Nicknamed the "Rain Sonata" because of the final movement's incorporation of a theme from Brahms' earlier work, Regenlied ("Rain Song"), Clara said of it: “I wish the last movement could accompany me…to the next world.”

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.