Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 04/20/2011, uploaded on 10/26/2011

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

Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, Op. 78 in G Major            Johannes Brahms
            I.   Vivace ma non troppo
            II.  Adagio
            III. Allegro molto moderato

Brahms wrote seven sonatas for piano and another instrument, three of those for violin.  The first one was the G major sonata written during the summers of 1878 and 1879, shortly after the premature death of his 24-year-old godson, Felix Schumann, son of Robert and Clara Schumann.

The lyric nature of the sonata in G major is presented in three movements and is rumored to be his fifth attempt at writing a violin sonata.  None of those earlier attempts survive.  He wrote several pieces of chamber music and sonatas in four movements, but conceived of this sonata in only three.  He joked with his publisher that he should receive 25% less than his usual fee for this work.

The nostalgic mood and opening motive of the first movement permeates the entire work and unifies the three movements.  The principal melodic material of the last movement comes from two earlier lieder, Regenlied (“Rain Song”) and Nachklang (“Reminiscence”), Op. 59, Nos. 3 and 4.  The text of these songs, from poetry by his friend Klaus Groth, lends a somewhat programmatic air to the movement and provides material for text painting in the piano’s sixteenth-note passage work – “Pour rain, pour down, and recall to me the dreams I dreamt in childhood...” from Regenlied; and the second song projects the roots of tragedy where raindrops and tears mingle.

Clara Schumann, who was seventy and in deteriorating health, wrote to Brahms about the G major sonata, “I wish that the last movement could accompany me in my journey from here to the next world.”

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.