First-Movement Sonata Forms

Chapter 3 studies in detail the first movements of Brahms’s three violin sonatas. Each first movement is cast in sonata form—the most exalted structure of the Classical Era. But Brahms did not fill a “sonata-form mold” with formulaic music. Just like his great predecessors whose music he so dearly loved and esteemed, Brahms adapted the outer aspects of the form and the contents of each section to express that movement’s unique musical narrative. The discussions of each movement explore the traits they all share as well as their individual Romantic features. The A-major Sonata’s first movement also provides an opportunity to explore musical allusions to other pieces and how that might affect our interpretations—both as performers and analysts.

It Sounds like Brahms

Chapter 1 discusses the balance of classicism and romanticism as artistic and expressive underpinnings of Brahms’s style. Brahms was in many ways a composer for whom the past—even the distant past—was still very much alive. Yet he was remarkably innovative. He often used Classical-Era forms, but he adapted them to his expressive ends. He used harmonic progressions identical to those used in similar circumstances by composers of the Classical Era, but also used harmonies as adventurously as Wagner or Liszt. In terms of texture and of rhythm and meter, he was, if anything, more adventurous than many of his contemporaries. The chapter offers a detailed analysis of harmony, dissonance, melody, melodic evolution, texture, rhythm and meter, counterpoint, and developing variation in a single Brahms phrase (from the second theme of the first movement of the A-major Violin Sonata, op. 100). Brahms’s phrase is compared to and differentiated from a similar phrase opening the second theme in Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in A, op. 30, no. 2.

Brahms and the Violin

How it is that Brahms, a consummate pianist, also wrote so imaginatively and extensively for violin? Chapter 6 explores various events that took place in 1853, the year that Brahms turned 20, when he left Hamburg to concertize with a violinist-colleague, met Joseph Joachim and began his lifelong friendship with him, and met Robert and Clara Schumann. Studying the sole movement for violin and piano that still exists from Brahms’s early works—the Scherzo that he contributed to the “F.A.E. Sonata”—we can assess the degree to which his mature compositional vision was already in place at such an early age.

Shaping Brahmsian Themes

This chapter studies six themes from Brahms’s violin sonatas, exploring many different ways that he crafts musical expression. Each theme demonstrates different aspects of Brahmsian compositional techniques, illustrating the infinitely varied ways he used harmony, texture, motivic evolution, and continuity in what has been described as “developing variation.” These discussions repeatedly show how a musical event that seems to be new (such as a surprising turn of harmony) quite frequently develops from something already heard, imparting the sensation that Brahms’s music is simultaneously drawing upon what has been heard and becoming something new. Awareness of these techniques prepares us for the later chapters, which focus on musical narratives that span entire movements or entire sonatas.

The Finales

Chapter 5 is a detailed study of the final movements of Brahms’s three violin sonatas. How do the finales function as separate movements? How do the finales complete the musical narratives of each entire sonata? Concerning the G-major Sonata, the chapter explores how the finale wraps up the sonata-long narratives, and how the sonata as a whole relates to the death of Brahms’s godson Felix Schumann. Concerning the A-major Sonata, the analysis looks at the ways the last movement wraps up the sonata-long narratives of how the personas of the violinist and pianist interact. In the case of the D-minor Sonata, attention is on the ways that the final movement differs dramatically yet relates to the earlier movements in the sonata.

The Middle Movements

Chapter 4 explores the different ways that Brahms organized each of his violin sonatas’ middle movement(s) so as to contribute to the overall narrative of that sonata as a whole. The G-major Sonata has a single middle movement. A letter that Brahms sent to Clara Schumann concerning that slow movement provides an opportunity to explore in more detail the relationship between this sonata and the death of Brahms’s godson at age 24. The A-major Sonata’s single middle movement combines a slow movement with a scherzo. The D-minor Sonata is the only one of Brahms’s violin sonatas to have two middle movements—a slow movement and an intermezzo.