The Cello Sonata from Beethoven to Brahms

Of the nine cello sonatas written by the three great German composers who applied themselves to the form between 1796 and 1886, only two contain a true slow movement. Considering that, today, the cello is valued above all for the lyrical eloquence obtainable in high positions on the A string – a quality which is obviously put to best effect in a slow movement – the apparent reluctance of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms to indulge the instrument in that way is difficult to understand.

We know from Haydn’s two concertos that 18th-century cellists were quite capable of sustaining a high-lying melodic line. It is hardly likely that Jean-Pierre Duport, court cellist to Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, for whom Beethoven wrote his first two Cello Sonatas – the earliest works of their kind by a major composer – was any less accomplished than Haydn’s cellists at Esterháza. Even so, while there are slow introductions in both the Prussian sonatas, neither amounts to a slow movement. Nor, still less, does the Andante cantabile introduction to the last movement of the Sonata in A major Op.69 that Beethoven wrote for the amateur cellist Ignaz von Gleichenstein in 1808. Seven years later, when he came to write his last two cello sonatas, for Joseph Linke, cellist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet, Beethoven finally relented – but in only one of the two works. Although the Sonata in D major Op.102 No.2 includes a full-scale Adagio, there is no equivalent in its companion in C major.

Mendelssohn wrote two cello sonatas – one for his brother Paul in 1838, the other for the amateur cellist Count Wielhorsky five years later – but was clearly not encouraged by the Adagio of Beethoven’s Op.102 No.2 to risk anything of similar stature himself. Nor at first was Brahms, who actually suppressed an Adagio intended for the Sonata in E minor Op.38 completed in 1865. He compensated for that, however, in the inspired Adagio affettuoso of Sonata in F major Op.99 written for the great cellist Robert Hausmann more than 20 years later.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Cello Sonata in C major Op.102 No.1 (1815)

Andante - allegro vivace

Adagio - tempo d’andante - allegro vivace

Clearly, since it was written for a favourite instrumentalist who was entrusted with an Adagio in the companion work in D major, the absence of a slow movement in Op.102 No.1 cannot be attributable to any lack of confidence in the cellist. It seems to have more to do with Beethoven’s radical attitude to sonata form at the time. The Sonata in C major is, in fact, an extraordinary interlocking structure consisting of two quick movements each preceded by a slow introduction. The whole work is linked by a central slow passage incorporating a crucial thematic transformation which both recalls earlier events and anticipates later ones.

The opening Andante is based on a Slavonic-sounding melody introduced in the first two bars by the cello. The imperious first subject of the Allegro vivace has nothing thematically in common with the introduction. Nor does the second subject – apart, that is, from an espressivo phrase on the piano with the same melodic shape, though not the same rhythm, as the first four notes of the Slavonic melody. Scarcely noticeable at the time, that four-note phrase seems little more significant when the cello plays it backwards, and twice repeats it, just before the end of the exposition. But significant it turns out to be.

The second movement begins with a deeply thoughtful Adagio introduction. It emerges from its ruminations with a lyrical inspiration on the cello and a reminiscence of the Slavonic melody, which is immediately recalled by the piano in its original Andante tempo. It is no coincidence that the four-note motif which is precipitated from this as the main theme of the following Allegro vivace is none other than the cello’s backwards version of the four-note phrase from the Slavonic melody. The revelation inspires such exuberance, such wit and contrapuntal ingenuity, that there is scarcely room from now one for anything but the four-note motif in an apparently inexhaustible variety of transformations.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Cello Sonata (1915)

Prologue: lent

Sérénade: modérément animé - vivace - modérément animé -

Finale: animé

“I like its proportions and, in the best sense of the word, its almost classical form,”said Debussy of his Cello Sonata. By “classical form” he did not mean sonata form. Working in the middle of the First World War and conscious of his national heritage – he signed himself “Claude Debussy Musicien Français” on the title page – he was thinking here of pre-classical models by French composers like Couperin or Rameau. He actually intended to write six such sonatas but had time to complete only this work, the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp and the Violin Sonata before he died.

The baroque background to the Sonatas is nowhere more evident in any of them than in the keyboard introduction to the Cello Sonata, which sounds like the opening of a French overture in D minor. The piano is reckoning, however, without the cello, which proves to have ideas of its own. By the ostensible means of a few virtuoso flourishes – which are actually designed to disguise the subtle thematic thinking behind them – the cello transforms the piano’s formal gesture into something far more personal and poetic. Immediately conceding that the string instrument has the more interesting voice, the piano discreetly accompanies the cello as it introduces the second main theme, a plaintive melody drooping through more than two octaves. The central climax is based on an passionately expressive A-string version of the initial baroque gesture which, as the plaintive melody is recalled in a reflective closing section, is revealed to be the source of that theme too.

Although Debussy decided against the title he was at one time thinking of attaching to the work, “Pierrot fâché avec la lune” (Pierrot vexed with the moon), it could appropriately be applied to the central Sérénade. In a fantastic nocturnal scenario the cello plays all the parts, stumbling in the dark over awkwardly placed piano notes, offering a Spanish guitar-style pizzicato prelude, testing its voice with the bow on a false harmonic, breaking into song but meeting with a variety of increasingly vexatious frustrations. It also takes part in a brief dance episode in the Vivace middle section and, as the opening tempo is restored, vaguely recalls one or two gestures from the previous movement.

The similarly Spanish-coloured Finale, which follows without a break, is rondo based on the high-spirited cello material – a sustained singing line and a tuneful pirouette – introduced over eager piano rhythms in the opening bars. The episodes between the two reappearances of the twin rondo themes are concerned with more or less distant echoes of motifs from the first movement, one of which is briefly but poetically exposed on the A-string between the abrupt exchanges of piano and cello chords that close the Sonata.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Adagio and Allegro in A flat major Op.70 (1849)

Although it is an essentially horn inspiration – it was written to register Schumann’s enthusiastic preference for the recently developed valve horn over the old hand horn – the Adagio and Allegro was published in 1849 with official alternative versions for violin and cello. These other versions are particularly appropriate in the opening slow section where, in his efforts to demonstrate the capabilities of the valve horn, Schumann treats it with the respect usually reserved for a string instrument. It draws long legato lines in the treble register, drops down into the bass and rises dramatically up again in wide leaps or arpeggios.

While it might seem unlikely that Schumann would have written the fanfare-like opening of the main theme of the Allegro for any kind of string instrument – it is obviously characteristic horn material – the main theme is bound to retain its heroic, triplet-propelled rhythmic vigour whatever colour is applied to it. A slower episode, where Schumann recalls the theme of the introduction and seeks to blend the two instruments in sensitively calculated chromatic harmonies, is scarcely less interesting on cello and piano than on horn and piano – until, that is, the fanfare motif returns to effect an abrupt dismissal of the poetry and to restore the heroism with even more vigour than before.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Sonata in E minor Op.38 (1862-5)

Allegro non troppo

Allegretto quasi Menuetto

Allegro - più presto

Partly because of the absence of a slow movement – Brahms withdrew an expressive Adagio originally intended for it – and partly because the composer seems to have had Bach very much in mind as he wrote it, the Cello Sonata in E minor has long been misunderstood: “the bleak E minor, wherein the surly cello can seldom be coaxed up from the depths…” is a characteristic comment. It is true that the first subject is introduced in E minor in the lower register of the cello. But it is then repeated three octaves higher by the piano in what is, after all, a duo designed to exploit the colours of both instruments. The second subject begins with a theme in B minor on the upper strings of the cello, descends into “the depths” and emerges again with another theme, this one in B major. Brahms makes little of the B major theme at this point but holds it in reserve to heighten the effect of its positively radiant recapitulation in E major. In a coda as bleak as a sunny day in spring that key survives to the end of the movement.

The outer sections of the Allegretto quasi Menuetto are based on an old-style minuet in a faintly modal A minor. There is nothing surly about the cello writing here, however, and still less in the trio section, where the cellist exploits the natural lyrical talents of his A and D strings. The only suspicion of surliness is in an occasional passage in the fugue which, clearly in tribute to J.S. Bach, occupies most of the last movement. This is also in E minor, but there are contrastingly happy episodes in the major and, although the work does end in the key in which it began, the più presto coda is not so much bleak as heroic.

Gerald Larner © 2008