Violin Sonata in A major Op.100 (1886)

Written on holiday at Lake Thun in Switzerland in the summer of 1886 – with nothing much to worry the composer now that the Fourth Symphony was safely first-performed and through the press – Brahms’s Second Violin Sonata is one of those rare, effortless, and serene masterpieces of a great composer’s maturity.

To use a phrase coined by Brahms in a similar context, “any fool can see” that the first few notes of the opening theme are the same as those of Walther’s Prize Song in Die Meistersinger. Intentional or not, this melodic allusion immediately and unmistakably establishes the idyllic mood which prevails throughout the sonata. The second subject is another quotation –this time from Brahms’s own song Wie Melodien, which scarcely disturbs the serenity. It would not be Brahms, however, without the characteristically muscular triplet rhythms and staccato chords that duly appear in the continuation of the second subject. The vigour does not last long. The development is based mainly on the “Prize-Song” first subject and, when the staccato chords and triplets return, piano and violin combine to tame them and submerge them in the idyll. Something similar happens in the recapitulation. The vigorous part of the second subject leads straight into a gentle meditation so absorbing that it takes the decision of a Vivace coda to snap out of it.

Since this is clearly not the large-scale, ambitious sort of sonata which could support both a slow movement and a scherzo, Brahms ingeniously combines the two in the middle movement. Lyrical Andante and playful Vivace passages alternate, clinging together not by reason of any thematic relationship but by means of a perfect balance of contrasts. In fact, the melody of the Andante is basically an inversion of the Prize-Song theme from the first movement, and the Vivace material is an anticipation of the next movement.

The Allegretto grazioso (quasi andante) tempo indicates that it is not intended as a conventionally cheerful finale. Its function is to re-assert the A major serenity of the Allegro amabile first movement. Though it is plunged into distant keys in two mysterious episodes, the stability inherent in the main theme is never seriously threatened, even when its rhythm is upset in a probably deliberate reminiscence of a playful Vivace passage in the previous movement. Besides, the coda is firm enough and expansive enough to suppress any remaining doubts.   

Some of Brahms’s greatest works – including the Piano Concerto in B flat and the Third and Fourth Symphonies – were written in the seven years between the First Violin Sonata in G Op.78 and the Second in A Op.100. Even so, the Second has more in common with the First than with the Third in G minor Op.108, which was started on the same holiday on Lake Thun in Switzerland and completed two years later. Both the First and the Second Violin Sonatas are inspired by song, not just songful melody but by specific Lieder of Brahms’s own composition. Although the theme shared by two Groth settings from Op.59, Regenlied and Nachklang, makes a definitive appearance only in the last movement of the Sonata in G, a prominent rhythmic figure associated with it not only opens the main theme of the first movement but also finds echoes in the second. The character of the present Sonata in A is similarly, if less thoroughly, influenced by another Groth setting, Wie Melodien zieht es mir, from Op.105.

The anomaly here, the significance of which is difficult to grasp, is the apparently clear allusion to a song not by Brahms but by Wagner, the Prize Song from Die Meistersinger, in the opening theme of the first movement. Brahms must have been aware of it: as he said in a similar context, “Any fool can see that.” Whatever the reason for its presence, accident or design, its effect is to establish the idyllic mood that prevails throughout the sonata. The second subject is Brahms’s own Wie Melodien theme which, though introduced teneramente by the piano, is displaced by more urgent material before it is taken up in an espressivo version by the violin. This too is is displaced by muscular gestures with forceful dotted rhythms which seem to contradict the prevailing mood. Interestingly, however, an apparently aggressive motif which provokes a brief canonic exchange between the two instruments is featured in one of the most poetic episodes in the whole work: shortly before the end of the development it emerges quietly in C sharp minor on the piano and is then persuaded into dolce major harmonies by the violin. The purpose of the emphatic ending to the movement is not a reversion to aggression but a brief celebration of the tranquillity secured by the close association of the two song themes in the coda.

Song seems to have an influence on the second movement too. Again we cannot be sure of Brahms’s thinking here, whether he deliberately based the violin’s opening F major melody on an inversion of the first three notes on the Prize Song theme. However that may be, the lyrical impulse of the Andante tranquillo sections is such that they sustain an even balance with the scherzando effect of the D minor Vivace sections that alternate with them. The second Andante tranquillo, beginning in D major, intensifies the expression; the second Vivace is a witty variant on the first, fragmenting the theme between piano and pizzicato violin. A last Andante tranquillo sweetly reconciles the D major tendency with the underlying F major, which is confirmed by a crisply conclusive allusion to the Vivace material.

The quasi andante qualification of the Allegretto grazioso tempo heading indicates that the last movement is not intended as a conventionally cheerful finale. Its function is to re-assert the A major serenity of the Allegro amabile first movement. Though it is plunged into distant keys in two mysterious episodes with diminished seventh harmonies, the stability inherent in the main theme is never seriously threatened, even when its rhythm is upset in a probably deliberate reminiscence of a playful Vivace passage in the previous movement. Besides, the coda is firm enough and, with its fervently expressive double-stopping on the violin, expansive enough to suppress any remaining doubts.