from Three Hebrew Melodies Op.45 (1855)

No.1 in G minor: Sostenuto

arranged for violin and piano

A celebration of Joseph Joachim

Considerable composer though he was, Joachim is more likely to come to mind these days in relation to others than as a creative musicians in his own right. Even in his own time he was better known as a violinist than as a composer and, since his death and the subsequent decline in interest in his music, he has been admired above all for the technical expertise and musical wisdom he applied to advising other composers on their violin concertos: as Max Bruch remarked,writing a violin concerto “is a damned difficult thing to do.” Without his intervention neither Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G minor nor Brahms’s in D major would be the work we know today. Though he never played them, he was the inspiration behind the Dvorak and Schumann concertos too. But Joachim’s influence went far beyond seeing masterpieces into the world. As the “high priest” of classical principles, he was the counter-balance to that other Hungarian instrumentalist-composer, Franz Liszt, and his “New German School.” As such, and in championing Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms,    Joachim was an essential factor in maintaining the balance between the two sides of the stylistic divide that defined German music for much of the 19th century.

The full title, Hebrew Melodies Based on Impressions of the Byron Songs indicates that there is more to these pieces than Joachim’s inborn affection for Jewish melody. Although he had by 1855 renounced his adherence to Liszt’s “New German School,” he had clearly not rejected programme music in principle. This, however, is a very discreet version of the programmatic art: while there are 23 poems in in Byron’s collection of Hebrew Melodies, there are only three pieces in the Joachim set and it is impossible to tell what biblical episodes he had in mind. There would be a clue if Joachim had drawn on the Isaac Nathan settings published with the Byron poems but he seems to have turned to traditional sources for his generally rueful melodic material. Written originally for viola and piano, in ternary form in each case, they are among the earliest pieces featuring the viola as a solo instrument.