Duo for violin and cello, Op.7

The reason why Kodály chose to write a major work for the rare and austere combination of violin and cello was probably more a matter of necessity than spontaneous invention. Trapped for a few days in the Swiss border village of Feldkirch on the outbreak of war in 1914, he found himself without manuscript paper and with only a school music exercise book to write in. Whatever the reason, it was a unique inspiration: nothing like it had ever been written before and no greater work - not even Ravel’s Sonata - has been written for violin and cello since.

The Duo has no formal precedent: it does not claim to be a sonata and it would be particularly misleading to approach the first movement with sonata-form expectations. The Allegro serioso is an improvisation, a continuous development of the wide ranging cello declaration in the opening bars. All the other thematic material - the legato melody quietly introduced by violin over a pizzicato cello ostinato, a second variation with its prominent semitonal sighs set against a crisp rhythmic accompaniment - is spontaneously derived from the initial cello melody. There is a recapitulation of sorts, following a broad climax where the main theme is sustained high on the violin over cello arpeggios, but nothing is ever literally repeated.

The Adagio, which is even freer in construction than the Allegro serioso, is a passionate and highly coloured meditation on the semitonal sigh. The falling two-note phrase is incorporated in the opening cello melody, in the violin’s recitative in sonorously scored octaves, and in the cello’s parting comments at the end. Although the slow introduction to the last movement goes over the same material, there is already - in the lyrical flights of the violin - a distinct change in atmosphere. The new mood is confirmed in the ensuing Presto. A phrase from the opening theme of the work is incorporated in a vigorous dance tune and one of its by now familiar variants is converted into a reassuringly playful episode which could have been written only when the composer was safely back at home in Budapest.

“In the summer of 1914 I spent a few weeks in Switzerland …The day of the declaration of war found me, together with my wife, in Zermatt. The whole resort became empty in a few days and, as the hotels were closing down, we too had to bid farewell to the most monumental mountain sights. We had to make the last stretch to the Swiss border in a truck, since Switzerland too was mobilizing. We had to stay put for several days in Feldkirch, a village along the Tyrolean border. It was there that the vision of the Duo suddenly appeared to me. Never before had I thought of scoring for a combination such as this… No music paper was to be had in Feldkirch, and so the first movement, which I put on paper there, is written in a school music exercise book. Whether others will ever find anything either of the indescribable grandeur of the gigantic mountains or the dim presentiment of a precipitate war in it, remans a great question.”

Why Kodály chose the minimal combination of violin and cello in these awesome circumstances – circumstances uncannily similar to those in which Bartók would be working on his Divertimento at the beginning of another war 25 years later – he does not say. Perhaps it was simply because of the limitations imposed by the school exercise book. Anyway, it was a unique inspiration: nothing like it had ever been written before and no greater work – not even Ravel’s Sonata – has been written for violin and cello since.

The Duo has no formal precedent: it does not claim to be a sonata and it would be particularly misleading to approach the first movement with sonata-form expectations. The Allegro serioso is an improvisation, a continuous development of the wide ranging cello declaration in the opening bars. All the other thematic material – the legato melody quietly introduced by violin over a pizzicato cello ostinato, a second variation with its prominent semitonal sighs set against a crisp rhythmic accompaniment – is spontaneously derived from the initial cello melody. There is a recapitulation of sorts, following a broad climax where the main theme is sustained high on the violin over cello arpeggios, but nothing is ever literally repeated.

The Adagio, which is even freer in construction than the Allegro serioso, is a passionate and highly coloured meditation on the semitonal sigh. The falling two-note phrase is incorporated in the opening cello melody, in the violin’s recitative in sonorously scored octaves, and in the cello’s parting comments at the end.

Although the slow introduction to the last movement goes over the same material, there is already – in the lyrical flights of the violin – a distinct change in atmosphere. The new mood is confirmed in the ensuing Presto. A phrase from the opening theme of the work is incorporated in a vigorous dance tune and one of its by now familiar variants is converted into a reassuringly playful episode which could have been written only when the composer was safely back at home in Budapest.

Gerald Larner © 2016

Gerald Larner©