Viola Sonata No. 1, Op. 240

sur des thèmes inédits et anonymes du XVIIIe siècle

Entrée

Française

Air

Final

While he was not quite as prolific as Hindemith in the production of viola sonatas, Milhaud did write two such works – both of them in 1944    and both for Germain Prévost, violist of the Fine Arts Quartet. Of the two, although it is slightly longer, the First is the slighter work. Based, according to the composer, on “unpublished and anonymous themes from the 18th century,” it contains no original material and is not so much a modern commentary on the classical style, like Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, as a pastiche of it. Certainly, it is an attractive score, particularly in the tenderly melodious Air, but it is only occasionally in the lively Française and towards the end of the last movement that Milhaud asserts his 20th-century identity.