Violin Sonata in E minor K.304

Mozart discovered the potential of the violin sonata when he was passing through Munich on his way to Mannheim and Paris in 1777 and came across a set of duo sonatas by Schuster. He was so impressed by them that he sent a copy home to his father and sister. “My main object in sending them to you,” he told them, “is that you may amuse yourselves à deux..” He also told them that he would write six himself “in the same style” - which must mean, for the first time in his violin sonatas, with the two instruments as equal partners.

The Sonata in E minor K.304 is particularly intimate in its writing for violin and piano. As the only one of all Mozart’s violin sonatas in a minor key (and since the exact date of its composition is uncertain), it is tempting to regard it as the composer’s reaction to the death of his mother in Paris in July 1778. However that may be, the grim beginning of the work is paralleled in Mozart’s music at this time only by the Piano Sonata in A minor K.310. The continuous feeling of urgency in the first movement persists in much of the second, the Tempo di menuetto, which is also in E minor. Not even the serene simplicity of the Trio section and its magical change to the major can influence the basic emotional situation.

Although he had written several sonatas for harpsichord and violin as a boy, Mozart first realised the potential of the violin and keyboard medium when he was in Munich in 1777, at the beginning of his journey from Salzburg to Mannheim and Paris. It was in Munich that he came across a set of six sonatas by Schuster and was so impressed by them that he sent a copy home to his father and sister. “My main object in sending them to you,” he told them, “is that you may amuse yourselves à deux..” He also told them that he would write six himself “in the same style” - which must mean with the two instruments as equal partners. Certainly, the major difference between the sonatas he wrote in Mannheim and Paris and the earlier examples is that the violin is liberated from the very subordinate, largely dispensable role allocated to it before.

The Sonata in E minor, K.304, is particularly intimate in its writing for violin and piano. As the only one of all Mozart’s violin sonatas in a minor key (and since the exact date of its composition is uncertain), it is tempting to regard it as the composer’s reaction to the death of his mother in Paris in July 1778. However that may be, the grim beginning of the work - with its unhappy E minor first subject presented in severe octaves - is paralleled in Mozart’s music at this time only by the Piano Sonata in A minor, K.310. The second subject, introduced in the relative major by piano with violin accompaniment, is more cheerful, but that too changes to the minor as soon as the violin takes up the melody.

There is a continuous feeling of urgency in the first movement, induced by restless contrapuntal activity for the two instruments or, in the recapitulation and in the ghostly coda, by the throbbing rhythms in the piano part. The same feeling persists in much of the second of the two movements, the Tempo di menuetto, which is also in E minor. Not even the serene simplicity of the Trio section and its magical change to the major can influence the basic emotional situation.

The history of the classical violin-and-piano sonata began in Mannheim in 1778 when Mozart wrote the first of the six Sonatas (K301-306) that were published in Paris later in the same year as “Opus 1.” They were apparently modelled on a set of six pieces by Joseph Schuster which had impressed him by being scored “à deux,” as he described it, rather than in the conventional manner of the sonatas of the day for harpsichord or piano “with violin accompaniment.” Certainly, the shared responsibility of violin and piano is a key features of the “Opus 1” Violin Sonatas and one that he was to develop in the next set, which would be published in Vienna in 1781 as “Opus 2.” The Vienna sonatas were greeted at the time as “the only ones of their kind: the accompaniment of the violin is so artfully combined with the clavier part that both instruments are kept constantly on the alert, so that these sonatas require just as skilful a player on the violin as on the clavier” - a comment no less perceptive for the fact that the writer was clearly unaware of the precedent set by the Paris sonatas.

The Sonata in E minor, K.304, is particularly intimate in its writing for violin and piano. As the only one of all Mozart’s violin sonatas in a minor key (and since the exact date of its composition is uncertain), it is tempting to regard it as the composer’s reaction to the death of his mother in Paris in July 1778. However that may be, the grim beginning of the work - with its unhappy E minor first subject presented in severe octaves - is paralleled in Mozart’s music at this time only by the Piano Sonata in A minor, K.310. The second subject, introduced in the relative major by piano with violin accompaniment, is more cheerful, but that too changes to the minor as soon as the violin takes up the melody.

There is a continuous feeling of urgency in the first movement, induced by restless contrapuntal activity for the two instruments or, in the recapitulation and in the ghostly coda, by the throbbing rhythms in the piano part. The same feeling persists in much of the second of the two movements, the Tempo di menuetto, which is also in E minor. Not even the serene simplicity of the Trio section and its magical change to the major can influence the basic emotional situation.