Berceuse for violin and piano Op.38 (1871)

A slightly earlier work then the First Cello Sonata, the Berceuse is one of the handful of unambitious scores Saint-Saëns was able to complete in the few months he was taking refuge in London from the the horrors of the Paris Commune in 1871. Among Parisian friends and colleagues already there when he arrived was the Viardot family, who had taken up residence in Devonshire Street, and it was for Pauline Viardot’s violinist son Paul, then in his 14th year, that he wrote this strange little piece. Conventionally, a berceuse is in triple time or a compound metre with a gently rocking rhythm, like the famous 6/8 example Fauré was to write eight years later. The Saint-Saëns Berceuse in B flat is in duple time and, while the violin line in the outer sections is both gentle in expression and attractive in melodic shape, there is little rocking motion in the even flow of quavers in the piano part. In the rather quicker middle section, with the rising and falling quavers of the violin line and the occasional intrusion of 2/4 time, there is still less of a rocking motion. At the same time, with the violin muted and the piano played una corda throughout, it is an engagingly intimate inspiration.