Violin sonata in G minor Op.23 (1907)

In spite of life-long near-blindness and breakdowns in both his health and his marriage (as well a catalogue of other misfortunes too many to recall here), Louis Vierne won a distinction that no one had achieved since 1772:    in 1900 he was awarded the post of organist at Notre Dame, where he was to remain for 37 years. The manner of his death, literally on a pedal E – his foot came to rest on the pedal board after a heart attack during his 1750th recital at Notre Dame – is said to have been what he wanted.

A disciple in the first place of César Franck and, at the Paris Conservatoire, a pupil of Charles-Marie Widor, Vierne was also a considerable composer. As well as organ music, including six symphonies completed between 1899 and 1930, he wrote several impressive piano and chamber works. The Violin Sonata in G minor was commissioned by Eugène Ysayë. The violinist had got to know Vierne through their mutual acquaintance with the pianist Raoul Pugno, who was to join the violinist in the first performance in 1908. Not surprisingly in a work written for the violinist who had given the first performances of the then most celebrated of French violin sonatas, Franck’s influence shows through. At the same time, however, it is so idiomatically written that the organist in Vierne is excluded until the last movement – the longest of the four and the crucial point in the work where the composer courageously faces his misfortunes.

The first movement is a tense but well balanced sonata-form construction beginning with the urgent main theme in 6/8 but syncopated by the violin in such a way that it seems to be in 3/4 while the propulsive piano part has its own rhythmic identity. Introduced by the piano after a fortissimo climax and a pause, the second subject is a contrastingly lyrical melody in the relative major. The eventful development plays the two ideas off against each other until they are recalled in their original shape but with the second subject reappearing in B major before it achieves its predestined G major – with the agreement at last of the main theme.

Vierne’s melodic gift is perhaps best demonstrated by the Andante sostenuto, a ternary construction with outer section based on the intimately expressive theme introduced by the violin over a gently syncopated piano accompaniment. The Poco agitato middle section anticipates something of the unease that is to be more prominently featured in the last movement. Here, however, after a sustained trill on the violin, it makes way at a comparatively early stage for a recall of the opening section where the melodic line, now accompanied by gentle piano arpeggios, is given exclusively to the violin which towards the end of the movement carries it perilously high on the E-string. The Intermezzo is a deftly scored scherzo, the staccato colouring of the opening section effectively offset by a more sustained legato melody with a distinct and rather surprising Spanish tinge.

The last movement begins Largamente with a vociferous fortissimo and increasingly dissonant protest which is twice repeated and followed each time by chromatic Franckish musings on both instruments. The Allegro agitato that follows is a complex, multi-faceted but defiant sonata-form structure the ultimate aim of which is the manouevre the    G-minor violin theme with which it opens into a triumphant conversion into G major. In this it ultimately succeeds, proceeding by way of a second subject in E flat major, and from time to time recalling in a discreetly cyclic fashion echoes of other themes. In the cause of applying maximum pressure the piano frequently reverts to low left-hand octaves as though by means of a pedal board but in meeting and rising above his misfortunes Vierne understandably ignores no technique at his disposal.