Aaron Copland
Sonata for Violin and Piano (1943)
Andante semplice
Lento
Allegretto giusto
Biography:
Program Notes:
Premiered in January 1944, Aaron Copland’s Sonata for Violin and Piano is a staple of the violin repertoire. Written while Copland was composing music for North Star, a Hollywood war propaganda film, the Sonata is dedicated to a fallen friend, Lt. Larry Dunham, killed while on active duty in the South Pacific.
References to the carnage of WWII are plainly audible in various portions of the Sonata, including an overt, if stylized, bugle call in the finale; more subtly, numerous tonal and melodic exchanges between violin and piano begin “in-phase,” distort, and end as “out-of-sync” passages representative of the cacophony of a world seized by war.
I. “Andante semplice”
The movement is saturated by a single melodic cell, or idea, (below):
In point of fact, the cell recurs in each of the subsequent movements so as to render the whole of the Sonata cyclic. The cell is constantly altered, however, and in such a way as to project Schoenberg’s notion of “developing variation.” At times the cell occurs in the violin, while at others it sounds in one of the two primary voices of the piano. What is more, the cell often assumes the role of an extended obbligato voice, continuing while additional melodic lines come to the fore.
Dissonant gestures provide a sense of polytonality, and are projected in oppositional clashes (both vertical and linear) between chromatic notes such as Bb and B; C and C#; F# and G. In other places, fractures in the smooth unfolding of the surface are manifest in the competing pentatonic gestures of the violin, and the polytonal piano accompaniment.
II. “Lento”
The direct ABA structure of the “Lento” allows for a complex interaction between violin and piano featuring such standard contrapuntal fare as a canon between the three voices of the texture (violin, right- and left-hand of the piano). The principal melodic cell of Movement I is never far from the surface here, variously appearing in the piano.
The “Lento,” projects a decided modal flavor (A dorian), but concludes with a D-major chord, which, in its turn, serves as a link into the initial pitch at the head of the finale (G). The A – D – G motion over the course of the “Lento,” and into the downbeat of the “Allegretto giusto” mimics the passage heard beginning in measure one of the “Andante semplice.”
“Phase-shifting,” continues in the “Lento,” with the violin and piano often rhythmically offset from one another, as if to question the prevailing meter.
III. “Allegretto giusto”
Throughout this movement mixolydian, and phrygian modes alternate and even overlaps with various major and minor tonal regions. The imitative interplay between violin and piano is spurred on by the continuous reshaping of the following omnipresent rhythmic gesture:
The stylized bugle call that signals the initial climax of the movement is audibly distorted after its first entry in the violin, both tonally and melodically. Even so, there are playful sections in the movement, marked by quintessentially Copland-esque passages. Following the varied return of the principal melodic cell of Movement I, the coda concludes with the open fifth G – D.
Program Notes by Gregory Marion
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
The University of Saskatchewan
