2012 Chestnut Hill Concerts program book

Debussy : Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano in G minor Depressed by World War I and eager to contribute to the French war effort, Debussy turned to the only thing he had to offer: his music. “I want to work not so much for myself, but to give proof, however small it may be, that not even 30 million ‘boches’ can destroy French thought,” he said. In his Violin Sonata, as in the other two sonatas he wrote at the end of his life, he turned for inspiration to the sonatas of the eighteenth-century French Baroque masters, although of course he put his own stamp on their form. Like the Cello Sonata, the Violin Sonata is moving away from Impressionism; it is brief, forward-looking, and relatively abstract. Although he had a hard time finishing it and rewrote the last movement several times, Debussy at first expressed satisfaction with it. A month later he had changed his mind: “I wrote this sonata only to get rid of it…. [It] will be interesting from a documentary point of view, as an example of what a sick man can write in time of war.” Time has proven how wrong he was.

The sonata is a work of many moods, from sad to humorous to capricious to fiery.

Like all of Debussy’s work, it is modal and harmonically ambiguous. At times it suggests Spain; at other times, gypsy fiddlers. The melodic first movement begins and ends, conventionally, in G minor, and it follows the traditional sonata form of exposition, development, and recapitulation. But from the violin’s melancholy opening theme, there are many irregularities. Keys shift unexpectedly. Motives are inserted in unexpected places. The rhythmic interplay between violin and piano is complex from the very first notes, with beats often obscured, or the violin playing in 2/4 time over the piano’s 3/4 time. At times the violin and piano seem to be competing against each other rather than working together as they would be in a traditional sonata. This first movement is subdued and nuanced except for a brief passionate outburst at the end of the development and a fiery, Spanish-tinged coda.

The playful second movement is more extroverted and capricious. Titled Intermède (Fantasque et léger), it recalls another classical source much beloved by French artists: the Italian Commedia dell’arte and especially its floppy clowns. (The same source inspired the second movement of the Cello Sonata.) A rhythmic, dance-like theme alternates with a melodious second theme before the movement dies away. Debussy described the vivacious Finale as “full of a joyous tumult.” The structure, he said, with its opening subject taken from the first movement, was “an idea turning back on itself like a snake swallowing its own tail.” Again there is a suggestion of Spain, as well as of the music of a gypsy violinist whose playing had impressed Debussy during an earlier visit to Budapest. While the sonata reflects many of the influences that shaped Debussy’s music over the years, its harmonic adventurousness looks to the future. As Aaron Copland said, “His work incited a whole generation of composers to experiment with new and untried harmonic possibilities.”

The Violin Sonata was the last thing Debussy wrote. He performed it in May 1917, and again in his final public appearance in September of that year. He died in 1918 during the German bombardment of Paris.

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