Sonatas for Two Instruments

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I was startled to see that some of my earliest posts on music were no longer very useful, because some of the links to performances on YouTube lead to clips that had been deleted.  Record companies are become ever more reluctant to give away anything for free, even a single cut from a CD, and they hound YouTube (Google) until they ask the person who puts up an identified track on YouTube to remove it.  [The music recording business was notoriously profitable at one time; the ease of ripping CDs and sharing the music is cutting into their profits very dramatically.  Unfortunately for most of us, getting "unfair" profits from things is not objectionable in this society, it is supposedly the very economic foundation of it.]

At one time, only keyboard instruments had sonatas written for them alone; sonatas for any other instruments had a keyboard instrument accompanying the other "soloist".  There were exceptions: Bach, for instance, wrote sonatas for solo violin and solo cello, and later these sonatas were adapted for flute and recorder as well.  (It is possible that Bach wrote original solo sonatas for flute and recorder; I'm not certain.)

It seems reasonable, though, to call a violin sonata with a piano accompaniment a sonata for violin and piano.  The wonderful Sonata in A major by Cesar Franck, certainly, deserves this description.  Here is the fourth movement:



The pianist is not identified on YouTube, but reading the comments we learn that it is (possibly) Pierre Barbizet.  (The arguments in the comments are precisely about the point we are making.)  Isn't it brilliant?  This last movement is exceptionally easy to 'get', because of the close imitation between the two instruments.

J. S. Bach wrote in most of the musical forms in which composers wrote at that time.  I was looking for a good example, and this is what I found: it is a modern transcription for violin and piano of a violin and piano sonata.  It is the last movement, and is in the form of a dance.  Arguably, the modern piano played judiciously is a better partner for the violin in these sonatas in which the two instruments are far more equal in Bach's music than they customarily might have been.  (The sheer joy in performance of the piece is clearly evident on the face of the pianist, though the violinist frowns with concentration most of the time!  One good reason for this is that to obtain a good tone takes a little more work on the violin than it does on a piano, so that the pianist is just a little more at liberty to appreciate the piece.)



In Baroque sonatas, independence of voices was a major value: at the height of its development, Baroque music was written so that every voice was important, and ideally, equally audible in the tapestry of the music.  This being the case, the keyboard part was usually written for two very independent voices--left hand and right hand-- or three partially independent voices: one in the left hand, and two in the right hand, where it is clear the the two voices could be kept moderately independent only with some loss in freedom.  So, ironically, the Baroque violin and piano duo sonatas are actually for three voices.  In the example above, you can clearly hear the main tune of the movement entering three times: the violin, the piano right hand, and the piano bass.

It seems rather a coincidence that both the examples should have this feature of the themes introduced imitatively, but in fact I suspect that it is a rather common device, especially in chamber music.

A brilliant duet for flute and piano is by Francis Poulenc, his flute sonata.  It is more a solo for flute, but the accompaniment is virtuoso grade.  This clip is essentially a sound clip:



Many baroque arias by Bach have an obbligato instrument.  The lovely aria "Qui sedes ad dextram patris" from the Mass in B minor features the voice and the oboe, accompanied by the so-called continuo.  The most important part of the continuo is the bass line, so in effect this is a trio.  The contralto vocalist is Hertha Töpper, whom I have never heard before.  I link to this in preference to the rendering by Kathleen Ferrier only because it is a true video:



[To be continued]