Sonata for Violin and Piano

If you know Claude Debussy only through his piano compositions—the Preludes, perhaps, Clair de lune, or Estampes—you already know a great deal about his musical palette. However, there is a side to his creativity and life story that emerges only in connection with the late chamber music. Debussy died miserably from colon cancer in spring 1918, fatigued, impoverished, and unable to do the one thing which meant everything to him: composing music. Besieged by a virulent cancer from within and the German imperial menace from without, Debussy nevertheless planned to write a set of six neo-classical sonatas for various instruments. Only three were completed. Each tries a kind of musical escapism, reverting to simplicity of texture and form and eschewing Debussy’s own lush “Impressionism” in favor of a leaner, more purely abstract and sardonic style. Initial ideas for the third sonata, a work for violin and piano, emerged in December 1915 but cancer intervened; Debussy wrote hardly a note of music during 1916 as his condition worsened considerably. Surgery failed. He was now faced with regular morphine injections (causing confusion and lethargy) and sickening radiation treatments, not to mention the encroaching German army. Against this backdrop the nostalgic Violin Sonata emerged in fits and starts. Two movements were completed early in 1917, but the third caused Debussy much consternation and uncertainty as he revised several earlier drafts. A despondent Debussy played the piano part at what turned out to be his final public appearance in September.
The work’s classical sonata form and modest scope (it lasts just 13 minutes) may be seen as a defiant gesture against German musical grandiloquence and, in turn, against the Kaiser’s attacking army. It also pays tribute to the influence of Erik Satie, whose austere piano works were popular in Paris at this time and which caused a vogue for “antique” triadic harmony and witty, irreverent rhythmic figures. Debussy himself described the sonata as “the simple play of an idea turning on itself, like a snake biting its own tail.” Some critics deride the work as the product of a sick, despairing soul, and to be fair, the work as a whole balances between sterile repetition and a few truly inspired passages. For instance, the opening passages are serene and engaging, while the nagging gypsy-like chromaticism that concludes the movement seems unwarranted in this classical landscape. The second movement, to me the best of the three, explores quick juxtapositions of contrasting characters, and Debussy succeeds in playing off the lyricism of Fauré against an intensity and use of pizzicato that would make Shostakovich envious. In the finale violin cadenzas decorate a shimmering piano texture, reminiscent of Debussy’s own earlier piano music. And if the rumbling finish provides more smoke than fire, there can be no denying that only Debussy could have composed this capricious yet elegant homage to the ancient genre of the accompanied violin sonata.

(c) Jason Stell