Final Violin Sonatas of Beethoven and Brahms: A Consideration of the Influence of Pierre Rode and Joseph Joachim.

Both Ludwig Van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms composed significant works for the violin, despite neither of them being accomplished violinists.These works were invariably composed with a specific performer in mind.At the beginning of the nineteenth¬century, new schools of violin playing began to emerge in Europe.Arguably the most prominent of these schools was the French, with which Beethoven was most familiar.Pierre Rode, a leading figure in this school, was one of the most famous French violinists of the time.His playing inspired the violin part of Beethoven’s Sonata for Piano and Violin, op.96, which he premiered with the work’s dedicatee, Archduke Rudolph.In the final decades of the nineteenth¬century Johannes Brahms consolidated his reputation as a writer for the violin with the premiere of his Violin Concerto, a work composed in close collaboration with Joseph Joachim, a key figure in what was then known as the “German”school of violin playing.This close collaboration had an indelible affect on Brahms’s writing for violin and it is clear that most, if not all, of his works for the instrument were written with Joachim in mind.The Third Sonata for Violin and Piano, op.108, is clearly influenced by Joachim’s approach to performance and stylistic predilections and it can be argued that this work displays the effect of his and Brahms’s close work together as friends, composers and performers.This critical commentary examines the effect of a performer’s style and practices on the compositional process and performance of a new work by exploring the schools of thought and personal relationships that brought about the works in focus.