Composed 1878-9; 28 minutes

When Clara Wieck, by then Robert Schumann’s widow, received the manuscript of Brahms’s newly completed G Major Violin Sonata, Op. 78 in 1879, she immediately recognized its special significance.  Clara was struck by the main melody, which Brahms had used in his earlier songs – the Regenlied (Rain Song) and Nachklang (Reminiscence).  This melody had brought her comfort during a period of intense personal loss—the death of her daughter Julie, the growing insanity of her son Ludwig, and the tragic, incurable tuberculosis of her youngest son, Felix, who was also Brahms’s godson. “It would bring me great joy if I could create some little thing in his memory,” Brahms wrote to Clara. The sonata, one of his gentlest and most lyrical creations, though not without its darker moments, became that ‘little thing.’

Often nicknamed the ‘Regen’ (‘Rain’) Sonata, Brahms composed the work during the summer of 1879 in the tranquil lakeside resort of Pörtschach, while simultaneously refining the solo violin part of his Violin Concerto with the celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim. Like the concerto, this sonata has three movements rather than the more customary four.

The emotional arc of the sonata mirrors that of Regenlied, a song imbued with nostalgic longing for the lost innocence of childhood. The melody of the song is not merely quoted in the sonata – it is its very lifeblood. Its most explicit appearance is in the opening of the third movement, where the violin assumes the vocal line of Regenlied, and the piano part is strikingly similar to the song’s accompaniment. A distinctive feature of this melody is its dotted rhythm – a long-short-long pattern on the same note. This rhythm pervades the piano’s accompaniment and ultimately serves as a unifying motto throughout the sonata, from the violin’s very first notes to the closing bars of the finale.

Two additional melodies from the first movement reappear in the finale, further reinforcing the work’s cohesion. The dotted rhythmic motto transforms into the contrasting, recurring funeral march of the Adagio, a dark E-flat minor lament for Felix, who died in February 1879 at the age of 24. Brahms confided as much to Clara in a letter from this period. The autumnal theme of the slow movement also re-emerges as an episode in the rondo finale.

As the finale unfolds, fragments of themes from earlier movements are woven into the constantly shifting texture, often in the minor key. The sonata reaches its culmination in a tender exchange between the violin and piano, as they share the motto theme, now in the major key, suggesting a sense of reconciliation. A feeling of peace and closure suffuses the work.