(draft) my favorite moments in my favorite sonata

Today was one of those “gloomy days” here in Southern California. Now, in Southern California, we don’t have true winters. We only have slightly frigid, grey days where the beautiful greenery is shrouded by a depressing stillness. Great recipe for Seasonal Affective Disorder. Now, what is a temporary antidote to a gloomy day? A matcha latte. Pair that with some classical music, and you’re golden! Now, my Brahms is as much a Romantic as any other composer from the Era. In fact, he was a late Romantic, the successor (in a way) to Schumann and Mendelssohn. **insert historical context, the point being things were pretty crazy at the time* My matcha latte on a gloomy day set the scene perfectly for listening to his D Minor Violin Sonata in the car. What I love most about this sonata is that Brahms maintains his stiff, erudite density while interspersing moments of hypnotic Romantic passion. Like somehow having a sugar high from that Matcha Latte even though everything around me was still and depressing. Throughout his life, Brahms was criticised for being far too academic. By the height of his late period, which the D Minor Sonata hails from, critics were saying that his final symphony felt like “being punched in the face by two highly intelligent people.” Or something like that. XD The opening of this sonata is among my favorites in all of music. The marking is particularly interesting: sotto voce ma espressivo. The term ‘sotto voce’ literally means “under the voice.” In rhetoric, it’s when the speaker intentionally says something of great importance using a hushed voice to further emphasize the statement’s weight. In music, passages marked sotto voce (as in the Wieniawski Legende or Mozart E Minor Sonata), usually have this broken quality to them - when you’re so sad you can’t speak up, because otherwise you will cry. So, while sotto voce is indeed an expressive marking, Brahms also felt the need to write ma espressivo. So while you have to be soft spoken, hesitant, so as not to burst into tears - you still have to maintain that Romantic fluidity. It's a distinct quality that’s so hard to achieve, but when a violinist does it right, it never fails to raise my blood pressure just a bit. XD The melody itself is a very hesitant one, but with a certain turbulence that foreshadows what’s to come. For example, the climax of the first phrase is this heart-wrenching jump from F to E natural (a major seventh). The major seventh is the most unstable interval, demanding to resolve up a half step to an octave. Brahms tragically reaches up, before stumbling back down into confusion. The phrase that follows features these triplet swells in the piano part, again foreshadowing instability. That opening is just so tragically beautiful, the best precursor for moments to come. The more lyrical second theme is when Brahms incorporates hypnotic romanticism into a generally cold and erudite piece. A particular moment I love is when this theme comes back during the recapitulation in the key of D Major. Just as the listener thinks they know where the melody is going, it suddenly soars up the fingerboard into the (in this context) distant key of F major. I’m not sure why I find that sudden modulation to be so beautiful, but it gets me every time. It’s almost like trying to escape reality one last time before you have to face your inevitable harsh destiny. Another feature of this sonata is its harmonic ambiguity. During the development, the violin uses one of my favorite techniques: bariolage. It doesn’t lay well under the violinist’s fingers because of how strange the harmonies are. This development invokes the same feeling as when you’re lost in anxiety, unsure of how exactly to function. A final favorite moment of mine is the ending. After all that restless tension - including a heart-wrenching climax where the sotto voce theme finally wails out in despair - Brahms manages to find peace. He winds the music down, ending on a sustained A from the violin part accompanied by a peaceful upward arpeggio. It’s just as peaceful as the ending of Meditation from Thais, in the same tonal center. It’s one of the most heart-warming things there is for me. I guess I relate to this movement so much because I have anxiety. And there’s no feeling like finally being able to rest your mind and body after an anxiety attack.

A good performance: