The Kreutzer Sonata

“ The 'Choral Symphony' ranks amongst the greatest of Beethoven's works, but we should like to mention one of his smaller, though not less famous, compositions—that which is known by the title of the 'Kreutzer Sonata for Pianoforte and Violin'—because no fitter illustration could be found of the rapidity with which the composer worked under pressure than is afforded by the beautiful work which he dedicated to his friend Rodolphe Kreutzer, a violinist attached to Count Bernadotte's suite of performers. ”

“ But one evening he came in, unheard, listened to her performance of the B-flat minor nocturne with a frown, and pulled her away from the piano before she had finished. "Not true music, not true love, not true anydings!" he said, speaking however with an unexpected gentleness, and patting her on the shoulder with a dirty old hand. "Listen!" He clapped his fiddle under his chin and played the air of the andante from the Kreutzer Sonata with so singing and heavenly a tone that Sylvia, as helpless an instrument in his skilful hands as the violin itself, felt the nervous tears stinging her eyelids. ”

“ Count Tolstoi in "The Kreutzer Sonata," has drawn, with a free hand, one of the vilest and basest of men for his hero. He is suspicious, jealous, cruel, infamous. The wife is infinitely too good for such a wild unreasoning beast, and yet the writer of this insane story seems to justify the assassin. If this is a true picture of wedded life in Russia, no wonder that Count Tolstoï looks forward with pleasure to the extinction of the human race. ”

“ It is a frightful power in the hands of any one, no matter whom. For instance, should they be allowed to play this ‘Kreutzer Sonata,’ the first presto,—and there are many like it,—in parlors, among ladies wearing low necked dresses, or in concerts, then finish the piece, receive the applause, and then begin another piece? These things should be played under certain circumstances, only in cases where it is necessary to incite certain actions corresponding to the music. ”

“ The Kreutzer Sonata is not an obscene nor even an indelicate book: the mind that finds it so is an indelicate, an obscene mind. It is not, according to our popular notions, “a book for young girls.” Nevertheless, it is most desirable that young girls should know—preferably through their parents who can speak with authority of experience—the truth which it enforces: namely, that marriage, like wealth, offers no hope of lasting happiness. ”

“ Opus 27; the Sonata in D Minor, Opus 31, No. 2, with its dramatic recitatives which seem like some grand yet heart-broken monologue; the Sonata in C minor for Violin, Opus 30, dedicated to the Emperor Alexander; the Kreutzer Sonata, Opus 47; and the Six Religious Songs, heroic yet grief-laden, to the words of Gellert, Opus 48. The Second Symphony written in 1803 reflects rather his youthful love; and here one feels that his will is decidedly gaining the upper hand. An irresistible force sweeps away his sad thoughts, a veritable bubbling over of life shows itself in the finale. ”

“ But was it? she suddenly asked herself, as she glanced at Dorat, rapt, unremembering, unseeing beside her. She recalled what he had said several days before, about the outsider always trying to read meanings into music. He had even cited Rubinstein's disgust with Tolstoi, over the fallacies of the Kreutzer Sonata, and had mocked at the many lay efforts to read words and ideas into Mendelssohn's Lieder Ohne Worte. ”

“ While he was studying the people, and sending into their darkness a ray of light from his station above them, he was also devoting two tragic romances to the still darker night of the middle [Pg 174] classes and the wealthy. At this period the dramatic form was predominant over his ideas of art. The Death of Ivan Ilyitch and The Kreutzer Sonata are both true dramas of the inner soul, of the soul turned upon itself and concentrated upon itself, and in The Kreutzer Sonata it is the hero of the drama himself who unfolds it by narration. ”

“ Many things were then accepted and admired in Vienna, in Berlin, in Leipzig, in London, which would now be regarded as impossible atrocities. Marxsen was capable of setting the Kreutzer Sonata for full orchestra, but this is hardly so surprising as that the Leipzig authorities should have produced the arrangement at one of the Gewandhaus concerts, or that Schumann should have mentioned it indulgently, on whatever grounds, in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. ”

“ There exists a copy of the sonata, formerly belonging to Bridgetower, on which he has made a memorandum of an alteration he introduced in the violin part, which so pleased Beethoven that he jumped up and embraced the violinist, exclaiming, 'Noch einmal, mein lieber Bursch!' In later years Bridgetower alleged that the Kreutzer Sonata was originally dedicated to him, but that before he left Vienna he had a quarrel with Beethoven about some love affair which caused the latter to alter the inscription. ”

“ Although the breadth of the thought in different movements is majestic even to awe, all phases of human feeling are expressed. Strength and delicacy, gloom and playfulness are found side by side. The sonata form with Beethoven was the means of the full development of all the expressive elements in music.
These considerations are likewise true of his piano and violin sonatas, trios and concertos, the most prominent of which are the so-called Kreutzer Sonata, for piano and violin, trio in B flat, violin concerto, and piano concertos in G and E flat. ”

“ They played Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’ Do you know the first presto? Do you know it? Ah!” . . .
Posdnicheff heaved a sigh, and was silent for a long time.
“A terrible thing is that sonata, especially the presto! And a terrible thing is music in general. What is it? Why does it do what it does? They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it acts frightfully (I speak for myself) , but not in an ennobling way. It acts neither in an ennobling nor a debasing way, but in an irritating way. How shall I say it? Music makes me forget my real situation. ”

“ Caraffa is acquainted with the delays of the German law-courts.
Lastly, the rascal has one support which never fails him and consoles him for his mortifications: the women. They are not always seductive, but they are always seduced. Long before the Kreutzer Sonata, Kuhnau had noted the ravages which music, and above all the performer, commits in the feminine heart ”

“ Massart was to play, with Franz Liszt, a program which included the Kreutzer sonata. Just as the sonata was begun a voice from the audience called out "Robert le Diable," referring to Liszt's brilliant fantasia on themes from that opera, which he had recently composed, and had played several times with immense success. The call was taken up by other voices, and the sonata was drowned. Liszt rose and bowed, and presently, in response to the continued applause, he said: "I am always the humble servant of the public. ”

“ Many people have based their idea of the moral status of musicians and the moral effects of music upon a certain work by Tolstoi, who is no more eminent as a crusader in the fields of real life and real fiction, than he is incompetent as a critic of art. His novel, "The Kreutzer Sonata," is musically a hopeless fallacy. ”

“ He was in Vienna with Bernadotte in 1798, but no trace of his relations with Beethoven remains, though we may assume them to have been good, for Beethoven to designate him as his 'friend.' It has been alleged as a reason that the second theme of the Presto is a phrase of Kreutzer's; but this has not been substantiated. Certainly no such passage appears in Kreutzer's violin works. The dedication on the 1st ed. stands 'Sonata per il Pianoforte ed un Violino obligato, scritta in uno stilo molto concertante, quasi come d'un Concerto. ”

“ After the stormy power and the serene beauties of the Sonata in C minor (a key which always called forth Beethoven's best) this Sonata appears somewhat colourless. The long-drawn Tempo [174] di Minuetto is a little tedious, whilst the first and last movements, though vigorous and well varied in mood, by no means give us the deep Beethoven of the C minor Sonata. The scoring of many of the passages is unusually thin, and reminiscent of Haydn not at his best.
9th Sonata, Opus 47, in A. Dedicated to Rudolph Kreutzer.
Adagio—Presto—Andante con variazioni—Presto. ”

“ A player who, in a case like that of the so-called "Kreutzer-Sonata," claims the honour of representing the master in full, might, at least, attempt to establish some sort of relation and connection between the sentiment of the theme and that of the first variation; he might begin the latter at a more moderate pace, and gradually lead up to the lively movement. Pianoforte and violin players are firmly persuaded that the character of this variation differs considerably from that of the theme. ”

“ Apart, however, from his fame as a violinist, Kreutzer was also a prolific composer; he wrote twenty-nine operas, many of which were successfully produced, besides nineteen violin concertos and chamber music. ”

“ The tender melody and delicate variations of the Andante, the bold Scherzo, with its soft Trio, and the energetic Finale are all exceedingly interesting; yet they do not affect us like the first movement, in which lies not only the majesty, but the mystery of genius. The sonata in D has a vigorous opening Allegro,—a long, lovely, slow movement,—a crisp Scherzo, but a peculiar Finale, one which Schumann qualifies as comical (possirlich) . The sonata in G contains some of the composer's most charming, characteristic music. ”

“ Scherzo, andante, and allegro enter when fancy ordains, lasting sometimes but a moment, and returning as they please. In the same way is constructed the superb pianoforte sonata in B minor, a glorious fantasy in Liszt’s most heroic style. It is commonly said that as a sonata this work is structurally weak; it would be truer to say that as a sonata it has no existence. It is the nobility of the work, in its contrapuntal and pianistic mastership, that carries conviction. ”

“ The final Allegro is preceded by a short introduction, in which the chief theme and other material of the Finale are set forth. The connection between this and the earlier movements of the sonata is not evident, like the one, for instance, already noticed, between the Andante and the Scherzo; with research, and possibly some imagination, relationship might, however, be traced. We are far from asserting that movements of a sonata ought to be visibly connected; after all, the true bond of union must be a spiritual one. ”

“ The repetitions of the sections in A major might have been omitted to better effect; but there is no looseness of structure. The music is unspeakably sad, with the sadness of the songs of the Winterreise. The scherzo is flawless, the final rondo long but well sustained. Yet, by reason of the aimlessness of long measures in the first movement, the sonata as a whole is like a condemned building. And in this sonata, too, there is an intensity of mood that, except for the last movement, should succeed in welding the whole group together. Even the last movement is not entirely independent. ”

“ The same qualities are found in Kreutzer’s part-songs for men’s voices, which at one time were extremely popular in Germany, and are still listened to with pleasure. Amongst these “Der Tag des Herrn” (“The Lord’s Day”) may be named as the most excellent. Kreutzer was a prolific composer, and wrote a number of operas for the theatre at Vienna, which have disappeared from the stage and are not likely to be revived. He was from 1812 to 1816 Kapellmeister to the king of Württemberg, and in 1840 became conductor of the opera at Cologne. ”

“ If in his early pieces he was the prestidigitator, the brother-in-art of Thalberg and Liszt, here he is the dreamer, the rhapsodist, and his nearest of kin is Robert Schumann. The largo of the B-minor Sonata is Schumannesque in its contemplativeness, its innigkeit, its marked note of mysticism; the funeral march in the B-flat minor Sonata equals that of the great quintet in poignancy and dignity, though it is a feminine version of what in the German composer we find expressed with more virile force. In the nocturnes the feminine quality is even more evident. ”

“ In the hands of a great interpreter the music makes a powerful appeal; yet as a sonata it is not really great. It lacks organic development, unity. The Sonata in B minor, though attractive to pianists, is an inferior work. The first movement, with exception of its melodious second theme, is dry, and the Finale belongs to the bravoura order of piece. The Scherzo is light and graceful. The slow movement is the most poetical of the four, though spun out at too great length. The real Chopin is to be found in his nocturnes, mazurkas, and ballads, not in his sonatas. ”

“ The Andante in D minor, with its epigrammatic Trio in the tonic major, was once a great favourite with the composer. The Scherzo which despite its title is really a Minuet, is one of his happiest, and the Rondo is full of the joy of field and forest.
16th Sonata, Opus 31, No. 1, in G major. Allegro vivace—Adagio grazioso—Rondo.
This Opus contains three Sonatas—a favourite grouping with the composer. Although No. 1 was published in 1802, this Sonata, so simple in [151] technique, has the feeling of having been conceived much earlier. ”

“ He also became first violin at the Opéra Comique, and professor at the Conservatoire, where he formed some excellent pupils, among them being D'Artot,{70} Rovelli, the teacher of Molique, Massart, the teacher of Wieniawski and Teresina Tua, and Lafont, who also became a pupil of De Bériot. On Rode's departure for Russia, Kreutzer succeeded him as solo violin at the Opéra, later becoming Chef d'Orchestre, and after fourteen years' service in this capacity he was decorated with the insignia of the Legion of Honour, and became General Director of the Music at the Opéra. ”