LDV77

When Ysaÿe composed these six sonatas, he obviously had Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas before his eyes, works which were already considered at the time to be a ‘Himalaya’ of the violin. What traces did Bach’s sonatas leave on Ysaÿe’s? Ysaÿe uses old forms derived from the church sonatas or the secular dances of the Sonatas and Partitas, especially in his First and Fourth Sonatas. Ysaÿe’s Sonata no.1 is a tribute to Bach’s First Sonata: both are in G minor. Bach’s begins with an Adagio, Ysaÿe’s with a Grave. The second movement is a Fugato in Ysaÿe, echoing the fugue in Bach. Obsession , which opens the Second Sonata, begins with a quotation from the Prelude of Bach’s Partita no.3 in E major. Moreover, the Dies irae motif haunts the entire sonata. The violin writing, however, is no longer that of Bach’s time. Violin making had evolved in the direction of greater projection of the instrument, a consequence of the technical developments introduced by the great violinists and composers of the nineteenth century. Ysaÿe’s violin had little in common with the instrument Bach knew. Bows had changed even more than violins. Their shape was no longer the same and the technique was totally different. The ‘expressive tools’ of the violin had multiplied: musicians used glissando and vibrato. The writing encompassed a much wider range, traversing the neck from bottom to top. Bach brought the organ into the violin. Ysaÿe liberated its expressive quintessence and accompanied the evolution of the musical language of the early twentieth century. 20 YSAŸE ∙ SIX SONATAS FOR SOLO VIOLIN OP.27