When you ask music lovers to name their favourite violin sonatas, they’ll likely mention works by Beethoven, Brahms, Franck, or Ravel.
But venture just a little bit further outside the established canon, and you will find fascinating and deeply moving works by women composers, dating from the mid-seventeenth century to the present.
Today, we’re looking at twelve violin sonatas written by women composers and the remarkable stories behind each one.
Isabella Leonarda: Sonata, Op. 16, No. 12 (published in 1683)
Isabella Leonarda was born to a wealthy family in Novara, Italy, in 1620.
When she was sixteen, she entered the local convent. While there, she was promoted to a leadership role.
It is believed she began composing around the age of fifty.
Isabella Leonarda
This violin sonata comes from a collection of sonatas for various combinations of instruments.
To our knowledge, this is the first instrumental sonata published by a woman.
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre: Sonata for Violin and Clavecin No. 1 (published in 1707)
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre was a French composer born in 1665.
During her long career as singer, harpsichordist, and composer, Louis XIV, the Sun King, was among her most faithful patrons.
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre
This sonata is the first in a collection of six that she published in 1707.
At the time, the structure of instrumental sonatas wasn’t yet formalized, especially in France. That experimentation means the sonata has six sections: a slow opening, a presto, an adagio, a presto, an aria, and a presto.
Margarethe Danzi: Sonata for Pianoforte with Violin Obbligato No. 1 (published in 1801)
Margarethe Danzi was born in 1768 to the director of the National Theatre of Mannheim and his singer/actress wife.
As a child, she studied music with soprano Franziska Lebrun in Munich. She then moved in with Leopold Mozart to study with him in Salzburg. Leopold tried, unsuccessfully, to get a publisher to print some of her keyboard sonatas. (They are considered lost today.)
Three of her violin sonatas were published in 1801, the year after her death at 42 from pulmonary disease.
Louise Farrenc: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 (ca. 1850)
Louise Farrenc was born in Paris to a musical family in 1803. She grew up to become a virtuoso pianist and prolific composer, as well as one of the first women to write symphonies and have them performed.
Louise Farrenc
This sonata was written for Louis Sina, the second violinist of the celebrated Schuppanzigh Quartet, which had premiered many of Beethoven’s string quartets.
The sonata is lyrical, with both violinist and pianist playing equal roles. It is more classically restrained than virtuosically romantic, paying tribute to the styles of earlier composers like Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn.
Interestingly, Farrenc switches the traditional order of sonata movements, placing the fleet-fingered scherzo movement second and the gentle adagio third.
Amanda Röntgen-Maier: Violin Sonata in B-minor (1878)
Amanda Maier was born in small-town Sweden in 1853 and enrolled at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm when she was sixteen. While there, she studied multiple instruments (violin, piano, cello, and organ), as well as composition. However, her primary instrument was the violin.
Amanda Röntgen-Maier
As a young woman, she went to study in Leipzig. In 1880, she ended up marrying her violin teacher’s son, pianist Julius Röntgen. She would retire from public performance after her marriage, but would continue composing.
Her 1878 violin sonata is assured, passionate, and profoundly charming. There are clear echoes here of Schumann and Brahms.
This sonata in particular has enjoyed a renaissance over the past decade, and for good reason!
Ethel Smyth: Violin Sonata (1888)
Ethel Smyth was born in 1858 in England. She was a headstrong child who dreamed of becoming a composer, and she wore down her family for years until they allowed her to go to Germany to study.
John Singer Sargent: Dame Ethel Smyth
She ended up in Leipzig in the 1870s and 1880s and became friends with Amanda Röntgen-Maier, who she adored.
She also met Clara Schumann and her daughters, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and others, and wrote about them all in her engaging memoirs.
This passionate, impetuous sonata was dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn’s daughter Lili, who was friends with Smyth.
It has many long, lyrical lines, playing with texture and colour in engaging and sophisticated ways.
Amy Beach: Violin Sonata (1896)
Amy Beach was born in 1867 in New Hampshire. She quickly proved that she was one of the most gifted prodigies of her generation.
Amy Beach
Today, she is famous for being the first woman to have a symphony – her “Gaelic” Symphony – played by a major American orchestra. That performance was given in Boston in 1896, the same year that this violin sonata was written.
This lush, romantic, and technically demanding work has been described as “heart-on-sleeve.” There are similarities here to sonatas by Richard Strauss and César Franck.
Dora Pejačević: Violin Sonata in D-major, “Spring” (1909)
Dora Pejačević was born in 1885 to a noble family and grew up in a castle in Croatia. She had a difficult relationship with her mother and a tumultuous love life.
Dora Pejačević
Although she never became a touring performing musician because of her gender and elevated social station, she found comfort, refuge, and a means of expression in composing.
Her “Spring” violin sonata is a fresh, compact work, with a thinner texture than the Smyth or Beach sonatas. In many places, it telegraphs the simpler neoclassical aesthetic that would become popular in European music a decade later.
Johanna Bordewijk-Roepman: Violin Sonata (1923)
Dutch composer Johanna Bordewijk-Roepman was born to a wealthy family in 1892 in Rotterdam.
She began composing in 1917, without formal instruction, having taught herself from reading a book.
Johanna Bordewijk-Roepman
Her violin sonata is slim and mesmerizing, calling to mind elements of the language of Debussy or Ravel. But – perhaps thanks to her unconventional training – it is always unique and original.
Ruth Crawford Seeger: Violin Sonata (1926)
Ruth Crawford was born in Ohio in 1901. When she wrote her violin sonata, she was studying composition in Chicago.
Ruth Crawford Seeger
It is an energetic, extremely modern work, influenced by friends, teachers, and colleagues who were fascinated by the art of composer Alexander Scriabin.
The sonata is intense, beginning with heavily accented chords marked fortissimo. Those are followed by extremes in dynamics, combined with shifts in time signatures, creating a deeply unsettling atmosphere.
Grażyna Bacewicz: Violin Sonata No. 4 (1949)
Grażyna Bacewicz was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1909, to a musical family.
She studied violin and piano at the Warsaw Conservatory and became a hugely prolific composer, pursuing a career even in the face of the destruction of World War II.
Grażyna Bacewicz
After the war, the government began critiquing works deemed to be incompatible with its ideology. Despite these postwar restrictions, Bacewicz’s creativity blossomed. Her fourth violin sonata dates from this period.
The sonata is probably the best known of her five for violin and piano, and features a neoclassical language with a midcentury twist. The work has hints of Soviet composers like Prokofiev and Shostakovich in it, but it is also incredibly original.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Sonata in Three Movements (1974)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was born in 1939 in Miami, Florida. She studied at Florida State University before attending Juilliard.
In 1975, the year after this sonata was written, she earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Juilliard, the first woman to ever do so.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
The San Francisco Chronicle praised the sonata:
[The sonata] reflects a generous and natural melodic gift, sure craft and positive inspiration. There is a personality here with something distinctive to say. The music says it concisely and with real urgency or necessity.
For more of the best in classical music, sign up for our E-Newsletter
