After having heard Joseph Szigeti perform Johann Sebastian Bach's sonata for solo violin in G minor, Ysaÿe was inspired to compose violin works that represent the evolution of musical techniques and expressions of his time. As Ysaÿe claimed, "I have played everything from Bach to Debussy, for real art should be international."[1] In this set of sonatas, he used prominent characteristics of early 20th century music, such as whole tone scale and dissonances. Ysaÿe also employed virtuoso bow and left hand techniques throughout, for he believed that "at the present day the tools of violin mastery, of expression, technique, mechanism, are far more necessary than in days gone by. In fact they are indispensable, if the spirit is to express itself without restraint."[2] Thus, this set of sonatas places high technical demands on its performers. Yet Ysaÿe recurrently warns violinists that they should never forget to play instead of becoming preoccupied with technical elements; a violin master "must be a violinist, a thinker, a poet, a human being, he must have known hope, love, passion and despair, he must have run the gamut of the emotions in order to express them all in his playing."[3]
Sonata No. 1 in G minor
Sonata No. 1, in four movements, was dedicated to Joseph Szigeti.
The final sonata is dedicated to Manuel Quiroga.
The dedicatee never played this sonata in public. It is written in the style of a Spanish habanera, with a turbulent middle section, and notable for rich texture and chromaticism and scale passages.
