The last movement of the beautiful Sonata in A for pianoforte and violin is sometimes criticised as being almost too concise. The present writer confesses that she always feels it to be so, and one day confided this sentiment to Joachim, who did not agree with her, but said that the coda was originally considerably longer. 'Brahms told me he had cut a good deal away; he aimed always at condensation.'
Dr. Widmann allows us to publish an English version of a poem written by him on this work, the original of which is published in the appendix to his 'Brahms Recollections.' We have desired to place it before our English-speaking readers, not only because it coincides remarkably with what we related in our early chapters of the delicate, fanciful tastes of the youthful Hannes, but because it gave pleasure to the Brahms of fifty-three, and even of sixty-three, and thus seems to illustrate the fact on which we have insisted, that if in any case then in our master's, the child was father to the man. Only a year before his death the great composer wrote to Widmann to beg for one or two more copies of the poem, which had been printed for private circulation.
THE THUN SONATA.
Poem on the Sonata in A for Pianoforte and Violin, Op. 100,
By Johannes Brahms,
WRITTEN BY
J. V. WIDMANN.
There where the Aare's waters gently glide
From out the lake and flow towards the town,
Where pleasant shelter spreading trees provide,
Amidst the waving grass I laid me down;
And sleeping softly on that summer day,
I saw a wondrous vision as I lay.
Three knights rode up on proudly stepping steeds,
Tiny as elves, but with the mien of kings,
And spake to me: 'We come to search the meads,
To seek a treasure here, of precious things
Amongst the fairest; wilt thou help us trace
A new-born child, a child of heav'nly race?'
'And who are ye?' I, dreaming, made reply;
'Knights of the golden meadows' then they said,
'That at the foot of yonder Niesen[71] lie;
And in our ancient castles many a maid
Hath listened to the greeting of our strings,
Long mute and passed amid forgotten things.
'But lately tones were heard upon the lake,
A sound of strings whose like we never knew,
So David played, perhaps, for Saul's dread sake,
Soothing the monarch curtained from his view;
It reached us as it softly swelled and sank,
And drew us, filled with longing, to this bank.
'Then help us search, for surely from this place,
This meadow by the river, came the sound;
Help us then here the miracle to trace,
That we may offer homage when 'tis found.
Sleeps under flow'rs the new-born creature rare?
Or is it floating in the evening air?'