JAVS Spring 2022

of Music. The work’s first public performance occurred at the Chautauqua Chamber Music Society on August 15, 1935, with performers Charles Lichter, viola, and Harrison Potter, piano. The Sonata’s public New York premiere occurred on March 23, 1936, on a program of the NBC Music Guild, with Joseph Vieland playing viola and Vladimir Breener on the piano. 12 Formal Analysis The Allegretto movement of Bauer’s Sonata for Viola and Piano is in sonata form (see Table 1). While the foreground of the piece utilizes modal harmony, the background follows a traditional tonal progression, essentially encompassing motion from C to G, and continuing: D to G to C. A surprising exception to the large-scale progression occurs in the E major harmony in the final measure of the movement. This harmony is not present in the rest of the movement and is not expected in any way from what came before. Its probable purpose is to foreshadow the E-centered harmonies of the sonata’s second movement.

The second movement of the Sonata for Viola and Piano , op. 22, Andante espressivo , is in ternary form, ABA’, in which the A and B sections are clearly contrasting in both tempo and character. An ostinato figure (F#A#G#) introduced in the first measure of the piano is utilized to create expectation and transformation throughout the movement (see Figure 1). The final movement of Bauer’s Sonata for Viola and Piano is in large-scale ternary form, ABA’. It is chromatic and frenetic, with a sixteenth note ostinato figure continuously providing a pedal for the viola’s chaotic melodic material, shown in Figure 2. Halfway through the movement, motion ceases and the viola sings a cadenza that leads into the meno mosso B section, recalling the Sonata’s second movement. With a return of the ostinato, piano and viola gradually accelerate to a climax at the end of the movement.

Table 1: Marion Bauer, Sonata for Viola and Piano, I. Allegretto, Form

Figure 1: Marion Bauer, Sonata for Viola and Piano, op. 22, II. Andante espressivo, mm. 1-5.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022