PROGRAM NOTE

Since childhood I have been obsessed with violin sonatas. As a teenager I played several of the Corelli and Mozart sonatas with the hopes of eventually learning Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. Additionally, as a string player in piano-playing composers’ world I thought that that’s what composer started with: composing three sonatas for their instrument. (Brahms, Beethoven, Boulez.) My first completed work was a violin sonata that I promptly sent to Joseph Silverstein and received no response. I wrote another one in high school but this one was written my sophomore year at Eastman.

In its original form it was forty minutes long – and unplayable. In 2003 I divided it into three smaller pieces: Violin Sonata (2001), Mercury for Violin and Piano (2001) and Proteus Variants (2003). However, my Violin Sonata (2008) received the designation Violin Sonata No.1 it means that, Bruckner-like, this is Violin Sonata No.0 (2001)

-Matthew Barnson