'F-A-E' Sonata

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The ‘F.A.E' Sonata, a four-movement work for violin and piano, is an interesting example of a collaborative effort by three composers. It was composed in Düsseldorf in October 1853 by Robert Schumann, the young Johannes Brahms (who had become known to Schumann on the 1st of that month) and Schumann’s pupil Albert Dietrich.

The Sonata was Schumann’s idea and was intended as a gift and tribute to the violinist Joseph Joachim, with whom all three composers had entered into friendship relatively recently. Joachim had taken the Romantic-sounding phrase Frei aber einsam as his personal motto (‘free but lonely’), and the idea was for all of the movements of the sonata to make prominent use of the musical notes F-A-E, echoing this motto, and for Joachim to have to guess the composer of each movement. To Dietrich was assigned the substantial sonata form first movement; Schumann followed with a short ‘Romanze’ taking the place of a slow movement; the scherzo was by Brahms, who had already proved himself a natural master of this form in his E flat minor Scherzo for piano and the scherzi of his first two piano sonatas; and Schumann provided the finale.

The work was presented to Joachim at the end of the month; he played it in the Schumann household and identified its authors without difficulty. The work thereafter remained unpublished as an entirety. Schumann proceeded to incorporate his two movements into his own Violin Sonata No.3. Brahms’s scherzo was eventually published in 1906, nearly ten years after his death. Whether Dietrich made any further use of his sonata-allegro is not known. It is interesting to note that all three composers separately composed a violin concerto for Joachim; Schumann’s, indeed, was completed on 3 October 1853 just before the sonata was begun. Joachim, however, never played it, unlike the concertos of Brahms and Dietrich.