Cello Sonata
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1917
- Publisher
- Musica Brasilis (free edition from the manuscript at the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro; edited by Thadeu de Moraes Almeida; CC BY-SA; ISMN 979-0-802319-41-7; listed by Musica Brasilis as still under revision)
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About this piece
Homero de Sá Barreto, a pianist and teacher who studied at Rio de Janeiro's Instituto Nacional de Música with Alfredo Bevilacqua and Francisco Braga and was a friend of Villa-Lobos, dated this sonata 9 May 1917. It has three movements: an Allegretto in 6/8, an Adagio e molto expressivo in common time, and an Allegro vivo in G minor in which the cello runs through long chromatic sixteenth-note passages, pauses for a central episode in slow whole notes, and finishes on full three-note chords. Musica Brasilis edited it from the manuscript in the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional and lists the edition as still under revision.
Technical overview
The cello part stays in bass clef nearly throughout, even when it climbs well above the staff, with one short treble-clef run near the end of the finale. The edition prints almost no dynamics, slurs or bowings in any movement, so phrasing, articulation and bow distribution are left to the players.