No sooner had Fauré completed the Second Violin Sonata—which inaugurates the chamber works of his final, old master, phase—than he began the Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano in the spring of 1917, completing the final movement August 18. Dramatic and impassioned, it has a direct and soaring disposition that sets it apart from its equivocal, uncertain predecessor. For instance, both begin with a sharply accented syncopation on the piano, but where the violin's entrance seemed skittish, the cello erupts in a peremptory, angry, commanding reworking of a theme from the discarded Symphony in D minor of 1884; the upward skips of this theme are something of a Fauréenne archetype, heard also in Pénélope. This is immediately succeeded by a lyrical second theme—a mere phrase, really—which poses a buoyant contrast to the first theme's agitation, and whose interplay is carried through with a narrative sureness. In its vehemence and power, this movement belies the image of Fauré as an urbane "master of charms," as Debussy called him, and points to his underrated strengths as a dramatic composer, evident in the operas Prométhée and Pénélope.

The great Andante again introduces two contrasting themes without prologue—a dotted figure and a berceuse-like sigh—from whose slender suggestions Fauré weaves a spellbinding cantando dialogue. The concluding Allegro commodo, again direct and simple, offers an effusive, accented melody followed by a leaping melodic fragment; the composer works these together canonically into an effervescent, yet serene statement.

In tandem with the Second Violin Sonata, the Cello Sonata No. 1 had its premiere at a concert of the Société Nationale de Musique, November 10, 1917, by André Hekking, cello, and Alfred Cortot taking the piano part.

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