Like his Piano Sonata (1939 - 41), Copland's Sonata for Violin and Piano (1942 - 43) represents a middle ground between the composer's thornier works and those in his readily accessible Americana-influenced style. Alternately reflective and exuberant, the Violin Sonata is permeated by a certain tenderness; each of its three movements, for example, ends with a quiet major triad. It is also very much a work of its time; Copland dedicated the sonata to memory of a musician friend, Lieutenant Harry H. Dunham, who was shot down in the Pacific during World War II. Indeed, there is an elegiac quality to much of the sonata, particularly in the somber, reflectively lyrical second movement.

The work is characterized by an austere, neo-Classical rhetoric which is evident in its lean textures and extended contrapuntal play, including three-part canons in the first two movements and the superimposition of one theme in the violin upon a different two-voice canon in the piano in the finale. While the harmonic language is largely diatonic, the tonal centers unconventionally shift on the turn of a note, lacing a degree of ambiguity into the work. Similarly, the piece frequently moves along like an improvisation, tempi increasing and decreasing at a moment's notice.

The first movement features a slow introduction that evolves into a vigorous opening theme. A simple second theme punctuated by plain triads in the piano leads into a more turbulent development that climaxes in a triple-forte passage, followed by a recapitulation and a brief coda. The central Lento is more an interlude than a movement per se, while the finale proceeds in binary form. The first half of the finale, derived in varying degrees from previous material in the sonata, proceeds from a scherzo-like theme to a slower, more intimate melody, to a fast spirited tune, to a short folk-like interlude, and finally, a poignant closing theme. The second half more or less recapitulates the first half, with the addition of a somber coda that is actually a brief reprise of the opening of the first movement.

Following the January 17, 1944 premiere of the sonata by Copland and violinist Ruth Posselt, violinists everywhere took up the work, granting it a position of some importance in the twentieth-century chamber repertoire.

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