Composed, or at least drafted and sketched, in 1914 but lost to the world until Webern scholar Hans Moldenhauer discovered the manuscript (along with a handful of other Webern manuscripts never before seen, including the Two Pieces for cello and piano) in an old European attic in the mid-1960s, Anton Webern's Cello Sonata was supposed to have been a birthday present for his father. In the middle of working on it, however, Webern decided to give his father the Three Little Pieces for cello and piano instead, and broke off work on the Sonata, never to return to it. Letters written by Webern seem to indicate that he planned the work to be a two-movement body; only one movement exists, however— a three-page item marked Sehr bewegt and dated May 5, 1914. It was first performed in 1970 by cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, at the same concert that first introduced the world to the much earlier and much different-sounding Two Pieces (1899).



The one movement that exists of this would-be Sonata is a good example of the kind of music Webern was writing around the War years— it is of course not twelve-tone (Schoenberg would not develop the twelve-tone language for many years yet) but it is fractured and rhythmically-pointed in that most uniquely Webernian of ways. Sudden, sometimes explosively and shockingly sudden, changes of dynamic abound, as at the very start of the piece, when a pair of fortissimo and triple-fortissimo gestures are suddenly cast aside in favor of a haunted ponticello whisper from the cello, which is itself instantly beaten into submission by another fortissimo blast. Mid-way through the piece (indeed, almost exactly at the midpoint: bar 20 of 41) Webern thins the texture dramatically, while at the same time replacing the previous Sehr bewegt [Very animated] with a Zart bewegt [Gently animated]. The cacophonous polyrhythmic juxtapositions are lessened for several bars as a quieter, more legato manner is assumed, but when the time comes for the movement's final perorative thought, it is to the agitated, punctuated thoughts of the opening that Webern returns.



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