Saint Saens - Finale from Cello Sonata No. 1 (Original Version) - Urtext/First Edition

Camille Saint-Saëns’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 32, is one of the major nineteenth-century sonatas for cello and piano. Composed in 1872 and first published by Durand in 1873, the work belongs to a period when Saint-Saëns was writing especially powerfully for the cello, alongside the Cello Concerto No. 1. The sonata is dramatic, tightly argued, and often Beethovenian in intensity, while still retaining Saint-Saëns’s clarity and elegance.

The finale survives in two versions. According to Charles-Marie Widor, Saint-Saëns’s mother admired the first two movements but objected to the original finale after hearing the sonata. Saint-Saëns then produced the replacement finale that became the published ending. This edition presents the rejected original finale, giving performers a rare opportunity to hear the sonata’s conclusion as Saint-Saëns first conceived it.

This Urtext/first edition is based on the autograph manuscript held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Editorial interventions and deviations from the source are clearly indicated in the score, allowing performers to distinguish Saint-Saëns’s original text from later clarification.

Well suited for lessons, recitals, lecture-recitals, and study of Saint-Saëns’s compositional process, this original finale offers cellists a compelling alternative view of one of the central French Romantic cello sonatas. It gives players opportunities to explore dramatic pacing, rhythmic clarity, Romantic expression, ensemble dialogue, and the fascinating history behind a movement Saint-Saëns ultimately chose to replace.

ASTA level: 3