Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso - Style and Structure

Style and Structure

The piece opens with a 36-bar theme in A minor, establishing key as well as rhythmic and harmonic themes. The orchestra supports the violin with block chord progressions while the soloist plays virtuosic arpeggios and chromatic scalar passages. Saint-Saëns destabilizes the rhythm of the soloist oscillating between syncopated rising arpeggios and falling eighth notes. In bar 18 the motion picks up when the tempo indication changes from Andante malinconico to animato and the soloist jumps into a rapid thirty-second note line.

In bar 37 the orchestra then takes over the rhythmic motion with a steady 6/8 pulse. The soloist then enters with the lilting syncopated melody of the rondo. Saint-Saëns employs the harmonic minor rather than the melodic minor mode to emphasize the innate Spanish flair of the melody. The violin sways down the melody in a scalar passage just to jump up again with dominant arpeggios and finally land on the second theme in bar 73. The second theme brings back the dotted eighth note theme from the introduction and ornaments it with trills and octave jumps in the solo and steady rhythmic accompaniment. The soloist then jolts into upward scalar patterns in bar 88 followed by falling arpeggios and one final flourish bringing back the rondo theme.

After a short orchestral interlude and a violin imitation the rhythm takes on an even more unstable twist as the violin moves into 2/4 while the orchestra stays in 6/8. The pleading melody of the violin changes from a single line to a two voice double stop passage climbing up into the higher register of the instrument just to snap back to a quick and winding melody back in 6/8. With an extended falling chromatic scale and another upward flourish, the rondo theme returns and is shortly followed by a reiteration of the orchestral interlude in a new key which is again imitated by the violin.

The solo then proceeds to the second theme but rather than returning to the first theme itself, it throws it off to the orchestra. The orchestra is brought to a stop when the soloist cuts through the texture with a rhapsodic triple-stop passage followed by a faster paced extended coda in A Major to finish the piece.