Salvaging the Style of Frei Aber Einsam in the music of Brahms: Proposing a Historically Informed Performance Practice for the Three Sonatas for Violin and Piano of Johannes Brahms, Opp. 78, 100, and 108

This thesis explores scholarship relevant to assembling a historically informed performance practice of Brahms’s three Violin Sonatas, Opp. 78, 100, and 108 in the nineteenth-century Germanic violin tradition of which, Joseph Joachim was its greatest proponent. This inquiry, which primarily examines surviving evidence of Joachim, his pedagogical ilk, and the circle of Brahms, engages with a variety of 19th and early 20th century Germanic musical and textual evidence, including nineteenth-century musical editions, correspondence and other archival materials, and early recorded performances to propose a historically informed style. In presenting this historiography of materials relevant to forming a historically informed interpretation of these sonatas as well as presenting lacunae in the field, the value of this endeavor becomes evident