Excerpt from programme notes written for Love's Delusion by Philippe Borer
This is the only violin sonata left by the great organist composer. It was inspired by the playing of Eugène Ysaÿe whom Franck had heard at the home of Henri Vieuxtemps in Paris.
The work was composed in 1886 during August and September and it was completed just in time to be sent as a wedding present to its dedicatee, a spiritual chart as it were. On 28 September Eugène Ysaÿe, the newly appointed violin professor at the Conservatoire Royal of Bruxelles, was married to Louise, the 18 year old daughter of the adjutant Bourdeau. It came as a wonderful surprise for the bridegroom - a "seraphic blessing" as he declared - when, during the toasts, a guest handed over the manuscript of the Sonata.
The messenger (and future founder of the Schola Cantorum) was Charles Bordes who had been chosen to represent his teacher César Franck at the ceremony. Ysaÿe's immediate reaction was to reach for his violin and he sight-read from the precious manuscript to the delight of all present. Bordes' sister-in-law accompanied him in this memorable impromptu rendition. Such spontaneity was a fitting tribute to the genius of Franck, a musician with an almost mediumistic flair for giving form to the creative impulse.
Every Sunday, at the organ of Sainte-Clotilde, Franck would "pour out his soul" in extraordinary improvisations which were often just as elaborate and coherent as any finished composition. After that he would kneel in a corner of the gallery and "prostrate himself before the Almighty Presence".
The official première of the Sonata took place at the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire of Bruxelles on 16 December 1886. However, it seems that the new work was not appreciated to the full at that time. Ysaÿe himself maintained that the Sonata was not understood until it had been performed many times. In particular there remained a strong resistance in Germany, perhaps more on nationalistic grounds than for purely musical reasons. While Franck s detractors at the Paris Conservatoire would call him "the son of a Prussian" because of his origins (his mother s ancestry was German), Franck was seen by Berlin musical circles as a zealot of the Société Nationale de Musique and hence a not so welcome promoter of the Ars gallica.