The Vinteuil Sonata has a precursor in Proust's unfinished novel
Jean Santeuil, written in the 1890s, but not published until after his death. Here the musical composition is not a fictional work, but the
Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor by
Camille Saint-Saëns, which was written in 1885.
Neville Jason in his biography of Proust says that the author attended a performance of the Franck Sonata given by
George Enescu. Afterwards he wrote enthusiastically about the concert to a friend and added a description of the Vinteuil Sonata to his draft of ''
Swann's Way''. Proust later wrote about Franck's sonata for violin and piano in the third part of
À la recherche,
Sodom et Gomorrhe. Attention has also been drawn to a sonata by the lesser-known
Guillaume Lekeu, who described his work as being for piano and violin rather than violin and piano. French musicologist
Georges Kan says it could be
Johannes Brahms'
Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100. He locates "the little phrase" at bar 89 in the last movement. This passage in F sharp minor appears three times, "quasi andante", and ends the piece. When Mme. Verdurin is crying "Just as though, 'in the Ninth', he said "we need only have the Finale", or "just the overture" of
The Meistersingers one naturally thinks about
Beethoven or
Wagner, but it should be understood as Brahms' Ninth Sonata (Op. 100 is the ninth in chronology) dubbed "Meistersinger" for its Wagnerian accents, the finale of which is reminiscent of the overture to
The Meistersingers. Georges Kan specifies that "a four-hand piano arrangement was available since 1887 at
Simrock and Proust could have had some information about a coming issue of
Paul Klengel's piano version". Maria and Nathalia Milstein, concert musicians and sisters, made the case in 2017 that
Gabriel Pierné’s Sonata for violin and piano in D minor, Opus 36, is the model for the sonata. =="Creations" of the sonata==