The cello sonata features advanced and original techniques, such as quarter-tones, but it is not certain that they already appeared in the early version.
It features some elements that were radical at the time, but they could also have been introduced in a revision in 1927,[2][3] produced when the composer lived in Paris,[1] in preparation for publication there.
[4] The original score is lost, therefore it is uncertain which pioneering material was already present in the first version which was composed before Debussy's well-known work.
[5] The probably first performance in the UK was played by Moray Welsh and Ronald Stevenson at London's Purcell Room in 1975.
[5] Foulds wrote in his program notes that some motifs contain "traces of two old English Puritan tunes which had been in the composer's mind since early boyhood".
[5] The final movement features pedal notes, culminating in a coda over a ground bass, presenting the main themes in imaginative counterpoint.