After his first cello sonata of 1872 (HN 1057) had fast gained popularity, the publisher kept asking the composer to write a second sonata for this scoring. But it was only in March 1905, in the mild climate of Algeria, that Saint-Saëns finallyrelented and composed a large sonata with four movements. He personally thought it superior to the first sonata and even believed that its third movement, the ''Romanza'', was an equivalent to the famous ''Swan'' in the ''Carnival of the Animals'' (HN943).