The Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38, entitled "Sonate für Klavier und Violoncello", was written by Johannes Brahms in 1862–65.

Johannes Brahms was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.