Chopin, as we have seen, studied well the compositions of Bach, and to that study should be traced his comprehensive knowledge of harmonic possibilities. This is wholly proved by his every important work; but in daring how he distances the profound and methodical contrapuntist of Leipsic! Only Wagner and Richard Strauss are bolder than he. As a harmonist Chopin was bent on notable things, and with equal zeal he essayed that most difficult and hazardous of undertakings, the Sonata. Had our Romanticist but given to the pianoforte Sonatas of Beethoven somewhat of those hours devoted to «The Well-tempered Clavichord,» the effect on op. 35 and op. 58, probably had been an enrichment of our repertory of high-class piano Sonatas. After all, the Sonata is a perfected growth of Classicism, and so lends itself most ungraciously to the looser treatment of the Romanticist, for it demands not only sequence of ideas and systematic development of themes, but also a unification of its constituent movements that as a whole it shall be homogeneous.
During his Parisian career, Chopin composed three Sonatas, op. 35 and op. 58, for piano, and op. 65, for piano and violoncello. This last, a most unequal work, has provoked more of adverse criticism than any other bearing his name.
Chopin's chief defect, one almost always apparent, originated in his somewhat narrow sympathies, which, though deep, did yet by no means fathom the joys underlying and destined to outlast the waves of sorrow, which, to his circumscribed vision, were sufficient for the engulfing of the world. What, we ask, was the partition, the virtual obliteration of Poland, to that universal freedom, which, since the Napoleonic days, was known as a blessing yet to be? As already said, Chopin allowed these earth-clouds of sorrow to darken greatly the radiance of his ideal world. The pessimist could not sink himself in the deeper and wider optimist. We suspect his predilection for the gay and thoughtless dwellers on the surface of life, to be but desire to rid himself of a weight of sadness engendered by solitary musings.
The Sonata should be the outpouring of a heart attuned to every chord of life; a heart capable of universal sympathies. Nevertheless, the supreme expression of that heart is joy, a prophecy hopeful as a Christmas greeting to the world. Let us turn to a consideration of op. 35 in B flat minor, for there, as nowhere else, Chopin betrays the defects of his qualities.
The four vague introductory measures, «Grave,» attempt the expression of unutterable woe whose painful fullness is yet relieved by this anguished cry. During the next four measures the soul, still overburdened, meditates a more adequate expression, and, at the Agitato, again attempts its story in what proves but an interrupted and broken eloquence of grief whose poignancy soon softens to tender, sweet regret. This presently swells to passionate longing as for some far-off good. But alas for expectance! Alas for every looked-for happiness gilded by the sunlight of a day that shall not be! This last mood, so characteristic of Chopin, ends the first section of the first movement, and then suddenly but inevitably come back the old brooding and the tearful, sob-choked utterance. And now a calmer moment for, as from the Sun of all being, a ray of heaven-born cheer finds the darkened chambers of the heart; but whatsoever of hope is there enkindled, is, by sorrow's unstayable fountain, soon made cold again.
In almost no one succeeding bar of the four movements comprised in this so-called Sonata, does a note of real joy leap forth from the funereal throng. Even the più lento of the Scherzo seems to say, «Whatever we feel, let us be outwardly cheerful!» Ah yes! But then this outwardness misleads no observer, for the suffused eye betrays the smiling lips, and laughter is the adroit but ineffectual turning of a sigh.
The Presto was abhorrent to Mendelssohn. A normal, happy being, he was born into the sunshine and green of a happy world, and his heart had not been plowed and harrowed, and then planted with the black-berried nightshade and all the baneful things of death. So he turned from this «Dark tarn of Auber» to the Chopin of meads and banks where no bird of midnight mood is croaking and the wholesome winds blow never from the «ghoul haunted woodland of Weir,» and the lithe branches are waving æolian at eve.
In the Sonata op. 26 in A flat, Beethoven rightly placed amidst a contrasting environment the immortal «Marcia funebre sulla morte d'un Eroe.» Amidst the almost unmitigated gloom of the B flat minor Sonata, Chopin has inserted a commemoration worthy of many heroes. But who were the heroes inspiring the Polish composer to one of his grandest thoughts, the unsurpassable Funeral March? Yes, who in truth were those dedicated heroes? Surely not the great achievers whom the wide world esteems, but rather those losing heroes hopeful in a hopeless cause; those fallen patriots of Polish blood whose mangled forms the iron hoofs of war had trampled in the mire of battle.
In the prevailing key of his Sonata, the key of B flat minor, one of the most sombre in all the realms of tone, Chopin's Funeral March at once reveals itself as no chapter of private sorrows; the mourning of a multitude is in its deep-voiced chords telling the burial of a people's loss. Fit for the final pageant of emperors and kings, yet little varied as the monotone of some grave discourse, the weighty measures move majestically and slow while everywhere bared heads are bending, and the dull, despondent look is downward for now the dust shall hide yon poor reminder of a vanished life. Ah, how those earth-bound chords, for less than two brief measures, struggle free and lift us on their glorious, upward wings! Alas, they falter ere yet they attain, and then, in feebler soaring, turn and sink exhausted to the very charnel place of Death. Once more with mighty final strength the massive chords are mounting only to falter and attempt and fall again even to the dismal housing of the dead. Then, suddenly unto that comfortless abode a song of heaven is wafted from her angel choir. At once complaining Doubt is dumb, and Sorrow hath her respite, and Hope her sweet uplooking to the rest of heroes from their finished days. Long afterward, when acute grief has changed to pensive musing, that song in tones of unforgettable beauty steals upon the silence of the soul; a tender message from the never-dying dead.
But whatever of balm in such serene outpouring, the torn heart must look for ease to Time the great healer, and so the deep wounds reopen, the insurmountable doubt and grief again are undergone, and in this wise the sublime march, so masterfully epitomizing certain human experiences, draws to its pathetic close and ends on the sombre chord which characterized its beginning.