The result is of course a lack of logical coherence. But one may well ask if the hot intensity of utterance has not welded the notes and parts of these movements into a complete fusion, if there is need of logic in such molten music.
In the second place, the Chopin sonatas owe not a little of their unique appearance to the composer’s great gift of harmony. The foundation of the classical sonata form was harmonic, and, be it said with due regard to exceptions, was rigid. Nothing was more characteristic of it, both in the early and late stages of its use, than the harmonic clearness of what one may call the approach to themes, episodes, or sections, and the sharp definition of these sections by what were fundamentally conventional cadences. Chopin in his sonatas obliterated at least one of these sectional lines. It is impossible to decide in the first movements where the middle section ends and the last section begins. It is not only that the first theme fails to make its reappearance. The harmonies surge on from the development section into the last section with no trace of break in their current. Even the cadences at the end of the first sections are incomplete, and the modulations by which they progress sudden and remote. Such procedures foretell unmistakably the endless harmonies of Wagner. So does the treatment of the development section in both sonatas, with the scattering of motives over never-ending progressions of chords.
No sonatas, not even those of Beethoven, present such radical variations from the accepted form; and naturally the question arises whether such movements as these of Chopin’s are properly in sonata form at all. One can only answer that Chopin named them sonatas, and that they represent at least what he felt a sonata should be. Mr. Shedlock has said of Beethoven that in aiming at a higher organization, he actually became a disorganizer. One cannot attribute such a conscious aim to Chopin; yet it is plain that his instinct led him to the complete demolition of one or two of the conventional restrictions of the sonata form.
Before leaving the sonatas there is a word to be said of Chopin’s comprehension of the group of four movements as a whole. It is such a comprehension on the part of a Beethoven that makes many of his later sonatas and a few of his earlier ones indisputably grand. In his case the successive dependence of the various movements on each other is often made plain either by the actual merging of one into the other, or by the employment of the same or cognate thematic materials in all. Of such structural unity there is no trace in the two great sonatas of Chopin. The separate movements are formally complete in themselves, and not materially related. Any other union between the separate movements of suite, sonata, or symphony, if, indeed, it is not a matter of familiarity with the whole work, or of respect for the composer, exists only in the mind of the hearer according to his or her sensibilities. Of the Chopin sonatas that in B-flat minor will probably impress most people as an impassioned and powerful whole; that in B minor as less unified.
The Funeral March of the former has a double existence, one within and one without the sonata. It is known that it was completed perhaps before the sonata was thought of; and that certainly the other movements were written in some sort of relation to it. The finale which follows it cannot possibly be dissociated from the sonata; and the first and second movements share a common intensity of passion. Organic unity the series may not have, but its phases of emotion lead, and almost blend, one into the other.
The two concertos, written as Chopin was on the verge of manhood, have evidently not held, if ever they won, so high a place in pianoforte literature as the two great sonatas. For one thing, Chopin’s treatment of the orchestra is, according to most critics, uninspired and unsatisfactory. But for another thing, their form is conventional, and in submitting to a conventional ideal Chopin is unquestionably ill at ease. Ten years later when he wrote the B-flat minor sonata he was all past his age of submission, and made of the form something new, shaped it fearlessly to his need of self-expression. The Fantasia in F minor, written about this time (1840), is longer than any single movements in the sonatas. Though unconventional in structure it is none the less faultless.
There still remains a profoundly moving work of Chopin’s, which, from the point of view of form, is astonishing. This is the Polonaise-Fantaisie, opus 61, seemingly his last work for the piano in large proportions. The Barcarolle, opus 60, was written probably about the same time; and it is worthy of note that this perfect piece escapes the grasp of most who would play it—i.e., interpret it in the only way that music can be truly interpreted. The difficulty is usually ascribed to its apparently rambling structure. But here, as in most cases where the composer may seem to be at fault, the imperfection exists in the player, not in the music. The right touch and the right quality of fervid yet delicate poetic imagination will reveal in the Barcarolle a poem in music of the most exquisite proportions. It is a work of matchless beauty. But the Polonaise-Fantaisie is not lyrical; it is intensely dramatic. It builds itself out of the strength, the weakness, the despair of unnamed forces in conflict. It is the cry of Poland in her agony, the pride of her people, crushed and tormented, in a broken voice.
The clashing moods of the piece are not of the sort that can be regulated and made orderly within even the expanded forms of conventional art. The grief and despair, the wrath, the pity, the unconquerable pride and hope of Chopin, shuddering like a great harp in the wind of destruction that has swept over his country, here demand and take on unfettered freedom of expression. The result is a work which reaches over Liszt to the symphonic poems of modern writers. It is probably not of historical importance; but it is of great significance as testimony to Chopin’s constructive originality. Liszt said of it that because of its ‘pathological contents,’ it must be excluded from the realm of art. If Chopin had chosen to supplement the piece with a few words as to its meaning, a program, as the phrase goes, Liszt would have had to judge differently, or else by the same token exclude other great works from the hallowed aristocracy to which he denied this one entrance.
At the other extreme of Chopin’s achievements stand the twenty-four Préludes. Some of these, like the eighth, fifteenth, sixteenth, nineteenth, for example, are well-rounded and completed pieces, which have not more of the spirit of improvisation which one associates with the term ‘prelude’ than his longer works. But many others are hardly more than fragments, or sketches, or instantaneous impressions. In pieces of such length, form is of no importance. What is perhaps unparalleled is their vividness. They seem now like a veiled glow, fading into darkness, now like a momentary flash from that region of secret fire in the light of which Chopin ever lived.
So Chopin’s power of expression showed itself new, fine, and broad. He is a master of presentation. There are but three or four of his considerable works of which one may say that they show uncertainty in judgment, an awkwardness in line, a clumsiness in balance. The vast majority of his compositions are perfect in shape and form, and flawlessly put together. If only we at this day might hear them unfold through his magic fingers! For, no doubt, what seems weak or unstable to the cautious judgment that relies upon standards of more rational genius, seems so only because the key is lost that will open to view the delicate machinery in all its perfect assemblage.