The Chopin sonata has caused almost as much warfare as the Wagner music drama.  It is all the more ludicrous, for Chopin never wrote but one piano sonata that has a classical complexion:  in C minor, op. 4, and it was composed as early as 1828.  Not published until July, 1851, it demonstrates without a possibility of doubt that the composer had no sympathy with the form.  He tried so hard and failed so dismally that it is a relief when the second and third sonatas are reached, for in them there are only traces of formal beauty and organic unity.  But then there is much Chopin, while little of his precious essence is to be tasted in the first sonata.

Chopin wrote of the C minor Sonata:  “As a pupil I dedicated it to Elsner,” and—­oh, the irony of criticism!—­it was praised by the critics because not so revolutionary as the Variations, op. 2.  This, too, despite the larghetto in five-four time.  The first movement is wheezing and all but lifeless.  One asks in astonishment what Chopin is doing in this gallery.  And it is technically difficult.  The menuetto is excellent, its trio being a faint approach to Beethoven in color.  The unaccustomed rhythm of the slow movement is irritating.  Our young Chopin does not move about as freely as Benjamin Godard in the scherzo of his violin and piano sonata in the same bizarre rhythm.  Niecks sees naught but barren waste in the finale.  I disagree with him.  There is the breath of a stirring spirit, an imitative attempt that is more diverting than the other movements.  Above all there is movement, and the close is vigorous, though banal.  The sonata is the dullest music penned by Chopin, but as a whole it hangs together as a sonata better than its two successors.  So much for an attempt at strict devotion to scholastic form.

From this schoolroom we are transported in op. 35 to the theatre of larger life and passion.  The B flat minor Sonata was published May, 1840.  Two movements are masterpieces; the funeral march that forms the third movement is one of the Pole’s most popular compositions, while the finale has no parallel in piano music.  Schumann says that Chopin here “bound together four of his maddest children,” and he is not astray.  He thinks the march does not belong to the work.  It certainly was written before its companion movements.  As much as Hadow admires the first two movements, he groans at the last pair, though they are admirable when considered separately.

These four movements have no common life.  Chopin says he intended the strange finale as a gossiping commentary on the march.  “The left hand unisono with the right hand are gossiping after the march.”  Perhaps the last two movements do hold together, but what have they in common with the first two?  Tonality proves nothing.  Notwithstanding the grandeur and beauty of the grave, the power and passion of the scherzo, this Sonata in B flat minor is not more a sonata than it is a sequence of ballades and scherzi.  And again we are at the de Maupassant