The two parts of the second section are a rapturous gaze into the beatific regions of a beyond, a vision of reunion of what for the time is severed.  The last movement may be counted among the curiosities of composition—­a presto in B flat minor of seventy-five bars, an endless series of triplets from beginning to end in octaves.  It calls up in one’s mind the solitude and dreariness of a desert.  “The last movement is more like mockery than music,” says Schumann, but adds, truly and wisely—­

and yet one confesses to one’s self that also out of this unmelodious and joyless movement a peculiar dismal spirit breathes upon us, who keeps down with a strong hand that which would revolt, so that we obey, as if we were charmed, without murmuring, but also without praising, for that is no music.  Thus the sonata concludes, as it began, enigmatically, like a sphinx with a mocking smile.

J. W. Davison, in the preface to an edition of Chopin’s mazurkas, relates that Mendelssohn, on being questioned about the finale of one of Chopin’s sonatas (I think it must have been the one before us), said briefly and bitterly, “Oh, I abhor it!” H. Barbedette remarks in his “Chopin,” a criticism without insight and originality, of this finale, “C’est Lazare grattant de ses ongles la pierre de son tombeau et tombant epuise de fatigue, de faim et de desespoir.”  And now let the reader recall the words which Chopin wrote from Nohant to Fontana in the summer of 1839:—­

I am composing here a Sonata in B flat minor, in which will be the funeral march which you have already.  There is an Allegro, then a Scherzo, in E flat minor, the March, and a short Finale of about three pages.  The left hand unisono with the right hand are gossiping after the March [ogaduja po Marszu].

The meaning of which somewhat obscure interpretation seems to be, that after the burial the good neighbours took to discussing the merits of the departed, not without a spice of backbiting.

The Sonata in B minor, Op. 58, the second of Chopin’s notable pianoforte sonatas (the third if we take into account the unpalatable Op. 4), made its appearance five years later, in June, 1845.  Unity is as little discernible in this sonata as in its predecessor.  The four movements of which the work consists are rather affiliated than cognate; nay, this may be said even of many parts of the movements.  The first movement by far surpasses the other three in importance:  indeed, the wealth of beautiful and interesting matter which is here heaped up—­for it is rather an unsifted accumulation than an artistic presentation and evolution—­would have sufficed many a composer for several movements.  The ideas are very unequal and their course very jerky till we come to the second subject (D major), which swells out into a broad stream of impassioned melody.  Farther on the matter becomes again jerky and mosaic-like.  While the close of the first part is very fine, the