This brings to an end a survey of the long and interesting
history relating to the reception of Chopin's piano sonata in B flat Minor opus
35. The content and order of this dissertation was organised so as to highlight
the change in receptive trend as it occurred around the mid-nineteenth to the
late-twentieth centuries. This trend has
been shown to exhibit a turning point around 1920 with the writings of Hugo
Leichtentritt.
The change in receptive trend is in part due to a better
understanding of the sonata cycle and sonata form. The evolution thereof began
in the early Baroque era with the multi-movement suite. This continued with the
appearance of the Classical sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; the
sonatas of Beethoven showing remarkable poetic licences and digressions from
those of Haydn and Mozart. Already by this stage, a significant compression of
the form was evident, especially in the later piano sonatas of Beethoven
(although an expansion of the form is also seen in Beethoven's late Hammerklavier piano sonata). The
Romantic composers continued the line of evolution, one of the most important
results of which was the mixing of various forms and characters under the title
"sonata." Chopin's experimentation with these forms and characters is no more
apparent than in his second piano sonata. Here he mixes variation and sonata
principles in the first movement, uses a three-layered form for the Scherzo,
uses a slow Funeral March as the third movement instead of the second (the
second being traditionally the home of the slow movement), and ends the work
with a bi-thematic rondo lasting around seventy-five seconds.
Just as Haydn and Beethoven substituted a scherzo in place
of the minuet, and introduced the fugue into their sonatas (Beethoven opus 106)
and quartets (Haydn opus 20), similarly, Chopin placed his own forms into his
sonatas. As observed by Jozef Chominski, Chopin used the four-movement scheme
as a context within which
