justification for his reasoning, Niecks
offers the better opinion of the two, simply on the grounds that Willeby
oversimplifies the concepts of "abstract" and "programme" music in general. In
all probability, there is also no means of substantiating Willeby's assertion
that Chopin's musical ideas were not subordinate to the form in which they were
employed.
Edgar Kelley is at odds with Willeby's stand on subordination
of musical material with regard to Chopin's sonatas in general. He writes:
Chopin was not the only composer who seemed to be obsessed
with the idea that, just as the fugue-subject must comply with a long series of
limitations before it is fugue-worthy, so must a sonata-theme conform to
certain requirements respecting shape and size. This explains why Chopin, when
writing in the specifically classical forms, employed themes that are classical
rather than Chopinesque, melodic rather than harmonic; which may be easily
grasped by the hands with little or no extension, and which, in their
development, run along the old highway instead of in the new, bold path he had
blazed in the Romantic forest.
Kelley did feel, however, that the only case where the use
of "classical themes" did not apply was to that of the second piano sonata in
particular:
Even in the more mature Sonata Op. 58 we are conscious, in
the first few measures, of classical influence, but the composer soon frees
himself. In the Sonata in B Flat Minor, Op. 35, we find no lingering survivals
of the classical sonata-themes, although throughout the entire work the spirit
of that form is manifest.
This specific case is, therefore, partly in agreement with
Willeby's proposition that Chopin's imagination and musical ideas preceded his
attention to form. However, Kelley's statement is somewhat contradictory, as it
implies that although Chopin did not employ "classical sonata-themes" in his
sonata opus 35, they were conceived within the framework of sonata form
structure. The analyses of opus 35 surveyed in
