This last comment echoes Arthur Hedley's objection to
comparing Chopin's opus 35 to the "textbook" sonata form. Samson notes that the
sonata was "...cultivated with greatest energy in Austro-Germany," which led to
attempts to codify sonata compositional principles, "...with implications for pedagogy,
criticism and indeed creative process which were not always beneficial."
He cites the Russian symphony as an example, stating that it was viewed as an
"...unhappy deviation from, rather than a potentially exciting collaboration
with, German symphonism."
He maintains that although a combination of aspects of the symphonic tradition
with indigenous thematic material and formal treatments did occasionally lead
to undesirable results, the music should be judged in relation to its aims and
ideals.
Samson reinforced this view in his 1996 Chopin, in which he states that Chopin's
modelling of his opus 35 on Beethoven's opus 26 was a response to classical
precedent, and that this precedent placed exceptional pressures on the work.
Samson suggests that the formal expectations of the Classical sonata were bound
to remain unfulfilled in opus 35, as Chopin was trying to create effectively a
new kind of sonata, albeit based on the old. This ties in with Chopin's role in
the evolution of the sonata, which will be examined in Chapter Six.
Anatoly Leiken echoes Samson's contention that unnecessary
"exceptional pressures" were placed on opus 35. He observes that the Romantic
period saw a significant decline in the number of sonatas being written per
composer. Mozart wrote seventy and Beethoven fifty-five, yet Chopin wrote five,
Schumann eight, and Liszt only two. Leiken does not interpret this as the
Romantic composers' loss of interest in the sonata, but rather as a reflection
of their unease at attempting to reach the Olympian feats of the sonatas of
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. He reckons that although the Romantic sonata
differs in many respects from the Classical sonata, one should not assume that
these changes are for the worse. Rather, they should be viewed as a "...strong
urge to renovate a form that had been around for many decades, to make it more
spontaneous and less predictable."
It should be mentioned, however, that the
