To look at the first measures of the . . . sonata and still
not be sure who it is by, would be unworthy of a connoisseur. Only Chopin
starts so and only he ends so, with dissonances through dissonances in
dissonances. And yet, how much beauty this piece contains. What he called
"Sonata" might better be called a caprice, or even a wantonness [in] that he
brought together four of his wildest offspring perhaps in order to smuggle them
under this name into a place where they otherwise might not fit. One imagines
some cantor, for example, coming from the country into a music centre in order
to buy some good music; he is shown the newest [things]; he will have none [of
them]; finally a sly fox shows him a "sonata"; "yes", he says happily, "that is
for me and a piece still from the good old days"; and he buys and gets it.
Arriving home he goes at the piece-but I would have to be very wrong if, before
he even gets painstakingly through the first page, he will not swear by all the
holy musical ghosts that this [is] no ordinary sonata style but actually
godless [trash]. Yet, Chopin has still accomplished what he wanted; he finds
himself in the cantor's home, and who knows whether in that very home, perhaps
years later, a romantic [-ally inclined] grandson will be born and raised, will
dust off and play the sonata, and will think to himself, "The man was not so wrong
after all."
With all this, a half judgement has already been offered.
Chopin no longer writes anything that could be found as well in [the works of]
others; he remains true to himself and has reason to.
It is regrettable that most pianists, even the cultivated
ones, cannot see and judge beyond anything they can master with their own
fingers. Instead of first glancing over such a difficult piece, they twist and
bore (their way) through it, measure by measure; and then when scarcely more
than the roughest formal relationships become evident, they put it aside and
call it "bizzare, confused etc.". Chopin in particular (somewhat like Jean
Paul) has his decorative asides and parentheses, over which one should not stop
too long at the
