examined in due course. This highlights the fact that the improvement in
standing of Chopin's opus 35 is as a result of a more analytical approach to
the work.
Another writer who opposed the negative appraisal of opus
35 at the turn of the century was G.C. Ashton Jonson. He believed that the
partial quotation of Schumann's critique resulted in a misunderstanding of
Schumann's view of the work.
He maintains that "Schumann never meant to say that these
four wildest children were not related and were only bound together
fortuitously; it is calling the work a Sonata that he describes as a jest, not
the juxtaposition of the four movements."
On Schumann's comments with regard to the finale, Jonson maintains that "...it must
be heard in its right place at the end of this so-called Sonata, which is not a
Sonata in the classic sense, but is an
organic and indivisible whole, a tone poem, a reading of life on earth, even
such a life as that of Chopin himself."
Franz Liszt is also credited with writing a paragraph on
opus 35 in 1851.
In typically poetic vein, Liszt praised the sonata's beauty, but showed his
reservation as to whether Chopin felt comfortable with large-scale forms. He
writes:
Not content with success in the field in which he was free
to design, with such perfect grace, the contours chosen by himself, Chopin also
wished to fetter his ideal thoughts with classic chains. His Concertos
and Sonatas are beautiful indeed, but
we may discern in them more effort than inspiration. His creative genius was
imperious, fantastic and impulsive. His beauties were only manifested fully in
entire freedom. We believe he offered violence to the character of his genius
whenever he sought to subject it to rules, to classifications, to regulations
not his own, and which he could not force into harmony with the exactions of
his own mind. He was one of those original beings, whose graces are only fully
displayed when they have cut themselves adrift from all bondage, and float on
their own wild will, swayed only by the ever undulating impulses of their own
mobile natures.
