In his book Frederic
Francois Chopin, Charles Willeby addresses the issue of "programme" versus
"abstract" music as it applies to Chopin's works in general. He regards the
third piano sonata as the most interesting of all, and is of the opinion that
the finale of opus 35 has "not the remotest connection, thematic or otherwise,
with anything in the [rest of the] Sonata."
He believed that Chopin was a pure romanticist and that, as a consequence of
this, his best music is his "programme" music (i.e., music in which the
generally explicit "programme" is an expression of the ideas and feelings
within the composer as he wrote). This prompted Willeby to question how
anything else could be more antagonistic to the classic form of the
sonata. He adds, "...we find him
here...continually endeavouring to repress the ideas within him which were
clamouring for utterance, as unsuitable to the form in which he was writing... It
is sufficiently manifest that Chopin's nature rendered him incapable of the
creation of music wholly for its own sake."
Willeby also discusses the concept of "subordination of
musical ideas," which warrants attention here. He believed that Chopin
expressed his musical thoughts as he wrote, and subordinated them to nothing,
unlike composers of "absolute" music (such as the sonata) who allowed the
subordination of their harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic senses to the form in
which they are writing. Referring to these two situations, Willeby concludes
his discussion as follows:
That [a composer] have an imagination is of course as
essential in the one case as in the other; but the fact remains that which is
art with the one is not so for the other, for it has not the same aims, nor
does it rest upon the same foundation. And when we have regard to this, can we
wonder at or question the truth of [at all events as regards the Sonatas]
Liszt's judgment when he said that they contained "plus de volonté que d'inspiration" [more effort than inspiration]?
It is interesting to note the existence of two completely
different opinions with regard to Liszt's remark - Frederick Niecks contra, and Willeby pro, by way of a carefully constructed argument. It would appear
that, although he does not offer much
