Chapters Seven and Eight tend to
support Kelley's general view that Chopin made use of classical themes in his
forms such as the sonata.
Like Niecks, James Huneker agrees with Schumann's doubts
as to whether the four movements collectively can be called a sonata, stating
that:
Schumann says that Chopin here "bound together four of his
maddest children," and he is not astray. He thinks the march does not belong to
the work. It certainly was written before its companion movements.
It is interesting to note the varying interpretations of
Schumann's analogy of the four movements of opus 35 to Chopin's children. Some
writers, such as Huneker and Hadden, refer to four of Chopin's "maddest"
children, while others such as Jonson and Newman use the word "wildest." These
two adjectives clearly have different connotations. The former seems to imply
that all four movements are of a crazed or deranged nature, while the latter
emphasises rather their untamed, savage character. Save perhaps for the Finale,
the use of the word "mad" would seem to be incorrect; the first three movements
are not deranged or out of the ordinary. "Wild" possibly more correctly depicts
the passionate, untamed nature of the first movement, the darkness of the
Scherzo, the morbid vision of death of the Funeral March, and the irony of the
Finale.
Huneker praises the quality of each movement as a separate
entity, but adds that these four movements "have no common life." He is of the opinion that the last two
movements have nothing in common with the first two, although as a group they
do "hold together." Expanding on this comment, he states that "Notwithstanding
the grandeur and beauty of the grave, the power and passion of the scherzo,
this Sonata in B flat minor is not more a sonata than it is a sequence of
ballades and scherzi."
The manner in which Huneker states above that the march
was written before the other movements seems to suggest that he, like many
other critics of the day, believed that it was simply added on to the rest of
the work. It is interesting to note how this
