Example 8: The link
between the Scherzo and Funeral March
The revelatory aspects of Leichtentritt's work having been
explored, the next important analysis of Chopin's opus 35 will now be examined
- that of Rudloph Réti. His analysis is based on a form-building element
considered by him as being almost completely neglected by the theoretical
community at the time. This is the sphere of thematic or "motivic" structure,
which, when applied to Chopin's second piano sonata, reveals how thematically
unified this work really is.
One of the principal reservations expressed by earlier
critics about opus 35 was its apparent lack of thematic and organic unity
between the four movements. Réti's analysis seems to provide overwhelming
evidence to the contrary. However, this should be seen in perspective, as Réti
is clearly using Chopin's opus 35 as a medium for proving the validity of his
analytical method, and not as a means of rehabilitating Chopin. The uncovering
of thematic links between subjects and movements should always be viewed with
one important issue in mind: that by a process of reduction, it
