The Sonate Genre
The first movement of the B flat minor Sonata is for me something mighty – like a sculpture in rock. It can only be compared perhaps with the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This section of Chopin’s work is-to my mind – on a par with the loftiest heights reached by such composers as Beethoven.
(Lutosławski)
Chopin’s sonatas occupy an exceptional place in the history of nineteenth-century music, alongside the most magnificent works of Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and Brahms. Chopin composed four sonatas, given below in the order they were written:
Sonata in C minor, Op. 4 (composed 1827–1828, first published 1851)
Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 35 (Funeral March 1837, whole work 1839, published 1840)
Sonata in B minor, Op. 58 (1844, published 1845)
Sonata in G minor for piano and cello, Op. 65 (1846–1847, published 1847)
As can be seen from this list, Chopin’s sonatas constitute a uniform phenomenon with regard to neither the period they were written and published nor even their forces (three piano sonatas, one for piano and cello). Besides the very early Sonata in C minor, Op. 4, we have here the Sonata in G minor, Op. 65 – the very last work in the composer’s oeuvre. In this respect, commentators stress the uneven value of the sonatas: the exceptional genius of the sonatas in B flat minor and B minor, the remarkable place of the G minor Sonata as the last work opused by Chopin and announcing a new style, and finally the student-piece character of the C minor.
In spite of this variety, the four works also have one feature in common: they are all rooted in the classical tradition of the sonata as a cyclical work (in four movements, like many of Beethoven's piano sonatas). Chopin succeeded in filling this classical framework with content that was entirely new, creating masterpieces of the Romantic sonata.
Sonata in C minor, Op. 4
dates from the period of Chopin’s composition studies at the High School of Music in Warsaw under Józef Elsner, to whom it was dedicated. This youthful work, not devoid of traits of the ‘school composition’, cannot be compared to Chopin’s mature works, and it is performed extremely rarely. Admirers of Chopin's music discover here with surprise the minuet in movement II, so very untypical of the composer of the ballades and mazurkas, and also the unusual 5/4 time in movement III (Larghetto).
Artur Bielecki
