Chopin’s metamorphosis of Beethoven. An example of the unconscious processing of musical information The three middle structural phases in bars 9–67 of section A of Fryderyk Chopin’s Scherzo, Op. 20 may be interpreted as typically Chopinian figurational extensions of three fragments from the first phase of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata, Op. 10 No. 3. The fact that the fragments come from a single sonata reinforces the assumption that Chopin more or less wittingly borrowed that motif, transposing it down by a semitone. This hypothesis is backed by rudimentary theory of unconscious information processing.
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