It may be reserved to the trained critical mind to decide what is great art of any kind; but the decision as to what is great music must ultimately rest with time and its changing voice of expression--the general world. Upon no sonatas, except some of those of Beethoven, does the public set such store as upon these two of Chopin. The sonatas of Weber, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms hold no such place in the general favor. In the case of the first three of these men a looseness in the grasp of form is responsible for the gradual degradation of their long works. It is logical to infer, then, that a similar looseness is not evident in the sonatas of Chopin. At any rate it has not yet become palpable to the public, whatever critics may have said. And the sonatas have undergone and are still undergoing a tremendous test. Therefore, however much men may declare the intellectual weakness in Chopin’s music, one must conclude that his instinct gave sufficient vitality even to his sonatas to enable them, alone among sonatas, to hold their public place with those of Beethoven. And it would seem that the undisputed intellectual power of Brahms failed where the instinct of Chopin succeeded. Of course it will be urged in explanation of the popular acceptance of the sonatas of Chopin, that they are eminently gratifying to the pianist, suitable to the instrument, and consequently delicious to the public. At the most this is but a grace which no other sonatas have in so great measure. It is not a virtue by which alone music endures. Music cannot last without a positive strength of form; and this, no matter what the source of it, the Chopin sonatas have. So then, what do men mean when they state, in the face of the enduring strength and beauty of these works, that Chopin has shown himself ill at ease in them? Chiefly that these sonatas are different from those of Beethoven. For the most part they choose to condemn the difference, rather than to understand and appreciate it. But if the verdict of time is worthy of consideration, this difference is not condemnable, and an analysis of it will bring us face to face with Chopin the innovator, not Chopin the insufficient.