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But in a minute or two the music struck up and the dancing began again one, two, three: it seemed a sort of mazurka this time, which suited the mandarins very well, as it gave them a chance of nodding to mark the time.
Although he remonstrated, saying it was now time to go, they protested so convincingly that the boy sat down again and resumed his playing. Afterwards wine was brought in and they all drank to the health of the young master. Chopin gave them a mazurka for farewell, then the tall post master caught him up and carried him out to the coach, and all travelers started away in high spirits.
The "Humoresque" is a bit of titanic merriment; the "Mazurka" is most deftly built and is full of dance-fire; the "Arietta" is highly original, and the "Capricietto" shows such ingenious management of triplets, and has altogether such a crisp, brisk flavor, that it reminds one of Lamb's rhapsody on roast pig, where he exclaims, "I tasted crackling!"
I glanced at our neighbours in the mazurka; they, too, glanced at me, and I fancied that my astonishment amused them; one of them even smiled at me sympathetically, as though he would say: 'Well, what do you think of our queer young lady? every one here knows what she's like. 'Have you tried to break your will? I said, turning to Sophie again.
He could not do it. Then he turned the handle of the music-room door and entered. Only three of the electric lights were on in the music-room. In the rosy light and half shadows the room looked larger than when seen in daylight, and different. She had wandered from the Mazurka into Paderewski's Mélodie Op. 8.
"You should not dance if you don't know the step," said Papa's angry voice in my ear as, pushing me gently aside, he took my partner's hand, completed the figures with her to the admiration of every one, and finally led her back to, her place. The mazurka was at an end. Ah me! What had I done to be punished so heavily? "Every one despises me, and will always despise me," I thought to myself.
Some of them had rings and watches, and Cerberus had ready cash what sort of dearth was that? The men sat under the painted ceiling and the gilded mirrors, over a glass of beer, leaving the girls to freeze even Elvira had to sit still. "Mazurka!" bellowed Cerberus, going threateningly from table to table. They slunk into the hall like beaten curs, dejectedly danced once round the floor, and paid.
Some of these valses are trivial, artificial, most of them are bred of candlelight and the swish of silken attire, and a few are poetically morbid and stray across the border into the rhythms of the mazurka.
One distinguishes, however, these latter easily from the ancient ones on account of their less original and less cantabile form. Its movement is in time, and yet less quick than the waltz. The motive is in dotted notes, which must be executed with energy and warmth, but not without a certain dignity. Now the mazurka is generally written in 3/4-time; Chopin's are all written thus.
The A flat Mazurka, No. 3, is pessimistic, threatening and irritable. Though in the key of E major the trio displays a relentless sort of humor. The return does not mend matters. A dark page! In A minor the fourth is called by Szulc the Little Jew. Szulc, who wrote anecdotes of Chopin and collected them with the title of "Fryderyk Szopen," told the story to Kleczynski.
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