Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 24, 2025
Slender in technical configuration, yet it impressed Louis Ehlert so much that he was impelled to write: "A more perfect canon in the octave could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned arts." The four Mazurkas, published posthumously in 1855, that comprise op. 67 were composed by Chopin at various dates.
In one of the letters to Moscheles, first printed in Scribner's Magazine for February, 1888, he complains that "a book of mazurkas by Chopin, and a few new pieces of his are so mannered that they are hard to stand."
First, according to the district from which they derive mazurkas of Kujavia, of Podlachia, of Lublin, &c.; or, secondly, according to their character, or to the purpose or occasion for which they were composed: wedding, village, historical, martial, and political mazurkas. And now let us hear what the poet Brodzinski has to say about the nature of this dance:
The appearance of the Throne-room with its royal company and brilliant picturesque groups, when the mazurkas were danced, is said to have been striking and beautiful. The diamonds of the Queen, the Duchess of Cambridge, and the Marchioness of Londonderry outshone all others. Lady Londonderry's very gloves and shoes were resplendent with brilliants.
It is the collective sorrow and tribal wrath of a down-trodden nation, and the mazurkas for that reason have ethnic value. As concise, even as curt as the Preludes, they are for the most part highly polished. They are dancing preludes, and often tiny single poems of great poetic intensity and passionate plaint.
There is also some editorial differences in the metronomic markings, Mikuli being, according to Kullak, too slow. Mention has not been made, as in the studies and preludes, of the tempi of the Mazurkas. These compositions are so capricious, so varied, that Chopin, I am sure, did not play any one of them twice alike.
Harmonies as ultra-modern as those of Wagner's "Parsifal" may be found in some of the mazurkas of Chopin. He was, as Rubinstein called him, "the soul of the pianoforte." No one before or after him knew how to make that instrument speak so eloquently.
Chopin, as I have already said, is most national in the mazurkas and polonaises, for the former of which he draws not only inspiration, but even rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic motives from his country's folk-music. Liszt told me, in a conversation I had with him, that he did not care much for Chopin's mazurkas. "One often meets in them with bars which might just as well be in another place."
It is, therefore, advisable that we should make ourselves acquainted with the principal Polish dances; such an acquaintance, moreover, will not only help us to interpret aright Chopin's mazurkas and polonaises, but also to gain a deeper insight into his ways of feeling and seeing generally.
And I beg you all, kind gentlemen, follow me: my Sarah has given birth to a little Jankiel, and to-day I treat the crowd; and the music is splendid! I will order bagpipes, a bass viol, and two fiddles; and Pan Maciek, my friend, likes old July mead and a new mazurka. I have new mazurkas, and I have taught my kids to sing just fine.”
Word Of The Day
Others Looking