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The words of most of these songs are by his friend Stephen Witwicki; others are by Adam Mickiewicz, Bogdan Zaleski, and Sigismond Krasinski, poets with all of whom he was personally acquainted. Karasowski states that many songs sung by the people in Poland are attributed to Chopin, chief among them one entitled "The third of May."
Op. 17, four Mazurkas, May 4, dedicated to Madame Lina Freppa; op. 24, four Mazurkas, November, 1835, dedicated to Comte de Perthuis; op. 30, four Mazurkas, December, 1837, dedicated to Princesse Czartoryska; op. 33, four Mazurkas, October, 1838, dedicated to Comtesse Mostowska; op. 41, four Mazurkas, December, 1840, dedicated to E. Witwicki; op. 50, three Mazurkas, November, 1841, dedicated to Leon Szmitkowski; op. 56, three Mazurkas, August, 1844, dedicated to Mile.
The reader will also remember that Chopin, in his letters to Fontana, alludes twice to books of poetry one by Mickiewicz which was sent him to Majorca, the other by Witwicki which he had lost sight of. Indeed, anything Polish had an especial charm and value for Chopin. Absence from his native country so far from diminishing increased his love for it.
The Third of May is cited as one of these. Chopin had a habit of playing songs for his friends, but neglected putting some of them on paper. The collected songs are under the opus head 74. The words are by his friends, Stephen Witwicki, Adam Mickiewicz, Bogdan Zaleski and Sigismond Krasinski. The first in the key of A, the familiar Maiden's Wish, has been brilliantly paraphrased by Liszt.
In addition to the friends who were then mentioned, I may name here the Polish poet Stephen Witwicki, the friend of his youth as well as of his manhood, to whom in 1842 he dedicated his Op. 41, three mazurkas, and several of whose poems he set to music; and the Polish painter Kwiatkowski, an acquaintance of a later time, who drew and painted many portraits of the composer, and more than one of whose pictures was inspired by compositions of his friend.
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