Understanding Form: The Mazurka

Link to book composition lessons:

[TheGeorgeLansing]

I have music for many dozens of Mazourkas for banjo and mandolin from 1880 to 1920 or so. Every country seemed to have their own at that time.

[hartmutehuber]

There is a revival of the Mazurka in today's BalFolk events. The way to dance can range from a set of steps to very free and interpretative.

[hannastaszak]

Mazurki Fryderyka Chopina to kwintesencja polskości ❤

[TrayyTurner]

I’ve made at least 23 mazurkas, and they really good with understanding how to compose, I suggest every person who sees this to make one because once understand how to make one it so easy

[Sam-gxti]

Something extremely important about the mazurka that most don't know: There's a lingering on the first beat in many instances. The way Chopin played, it was sometimes so extreme that the first beat sounded like two beats. There's a recorded instance where Meyerbeer greatly angered Chopin by insisting he was playing in common time rather than triple time. Another time, a student clapped four beats in one measure as Chopin was playing. Chopin then told the student that it was the "national character of the piece" that produced the oddity. Both these incidents are in Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger's "Chopin: Pianist and Teacher."
What's amazing, is that many people never even noticed this extreme lingering because it was so natural and organic to Chopin's playing that it remained subconscious for him and the hearers. It is't just Chopin either that does this. On youtube you can find recordings of Paderewski playing the famous A minor mazurka, and at one point, the lingering is so extreme that the first two notes of the measure despite being equal length as written on the page, that it sounds exactly like a dotted and then a short note!
From what I've gathered, this only occurs during the melody, and even then only sometimes.

[callenclarke]

So many questions I've had for years answered in this one short video. Thank you for this.

[KatarzynaMatylla]

Thanks for the video!

"Mazurek" means (at least sounds like) "little Mazur" much more than "Mazurian dance". "-ek" is a common diminitive suffix. [source: I'm Polish.]
Maybe it originated in a different way than adding the diminitive suffix, I'm not a historian. But it sure sounds this way.

[Looking-for-More]

fantastic video! very useful in gaining some insight into the form

[DirkdeZwijger]

this is the first video i've come across that actually explains what the mazurkas are. I've looked it up about a year ago and couldn't find it. Glad to have looked it up again :)

[scalenescott]

Thanks so much for this. Some lightbulbs went off when talking about the bagpipes. I've been working on Chopin's Op.67 No.2, and in the B-section these harmonic fifths in the left hand are all over the place -- bagpipes! Also, the bar totals for each sections are multiples of 8: 16, 16X2, 8, & 16. Much appreciated. I'll eat up anything I can find about Mazurkas!

[caterscarrots]

Great video as usual. I myself was unsure of form when I went to write the Mazurka of my Romantic Dance Suite but after listening to all of Chopin's Mazurkas, I basically had 3 categories based on form, those being the Rondos, the Ternary Form, and the Binary Form.

The Rondos included a lot of Chopin's Mazurkas including the most famous of them all, the Mazurka in Bb Op. 7 no. 1. This is the structure I ended up using for my own Mazurka, with an added Double in Bb minor, which is basically restatements of minor key variants of the A theme with cadenza flourishes between each restatement, so I guess you could say I hybridized Ternary Form(the Mazurka I, Double, Mazurka I large structure) with the Rondo(the structure of Mazurka I itself)

Speaking of Ternary Form, a lot of the Mazurkas that weren't Rondos fell into this category and some felt more like Scherzos in a way such as Op. 24 no. 2(not as much of the characteristic rhythm of the Mazurka, but with distant modulations and other things I tend to see in a Scherzo). The rest fell into the Binary Form category including Op. 7 no. 5 that just ends with a bunch of G octaves, so it really sounds like it ends in the dominant and not the tonic.

As for the Romantic Dance Suite as a whole, well, I basically looked at characteristics of the dances in the Baroque Dance Suite and tried to match them as closely as possible to a Romantic Era counterpart. That lead me to these pairings:

Allemande - Polonaise -> Both are complex in their own ways and both use a lot of sixteenth notes
Courante - Mazurka -> Both are generally faster dances with rhythmic interest
Sarabande - Waltz -> Both are slower than the rest, although the Waltz does not have to be slow
Minuet - Scherzo -> Similar on the surface with differences in the details + one evolved from the other
Gigue - Polka -> Both fast and in duple meter with lots of dotted rhythms

[thewanderingbodhran]

I play Irish and Scottish traditional music, and a mazurka comes up occasionally and since we also play waltzes I have been trying to hear the difference! I've been working on a tune on fiddle that apparently can be played as a mazurka and I wanted to understand it better so I can make the choice as to whether whether I play it more as a mazurka or more as a waltz.. thank you for a great explanation!

[victorziegler]

Hi, many thanks for this great video. I really appreciate the effort you put into linking this music style with the linguistics of the Polish language, fascinating!

[PinacoladaMatthew]

For more popular example, try this:
The Godfather Family Wedding Mazurka (Alla Siciliana)

[orangecloudsonanindigoblue]

Great video! I would like to watch the Tarantella analysis :⁠^⁠)

[tymanung]

In Caribbean, S America, etc.
there are folk/ Vintage ballroom
versions in.Martinique and Gouadeloupe with French or local Creole lyrics,
in Puerto Rico there are versions in
Spanish.In Mexico. there are regional
dance varieties, .also.small.amount in
Argentina There may be more Mazurca
in Philippines and other island ex colonies? Also modern France.
Most places outside of Poland, in terms of dance. use simple waltz steps to
replace real, more complex original
Polish steps
Exceptions who do.Polish steps include
1 region
in Mexico (sorry, forgot name of region,
but there is a youtube video).
Other exceptions include historical dancers in W and. E ewEurope, .N & S America.
Of course. Polish descendants outside of Poland, in other Euro countries and
N (& S?).America continue to.perform Mazurek.and other.Polish folk dances.
in authentic ways.

i
.

[tarunsmusings]

Love your videos from India...
Please upload more videos...
Can you please put videos on Beethoven piano sonatas

[Marklar]

I really like the point of levity and lightness in the mazurka. When I first heard of Mazurkas I though of the dynamic accent, but as I played through the Chopin mazurkas, I felt like putting a dynamic accent on the 2nd or 3rd beat was overkill and just made the music sound too heavy and awkward. In a way, the accent is written into the length of the notes, and doesn't need any more "accent".

[emilgilels]

Excellent and informative video. Many thanks!

[stephenmessano]

Great explanation, thank you. 🎶 What is the ballet so prominently featured in this video?