Mazurka

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The mazurka (Polish: mazurek, named after Poland's Mazury (Masuria) district; mazurka is the genitive and accusative case of mazurek) is a stylized Polish folk dance in triple meter with a lively tempo, containing a heavy accent on the third or second beat. Its folk originals are: slow kujawiak and fast oberek. It is always found to have either a triplet, trill, dotted eighth note pair, or ordinary eighth note pair before two quarter notes. The dance became popular at Ballroom dances in the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century. The Polish national anthem has a mazurka rhythm, but is too slow to be considered a mazurka.

Several classical composers have written mazurkas, with the best known being the 57 composed by Frédéric Chopin for solo piano, the most famous of which is the Mazurka nr. 5. Henryk Wieniawski wrote two for violin with piano (the popular "Obertas", op. 19), and in the 1920s, Karol Szymanowski wrote a set of twenty for piano and finished his composing career with a final pair in 1934.

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[edit] Outside Poland

In Russia, Mily Balakirev composed seven mazurkas for solo piano. Also, Tchaikovsky composed six mazurkas for solo piano, one for his Swan Lake score, one in his opera Eugene Onegin, and one for his Sleeping Beauty score; Leo Delibes composed one which appears several times in the first act of his ballet Coppelia; Borodin wrote two in his Petite Suite for piano; Mikhail Glinka also wrote two, although one is a simplified version of Chopin's mazurka number 13 and Alexander Scriabin used the form as well. The Mazurka is an important dance in many Russian novels. In addition to its mention in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as well as in a protracted episode in War and Peace, the dance is prominently featured in Ivan Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons. Arkady reserves the Mazurka for Madame Odintsov with whom he is falling in love.

In France, Impressionistic composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel both wrote Mazurkas: Debussy's is a stand-alone piece, and Ravel's is part of a suite of an early work, La Parade.

In Australia, Julian Cochran composed a collection of Mazurkas for solo piano.

In Nicaragua, Carlos Mejía Godoy y los de Palacaguina and Los Soñadoes de Saraguasca made a compilation of Mazurkas from the popular folklore, which are performed with Violin de Talalate an autochthonous instrument from Nicaragua.

In Swedish folk music, the quaver or eight-note polska has a similar rhythm to the mazurka, and the two dances have a common origin.

In Brazil, the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote a mazurka for classical guitar in a similar musical style to Polish mazurkas.

In Cuba, composer Ernesto Lecuona wrote a piece titled Mazurka en Glisado for the piano, one of various commissions throughout his life.

The dance was also common as a popular dance in Europe the United States in the mid- to late 19th century. It survives in some old time fiddle tunes, and also in early Cajun music, though it has largely fallen out of Cajun music now. In the Southern United States it was sometimes known as a mazuka.

In Cape Verde the mazurka is also revered as an important cultural phenomenon played with a violin and accompanied by guitars. It also takes a dance form found in the north of the archipelago, mainly in São Nicolau, Santo Antão, Brava.

Mazurkas are also popular in the traditional dance music of County Donegal, Ireland.

Groucho Marx mentions the Mazurka in his song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" from "At the Circus": "For two bits, she will do a Mazurka in Jazz..."

Pink Martini reference mazurka as a metaphor for a relationship in their song "Dosvedanya Mio Bombino (farewell my bumblebee)" from "Hey Eugene!": "In Florence we were on the mend; But that mazurka had to end..."

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