Mazurka in F-sharp minor (Op. 6 No. 1)

Background

The mazurka is not a single dance but a family of Polish country dances in three beats, among them the mazur, the kujawiak and the oberek, named after the Mazovia region around Warsaw. Chopin grew up hearing them and wrote nearly sixty mazurkas, more than any other kind of piece. He did not write them for dancing. He kept the stamping accents, drone basses and sudden mood changes of village music and turned them into short concert pieces.

Op. 6 is the first set of mazurkas to which he gave an opus number: four pieces, of which this one, in F sharp minor, is the first. They are usually dated to around 1830–32, the years in which Chopin left Warsaw for good, spent several months in Vienna and settled in Paris, and they were first published in 1832–33. This opening mazurka is wistful rather than boisterous. It begins with a small turning figure, almost a sigh, before the dance gets under way.

How to practise it

The secret of any mazurka is where the weight falls. In this one the right hand often leans on beat 2 with a dotted or held note, while the left hand drops to a low bass note on beat 3, which pushes the music on into the next bar.

Learn the left hand first. Say "chord, chord, bass" as you play, and move towards the low note early, so it arrives on time and with a little weight. The chords on beats 1 and 2 stay light.

Then learn the tune. The upbeat is a tiny turn, F sharp, G sharp, F sharp, written as a quick triplet; play it unhurried and soft, like an intake of breath. Keep the dotted rhythms springy, and notice that the sixteenths always lead forward to the next note.

The piece is built in clear sections:

• Bars 1 to 16: the main tune, played twice.
• From bar 17: a bolder passage with octaves in both hands, after which the tune returns.
• Around bars 41 to 56: a middle section high in the right hand, full of quick grace notes, over a bass that keeps going back to F sharp and C sharp like a village drone.
• From bar 58: the opening music once more.

The grace notes in the middle section are the trickiest spot. Practise those bars without them at first, then add each one as a light flick just before its main note, and keep them all the same length.

A plan: hands separately at 40 beats a minute, then together at 40, 54 and the full 66. Use short touches of pedal with each bass note, lifting them quickly so the dance rhythm stays crisp. Once everything is secure, let beat 2 or 3 stretch very slightly where the music leans; a mazurka should never sound mechanical.

Another early Chopin dance in this library is the Waltz in B minor.