Four Mazurkas, Op.30 (1836-37)

No.1 in C minor

No.2 in B minor

No.3 in D flat major

No.4 in C sharp minor

Although most of Chopin’s mature mazurkas contain more than one tune, they are never medleys in the sense that some of the waltzes are. The Mazurka in C minor, Op.30, No.1, for example, is a conversation between its plaintive opening theme and a more confident companion in the relative major - not that the con anima intervention of the latter has the least effect on the mood of the former, as it confirms when it returns in its original form to effect a sadly resigned ending in C minor.

While most of the mazurkas are in ternary form, they never follow set patterns either. Op.30, No.2 in B minor is a unique construction. The material to all appearances presented as the main theme in the opening bars gives way to a sequence leading to a new theme in the dominant. And that, after another sequence, is where it ends, with no recall of the opening theme and not in B minor but in F sharp minor, leaving the impression like many of its folk models that it is unfinished. Op.30, No.3, in D flat major, its freely modulating and elusive middle section offsetting its plain-speaking outer sections, is scarcely less remarkable.

The most developed structure, as is usual in Chopin’s mazurka sets by this stage in his career, is that of the last. The unharmonised introduction to No.3 in D flat is no more than a run-in to the main theme. The harmonically complex introduction to No.4 in C sharp minor is an integral part of the construction and a preparation for an extraordinary event near the end. Its function is not only to lead into the main theme in C sharp minor, bouncing lightly in the right hand on heavily strummed chords in the left, and to re-introduce it after an extended and dynamically liberated middle section. It also has to restore a tonal situation dissolved out of recognition by a sequence of dissonant harmonies descending in parallel chromatic steps in the final bars. Those who heard or read this on the publication of Op.30 – as a generous supplement to the Gazette Musicale in March 1838 – had surely never come across anything like it before.

Gerald Larner©