Four Mazurkas, Op.6

No.1 in F sharp minor

No.2 in C sharp minor

No.3 in E major

No.4 in E flat minor

The four Mazurkas, Op.6, and the five Mazurkas, Op.7, most of which were written in Vienna towards the end of 1830, were the first works of their kind that Chopin himself chose to publish. It could be that he turned to the national dance at this time - delighting in what is rhythmically and harmonically distinctive about it in clear defiance of conventional good taste - because of patriotic feelings aroused in him by reports of the heroic (but ill-fated) Warsaw uprising. It is a fact, however, may be, the fact is that he had abandoned the fashionable salon mazurka for something more like the rustic real thing even before he left Warsaw. The Mazurkas published posthumously as Op.68, the first three of which were written between 1827 and 1830, offer proof enough of that in their modality, their drone harmonies and their displaced rhythmic accents, to mention only the most obvious of their characteristics.

The Mazurka in F sharp minor, Op.6, No.1, is based on the mazurek folk model in the rhythmic shape of the much repeated first phrase of its main theme and in the clear contradiction of the triple-time metre by a consistent stamp of the feet on the third beat in the bar. No.2 in C sharp minor consistently transfers the rhythmic emphasis to the second beat, not least clearly in the opening bars where drone harmonies trap the melodic line in the wrong key. G sharp major remains a surly threat to melodic freedom until the middle section (marked gajo in the score) where Chopin abandons C sharp minor for E major and then, delightfully and without warning, C sharp major - but only to fall back into the G sharp drone.

No.3 in E major also begins with a drone of open fifths. But this time, emphasising the third beat in the bar, it is to encourage heavy-footed peasant steps in the left hand in a curious competetion with a more sophisticated dance harmonised in salon-style thirds in the right hand with the rhythmic accent transferred to the second beat. One of the shortest of all Chopin’s mazurkas, No.4 in E flat minor is based on fluid and hypnotic repititions of two short phrases of contradictory rhythmic shapes.