Three Mazurkas, Op.59

No.1 in A minor

No.2 in A flat major

No.3 in F sharp minor

Although Chopin composed little at Nohant in the summer of 1845, he did complete a set of three mazurkas at the request of a friend whose father had just set up a music publishing business in Germany. Whether Stern of Berlin was alarmed or pleased by the provocative harmonies of the pieces that were sent to him, he certainly wasted no time in getting them into print. He had them on sale only four months later.

Beginning as an innocently pensive kujiawak in A minor, Op.59, No.1, is characteristic of the set in general in its disconcerting tendency to wander off into remote key areas. The solidly harmonised start to the middle section seems intent on anchoring it in the tonic major but that doesn’t last long in a development apparently so little concerned for the harmonic implications of its contrapuntal preoccupations that it reaches a point as far from A minor as it can get. So, as in the Second Impromptu, the main theme has to effect its re-entry a semitone flat. The tonic is restored with masterly imperceptibility but with no certain prospect of survival until the A minor chord in the very last bar.

There seems to be no fear of losing touch with the tonic in the Mazurka in A flat major, which presents its main theme no fewer than three times in the same key - though with increasingly passionate colouring - before briefly changing the subject in the middle section. At the behest of the left hand, it sets itself up apparently to repeat the process in the closing section when it slides gently out of control on a slippery slope of parallel chromatic harmonies. Once again, the situation is retrieved only in the closing bars.

Appearances are deceptive also in Op.59, No.3, which begins as a folky oberek in F sharp minor with Lydian sharpened fourth and one short motif obstinately repeated. The more sophisticated middle section in F has a tendency to wander off the point but it takes no more than an ostinato of drone harmonies to bring it back first to F sharp major and then to F sharp minor. An insistent left hand and an artfully contrived canon seem to have secured the conditions for a full-scale return of the opening section when a contrapuntal development involves the left hand in such a dissonant relationship with the right that the harmonic sense is quite disorientated. The ostinato from the middle section restores order but in F sharp major rather than F sharp minor and only with the intervention of a new melodic motif in the closing bars.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Three Mazurkas, Op.59
No.1 in A minor
No.2 in A flat major
No.3 in F sharp minor

Three Mazurkas, Op.63
No.1 in B major
No.2 in F minor
No.3 in C sharp minor

Mazurka in A minor, Op.67, No.4
Mazurka in G minor Op.67, No.2

Mazurka in F minor, Op.68, No.4

The three Mazurkas, Op.59, written at Nohant in the summer of 1845 for an insistent publisher in Berlin, are among the most surprising works of their kind. The first of them begins innocently enough in A minor and, in that context, a middle section in A major is only to be expected - but not one that modulates so freely and with such a disorientating effect that it leads to a reprise of the opening a semitone too low in G sharp minor. The Mazurka in A flat major has its harmonic interest too but it is remarkable above all for the passion developed by the initially gentle main theme as, roundly harmonised in sixth and thirds, it doubles and redoubles in dynamic intensity, though only to trickle away at the end. The harmonies in the middle section of Op.59, No.3, float so lightly off the point that it takes an insistent left hand to anchor them in F sharp major and then to turn them towards F sharp minor for the return of the main theme - an event signalled by a rare indulgence in canonic counterpoint. The same insistent left hand leads to an artfully prolonged ending in the major rather than the expected F sharp minor.

The Mazurka in A minor, Op.67, No.4 was written only a year after Op.59 but has more in common with the last two in the series - in G minor, Op.67, No.2, and in F minor, Op.68, No.4 - than any of the earlier ones. Shorter than those of Op.59 and comparatively spare in texture, it is inspired by a resigned melancholy which seems more rather than less poignant when the harmonies change to the major in the middle section.

The last two of Chopin’s mazurkas, Op.67, No.2, and Op. 68, No.4, were written in the summer of 1849, after the composer’s return to Paris from an ill-advised concert tour in England and Scotland and only a few weeks before his death. Even more economical and no less poignant than the A minor Mazurka of 1846, the haunting G minor is based on little more than an unadorned melody in the right hand with a simple accompaniment in the left. The return to the first theme, after a comparatively richly harmonised middle section in the relative major, is made by means of a sadly expressive line with no harmonies at all. The Mazurka in F minor, Op.68, No.4, the very last piece of music Chopin wrote (when he no longer had the strength to play it) was originally published in a “realisation” by the composer’s great friend August Franchcomme who, it was discovered when the manuscript came to light, omitted an important section in F major. With or without that section, the great inspiration is the magical modulation which briefly lifts the tonality into a serene A major before it falls back into F minor.

The three Mazurkas Op.63 were the last set to be published in Chopin’s lifetime (the Op.67 and 68 sets, both made up of works from different periods, were published in Berlin in 1855). Written in 1846, shortly after the completion of the Polonaise-Fantaisie and the Barcarolle, they are not yet as weary as the two examples from 1849. The B major, its main theme running in cheerful thirds, is positively energetic. There is an expression of pain, however, in the appogiaturas associated with the main theme of the Mazurka in F minor and, though based on the relative major, the chromatic harmonies of the middle section do little to relieve the situation. The Mazurka in C sharp minor, which has something of the exquisitely nostalgic atmosphere of the nocturnes, ends with a beautifully contrived canon at the octave with the lower voice shared between left hand and right.