Discovering the Mazurka beyond Chopin. A Swedish perspective
Anastasia BELINA
The mazurka, which dates back to as early as the sixteenth century, was a Polish country dance from the plains of Mazovia, danced by the people of the province, the Mazurs.
.There were three basic forms of their dance: a quick, lively mazurek, with distinct and varied articulation, and the most popular of the three;a fast and playful oberek, anda melodious, melancholy kujawiak. All three stem from the ancient Polska, a dance in triple time with strong accents (often accompanied by a tap of the heel) on the second or third beat of the bar. In performance, a pride of bearing and a certain wildness made its mood different from the more sedate waltz. From its folk origins, it spread to ballrooms across Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even reaching America in the nineteenth century. Throughout the vastness of nineteenth-century Russia, the mazurka was a very popular dance, not least in glittering ballrooms in the estates and palaces of the nobility.
Of course when we speak about the mazurka, Frédéric (Fryderyk) Chopin (1810-1849) is the first composer who comes to our mind. Had it not been for him, the mazurka might have remained a passing dance fashion, but instead, to Chopin it became a deeply personal, intimate statement of his feelings as an émigré Polish composer living in Paris. From some of his very first compositions to his last (Op 68, No 4, written a few weeks before his death), it is the only form that Chopin composed regularly throughout his life, with nocturnes coming a close second. Although Polish composers before him wrote mazurkas too, such as Maria Szymanowska, Karol Krupiński, and Jósef Elsner, it is Chopin’s musical genius that elevated this country dance into an art form. His mazurkas inspired various composers from Glinka and Balakirev, through Debussy, Scriabin, and Stanchinsky, and is still cherished in Poland, in the works of Szymanowski, Maciejewski, Gradstein and others.
Mazurka is a genre that has always remained personal to Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski, with whom I sat down to have a conversation about how can we trace its presence in Sweden
AB. Peter, you once remarked that throughout your career you probably played a mazurka in every concert, whether as part of the programme, or as an encore. Can you tell me more?
PJ. These were not only by Chopin, of course, but also by Scriabin, Szymanowski, and a number of others. I recorded the complete Scriabin mazurkas for the Finnish label Ondine (released in 2019), previously having recorded a selection of mazurkas by Szymanowski and Maciejewski. For me, a mazurka is something very personal, and something that I really enjoy playing to the audiences.
AB. You are half-Polish, half-Swedish, with many of your student years spent with a Polish piano professor at the Malmö Academy, Michał Wesołowski. What did he teach you about a mazurka?
PJ. Michał had a huge influence on my development as a pianist, and a Chopin mazurka was the first piece he gave me when we started our lessons. Himself a wonderful pianist, he left a recording of the complete Chopin mazurkas. He always felt it to be close to his heart, to his soul, and I guess his passion for this elusive genre easily transferred to me. And since we are talking about a Swedish perspective on a mazurka, it is Maciejewski who bridges Polish and Swedish musical cultures via the much treasured mazurka genre.
Roman Maciejewski left his native Poland in 1934, and ended up living in Sweden (having first lived in France and the United Kingdom) in 1939-51, and then again in 1977 until his death in 1998. Before he arrived to Sweden, Maciejewski spent several years in France, becoming part of a circle of French avant-garde composers led by Milhaud, Poulenc, Honneger, and Stravinsky. He became friends with Arthur Rubinstein, studied with Nadia Boulanger, and like Chopin, composed mazurkas throughout his career, wanting to present and preserve in them ‘the most complete picture of the Polish soul’[1]. Rubinstein performed a number of his mazurkas regularly, and even asked Maciejewski to write a piano concerto for him (to no avail, the young composer was simply not interested!). While in Sweden, he also composed chamber and piano works, and music for theatrical plays directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Many of his mazurkas were left incomplete, so when a two-volume collection was published by the PWM in 2019 (edited by Michał Wesołowski), it contained only 39 works, although the exact number could be nearer 60, very similar to Chopin’s. Maciejewski is the only composer in Sweden who left so many mazurkas in his output, but there were composers before him who also wrote them.
It is worth mentioning that although we do not often talk about or indeed listen to music by Swedish composers, Sweden is a country with a rich musical tradition. Swedish composers were internationally educated, mentored by great artists of their day, and left behind them a rich legacy of works in all genres, which stand as a testament to their talent, musical invention, and connection to European musical tradition. Composers from other countries worked and lived in Sweden for centuries. Just two examples are J.S. Bach’s brother Johan Jacob, who was employed as flutist in the court of the Stockholm capelle between 1713 and 1722, and Bedřich Smetana, who spent five years living in Gothenburg (the same city where Maciejewski finally settled), working as a piano teacher, giving concerts, conducting choirs and orchestras, organising concerts and, of course, composing. Trailblazing Swedish women composers such as Elfrida Andrée (1841-1929) were also deeply involved in social and political life of the country.
Among Swedish composers who contributed to the mazurka legacy are Hugo Alfvén (1872-1960), who wrote one mazurka dedicated to his mother in 1891, and his contemporary Tor Aulin (1866-1914) who wrote two: a Mazurek as a second work in his set of Two Character Pieces for Violin and Piano (1892), and Mazurka as a second work in the set Melodie und Rhythmus for Violin and Piano Op 26 (1910). Tor Aulin had an immensely talented sister, composer Valborg Aulin (1860-1928), who included a mazurka as one work in her set 5 Tone Poems for Piano Op 7, (1882), and the third movement of her monumental Grande Sonate sérieuse pour le piano Op 14 (1885) is titled Scherzo capriccioso: Tempo di mazurka.
Swedish royalty not only danced the mazurkas but also composed them. Princess Eugéne (Princess Charlotta ‘Eugénie’ Augusta Amalia Albertina Bernadotte 1830-1889) was a composer who left one example in 1864 of a mazurka for piano called Trio in Anetten-Mazurka with Trio.
Princess Therese Amalie Karoline Josephine Antoinette von Sachsen-Altenburg (1836-1914), who married Swedish prince August, was also a composer who left two works: Anetten Mazurka, 1864, and Jugend Mazurka, 1869.
Five more composers who left one piano mazurka each are Rudolf Gagge (1834-1912), 1866; Lennart Lundberg’s (1863-1931) Op 45, 1910; Gustaf Hägg (1867-1925) included a mazurka as a last item in his set for piano called Sommartankar (Thoughts of Summer) Op 14, no date; Fredrika Wickman (1852-1910 or later), wrote a work called Polka-Mazurka, which she dedicated to H.R.H. Princess Louise of Sweden (1851-1926) in 1862; and Adolf Wiklund (1879-1950) included a mazurka into his set Stämningar (Ambiances) Op 15, 1902.
One of the most prolific Swedish composers, Jakob Adolf Hägg (1850-1928), with much of his output is still unpublished, was also the one who left the most mazurkas: at least half a dozen.
Today, the mazurka is still alive in the work of Swedish composer Martin Skafte (born in 1980), who composed in 2008 Three translations of Mazurkas by Chopin, and in 2021 wrote for Peter Jablonski the Fantasia on Two Pieces by Scriabin (Mazurka Op 25 No and Piano Sonata No 9).
AB. So, it is safe to say that, although the mazurka as a genre appears in the output of Swedish composers rather seldom, the mazurka in its representation by Chopin, Szymanowski, Maciejewski, and Scriabin is heard in Sweden often thanks to your efforts.
In fact, your recently recorded the complete mazurkas by Chopin here in Sweden, which followed the complete Scriabin mazurkas you recorded in 2019. Do you have any plans to do further work with his beautiful musical genre?
PJ. I often think of recording the complete mazurkas by Karol Szymanowski and Roman Maciejewski. I find Maciejewski’s works to be very evocative, full of imagination, with the composer managing to say a lot via very simple means. There is such noble simplicity and discipline in his music, and of course in his mazurkas too.
AB. What does performing mazurkas mean to you in terms of actual musical execution?
PJ. The mazurkas demand elegance, spirit, careful attention to tempi, colours, rubato (the elusive mazurka lilt), dynamics, and pedalling. Chopin’s use of the pedal was incredibly sensitive, and relatively sparse, as we know from the accounts of his students. He was very fond of una corda, but on his Pleyel piano it would have given him a very different colour and effect than a modern instrument gives us today.
Chopin gave very clear indications in his scores, but we know from his pupils that he never played his own works in the same way twice. He told his students to put their soul into the music they were playing, to trust their own musical intuition. To him, it was important to find the essence of the work, to allow it to live and breathe, and he certainly practiced what he preached. Ignaz Moscheles remembered that ‘Chopin’s manner of playing ad libitum, a phrase which to so many signifies deficiency in time and rhythm, was with him only a charming originality of execution.’[2]
When we play mazurkas by other composers, such as Scriabin, Szymanowski, and Maciejewski, it is safe to say that the same rule apply. For me, it has always been important to bring the innate delicacy and intimacy in some of these works, whilst also showcasing their robustness and abandon in others.
AB. In his mazurkas Chopin found a way to be at his most personal, vulnerable, and intimate. One might say that they are his musical diary. Of course one might feel this intensity in his other works, but in the mazurkas it somehow seems to be more present, more visceral. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that in Chopin’s mazurkas we can hear the musical essence of a Poland that he loved, (a kind of ‘dream Poland’, as he was never to return there), his longing for and ‘romanticisation’ of his feelings and memories, which only grew throughout his life. Could we say the same about Maciejewski’s mazurkas? We can only speculate, but the very fact that after he retired and pretty much stopped composing new works, with the exception of mazurkas, speaks volumes.
Not only did the composer write them throughout his life like Chopin, but like Chopin, he was a composer who lived most of his life outside of Poland. Could the mazurka be the bridge that connected him to his homeland? Did the mazurka act as a kind of a musical diary for him as it did for Chopin? Did feeling ‘at home’ in a mazurka help him to feel at home in Sweden?
It is a little-known fact that Maciejewski also used Swedish folk music in his works, leaving a suite for two pianos based on Swedish folk dances, for example, so perhaps a connection to the land and its people’s musical roots is what kept him rooted himself, and was some kind of a way of finding a home away from home.
.Whatever the case, the mazurka was made welcome in Sweden by its composers, by those who played or danced it, and by those who continue to listen to it today.
[1] Roman Maciejewski, Mazurki na fortepian, PWM, 2019, p. 8.
[2] Jean Kleczynski, How to Play Chopin. The Works of Frederic Chopin and their Proper Interpretation (translated by Alfred Whittingham), London, 1880, p. 58.
