Later, in
St. Petersburg, Meyerbeer met this gossip and told him that he
loved Chopin. "I know no pianist, no composer for the piano like
him." Meyerbeer was wrong in his idea of the tempo. Though Chopin
slurs the last beat, it is there, nevertheless. This Mazurka is
only four lines long and is charming, as charming as the brief
specimen in the Preludes. The next Mazurka is another famous
warhorse. In B minor, it is full of veiled coquetries, hazardous
mood transitions, growling recitatives and smothered plaints. The
continual return to the theme gives rise to all manner of
fanciful programmes. One of the most characteristic is by the
Polish poet Zelenski, who, so Kleczynski relates, wrote a
humorous poem on this mazurka. For him it is a domestic comedy in
which a drunken peasant and his much abused wife enact a little
scene. Returning home the worse for wear he sings "Oj ta dana"--
"Oh dear me"--and rumbles in the bass in a figure that answers
the treble. His wife reproaching him, he strikes her. Here we are
in B flat. She laments her fate in B major.
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