Mazurka No.20 in D flat

The Mazurka takes its name from the Mazurs, the inhabitants of the province of Mazovia, near Warsaw. It is a strikingly rythmic dance, based on certain rhythmic and melodic formulae that find their place in the Mazurkas of Chopin. Like the Polonaise, the Mazurka had made its way from the villages of Poland to fashionable ball-rooms in the cities of the country, to Paris, to London and to Russia. No Mazurkas could rival the variety of feeling and musical content that Chopin achieved in a form that he first attempted as a ten-year-old in 1820 and last touched in the year of his death.