Piano Dances

“My piano heard nought but mazurs.”

(Chopin in a letter to his family, 1831)

For Chopin, the Mazurka (a dance in triple time with an unsystematic emphasis on the second or third beat) connected him to his homeland more than any other of his music, and he wrote fifty-seven Mazurkas, each with “an individual poetic feature, something distinctive in form or expression” (Robert Schumann, in a review, 1838).

In the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century composers sought to add a national distinctiveness to their music, and for composers such as Dvorak and Bartok this was drawn from folk music and vernacular dances of his homeland and Eastern Europe.

Formal or “courtly” dances have featured in keyboard repertoire since Renaissance times, from the stately Pavane and Galliard, to the Sarabandes, Bourree and Rigaudon. Many of these dance forms were taken up by seventeenth and eighteenth century composers such as Rameau, Couperin and most notably J S Bach, whose French and English Suites and keyboard Partitas comprise a relatively strict progression of dance movements (usually Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Minuet and Gigue) which demonstrate different styles, metres and moods.

French composers Satie, Debussy and Ravel all refer back to their French Baroque heritage in their piano music: their interpretations of the Sarabande, Pavane and Minuet combine original elements of the forms with unexpected or unusual harmonies, the use of whole-tone scales, and an emphasis on timbre for musical colour rather than pure melody.

Of course any playlist of dances in piano music would not be complete without a mention of the Waltz, a gliding dance in three time which originated in sixteenth-century Europe. Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were fond of the Waltz, but it was Schubert who really embraced the form, and the dance remained a significant part of his compositional output throughout his life. Simplicity dominates these charming pieces - in the choice of key, their melodic gracefulness, and good-natured mood infused with melancholy through a fleeting modulation into the minor, or an unexpected accent. These miniatures are works of great expression, beauty and variety. Chopin and Brahms truly appreciated the form too and their waltzes remain amongst their best-loved piano works. Later Ravel, who was intrigued by the waltz genre, paid homage to Schubert’s waltzes in his “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales”, which contain an eclectic blend of modernist and impressionistic elements in miniature form.