Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A Polish dance resembling the polka, usually in 3/4 or 3/8 time with the second beat heavily accented, and frequently adopted as a ballet form.
- noun The music for this dance.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A lively Polish dance, properly for four or eight pairs of dancers, originally performed with a singing accompaniment.
- noun Music for such a dance or in its rhythm, which is triple and moderately rapid, with a capricious accent on the second beat of the measure.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun music A
Polish folk dance in triple time, usually moderately fast, containing a heavyaccent on the third beat and occasionally the second beat. - noun music A classical musical composition inspired by the
folk dance and conforming in some respects to its form, particularly as popularized by Chopin.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a Polish national dance in triple time
- noun music composed for dancing the mazurka
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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My last remarks hold good with the fourth mazurka, which is bleak and joyless till, with the entrance of A major, a fairer prospect opens.
Frederic Chopin as a Man and Musician Niecks, Frederick 1888
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Mr. CARLOS SANDRONI (Ethnomusicologist, University of Pernambuco): You have polka, waltz and - what's more - mazurka.
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The mazurka part is how the poem 'turns' on its one-word lines, all of them adjectives.
John Seed: Mazurki: The Multiple Meanings of a Philip Guston Drawing John Seed 2011
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Mr. CARLOS SANDRONI (Ethnomusicologist, University of Pernambuco): You have polka, waltz and - what's more - mazurka.
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Does a discussion of the Lydian mode really enhance the layman's enjoyment of a mazurka?
Ganz's copious, commanding Chopin project Robert Battey 2011
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The mazurka part is how the poem 'turns' on its one-word lines, all of them adjectives.
John Seed: Mazurki: The Multiple Meanings of a Philip Guston Drawing John Seed 2011
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But many Poles hold on to him as a very special person, a very special musician whose music really says Poland, especially when he took different forms, Polish dances, like the mazurka, and took a rustic dance and made high art out of it.
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(Soundbite of song, "Mazurka in F Sharp Minor") RAZ: And that mazurka we're hearing, Tom, is by the great Arthur Rubinstein.
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And I think something that's special about this particular performance and this mazurka, it points out something that you can find in many places in Chopin's music, which is fascinating to me, and that is this idea that the music sounds like it's off the cuff, and it couldn't be further from the truth.
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HUIZENGA: So this particular mazurka, it starts out with a very identifiable theme, and it's fine, and you think you know where it's going.
brtom commented on the word mazurka
He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet past the fireplace ...
Joyce, Ulysses, 7
January 2, 2007
treeseed commented on the word mazurka
The mazurka (Polish: mazurek, named after Poland's Mazury (Masuria) district; mazurka is the feminine form of mazurek) is a stylized Polish folk dance in triple meter with a lively tempo, containing a heavy accent on the third or second beat. Its folk originals are: slow kujawiak and fast oberek. It is always found to have either a triplet, trill, dotted eighth note pair, or ordinary eighth note pair before two quarter notes. The dance became popular at Ballroom dances in the rest of Europe during the nineteenth century. The Polish national anthem has a mazurka rhythm, but is too slow to be considered a mazurka.
Several classical composers have written mazurkas, with the best known being the 57 composed by Frédéric Chopin for solo piano, the most famous of which is the Mazurka nr. 5. Henryk Wieniawski wrote two for violin with piano (the popular "Obertas", op. 19), and in the 1920s, Karol Szymanowski wrote a set of twenty for piano.
_Wikipedia
February 25, 2008
dailyword commented on the word mazurka
This dance was mentioned by Natasha in War And Peace.
December 25, 2012
hernesheir commented on the word mazurka
Sonny's Mazurka is a very popular Irish session tune.
December 25, 2012