of life and joy, shaded with simple,
graceful, and delicate sentiments. Seeing in the mazurek the
female dancer almost carried away in the arms and on the
shoulders of her cavalier, abandoning herself entirely to his
guidance, one thinks one sees two beings intoxicated with
happiness and flying towards the celestial regions. The female
dancer, lightly dressed, scarcely skimming the earth with her
dainty foot, holding on by the hand of her partner, in the
twinkling of an eye carried away by several others, and then,
like lightning, precipitating herself again into the arms of
the first, offers the image of the most happy and delightful
creature. The music of the mazurek is altogether national and
original; through its gaiety breathes usually something of
melancholy--one might say that it is destined to direct the
steps of lovers, whose passing sorrows are not without charm.

Chopin himself published forty-one mazurkas of his composition in eleven
sets of four, five, or three numbers--Op. 6, Quatre Mazurkas, and Op. 7,
Cinq Mazurkas, in December, 1832; Op. 17, Quatre Mazurkas, in May, 1834;
Op. 24, Quatre Mazurkas, in November, 1835; Op. 30, Quatre Maazurkas,
in December, 1837; Op. 33, Quatre Mazurkas, in October, 1838; Op. 41,
Quatre Mazurkas, in December, 1840; Op. 50, Trois Mazurkas, in November,
1841; Op, 56, Trois Mazurkas, in August, 1844; Op. 59, Trois Mazurkas,
in April, 1846; and Op. 63, Trois Mazurkas, in September, 1847. In the
posthumous works published by Fontana there are two more sets, each of
four numbers, and respectively marked as Op. 67 and 68. Lastly, several
other mazurkas composed by or attributed to Chopin have been published
without any opus number. Two mazurkas, both in A minor, although very
feeble compositions, are included in the editions by Klindworth and
Mikuli. The Breitkopf and Hartel edition, which includes only one of
these two mazurkas, comprises further a mazurka in G major and one in B
flat major of 1825, one in D major of 1829-30, a remodelling of the
same of 1832--these have already been discussed--and a somewhat more
interesting one in C major of 1833. Of one of the two mazurkas in A
minor, a poor thing and for the most part little Chopinesque, only the
dedication (a son ami Rmile Gaillard) is known, but not the date of
composition. The other (the one not included in Breitkopf and Hartel's,
No. 50 of Mikuli's and Klindworth's edition) appeared first as No