Between 2 and 4 August, the Dutch Chopin Festival will take place in Castle Oud Poelgeest, in Leiden. This year’s theme is “influenced by Chopin”. One of the legacies of Poland’s best-known composer is the popularisation of the mazurka. This type of music, characterised by its liveliness and a strong accent on the second beat, has its origins in three Polish folk dances: the mazur, the kujawiak, and the oberek. Prior to Chopin, a large number of mazurkas were written by the Polish composer Maria Szymanowska. Chopin’s mazurkas for piano subsequently propelled the genre’s popularity, which reached its height in Europe and the United States during the mid to late nineteenth century.

In the Netherlands, examples of mazurkas feature in the songbook Jan Pierewiet: a collection of Dutch and Flemish folk songs meant for children, published between 1933 and 1972. Moreover, multiple mazurkas were written by composers from Curaçao, which is one of the islands comprising the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Among them was Jan Gerard Palm, who lived in the nineteenth century and is considered the first composer of classical music from Curaçao. He wrote several mazurkas, including one for the birthday of his son in law. Another well-known composer from Curaçao who wrote mazurkas was Wim Statius Muller, who was a student of Jacobo Palm, a grandson of Jan Gerard Palm. Muller even earned the nickname “Curaçao’s Chopin” because of his romantic style of piano composition!

For more information about the Chopin Festival, see this website.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 57.