As Maya Trochimczyk points out in her excellent article on the mazur, the term ‘mazurka’ has been used as a blanket term for a family of dances which include the kujawiak and the obertas or oberek as well as the mazur(ka). This also applies to Chopin’s “mazurkas.” The fact that Chopin’s mazurkas include all three types, not to mention his own pianistic and composerly embroidery on the form, means that you can’t just pick a mazurka by Chopin and say ‘That’s a mazurka’, extract the defining features, copy it and get another mazurka.
It’s a bit like saying you want to go to Stoke-on-Trent, which as I discovered only a few years ago, is not actually a town with a centre, but a polycentric federation of six towns.
See also:
- Maya Trochimczyk’s pages on Polish folk dances at the Polish Music Centre at the University of Southern California)
- The ultimate polonaise and mazurka internet resource (blog post with link)
