- Download the score of the polka mazurka (free pdf) [Version 2 with minor corrections published 1st May 2015]
- Read more about my Year of Ballet Playing Cards
Another polka mazurka? Yes, and here’s why
After I posted the two pieces by Ziehrer, the Fächerpolonaise and the Wurf-bouquet polka Mazurka, I doubted myself – were they just too uninteresting to be worth inputting and posting online for other people to play? Well, they may not be the world’s most exciting pieces, but they have been lifesavers in recent classes. The polonaise works because it’s simple. By contrast, I sometimes detect dancers stuck in a kind of cognitive traffic jam when I play something that’s what you would normally describe as musically “interesting” – it’s just too much to try and process the music and the steps of the exercise at the same time. As for the polka mazurka, using that for class in one of the dreaded slow mazurka pirouette exercises that I blogged about last year enabled me to play for about 10 minutes without a single tempo-correction, and that is a record for me.
That’s why I’m serving up another polka-mazurka this week, because you can never have enough of this stuff when there’s a dozen groups coming from the corner on both sides. This is form Un ballo in maschera. Incidentally, nearly every clip that I tried to load had been disabled for copyright reasons, so I don’t know how long this one will be there. This is a fine example of how classical music is killing itself through hating its public, whereas the pop industry seems to be awake to the fact that letting people hear stuff online is a good way of letting them get enthused about it. Don’t be put off by the speed in the clip – it’s fine as opera, but you’d have to pump it up a bit for class. I’ve done a kind of medley version of it, to stretch it out as long as possible. You don’t have to play all the tiny notes, but some of them help.
While we’re on the subject of polka mazurkas, my favourite clip of the week is this, just for the mis-spelling (but also, because a polka mazurka features in a detective story). Long live the Porka Mazurka!
