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Mazurkas

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11-07-2004, 10:20 PM
Ruth
Mazurkas
Hello all. Does anyone have any knowledge of Mazurka music? Originally a Polish dance it was a hit in the ballroom world in the 1800's. The style of music is like a very militaristic Viennese, a sharp rhythm in a 3/4 tempo. There's loads of things out there calling themselves mazurkas but most of them are slower than we want or ridiculously fast or they're just piano. We're shooting for some sort of orchestra (large or small) playing at 50 - 60 measures per minute.

We've tried a huge list of sources from folk dance groups to the Smithsonian to Barnes and Noble to our own library consortium to my Polish coworker and her friends. And we've gone through hundreds of pieces and sound clips. The style/speed we're looking for really does exist, the single piece we have (the Swir-swir Mazurka, nice piece, but short, overused, and the quality of our recording is iffy) can't be the only one in existence since this dance was the darling of the ballroom world for close to 50 years!

Does anyone have a secret stash of Mazurka music out there? We have a choreography waiting!
11-09-2004, 07:15 AM
Joe
Chopin wrote a bunch of Mazurkas for piano...