One often looks to Chopin's personal life for indication of events that may have brought on a particularly happy or sad mood in his compositions. He was known to be a melancholic artist who often found happiness in his love affairs. The Op. 30 set of mazurkas was composed when his romance with the teenage pianist Maria Wodzinski was in full bloom. It would end by mid-1837, and Chopin would fall into a depression. These relatively detached mazurkas show little indication of passionate love or of even lukewarm love, and may thus indicate the composer had already sensed the collapse of the relationship.

This C minor Mazurka No. 18, marked Allegro non tanto, has a certain sense of loneliness in its beautiful, gentle melody, to be sure, but never quite wallows in grief or sorrow, mostly preferring elegance and grace to be its expressive means. Here is another of those Chopin works that mix opposite feelings and manage to straddle more than two fences, thereby ending up with multiple meanings and interpretations. The melody is one of the composer's most appealing, and ultimately this two-minute mazurka must be counted among his better ones.

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In 1835, Chopin fell in love with a gifted 16-year-old pianist, Maria Wodzinski. But by the summer of 1837, the relationship had become doomed, owing to the opposition of Maria's parents. The Op. 30 set of mazurkas was written during the composer's affair with Maria. Though events in Chopin's personal life, especially his love life, often impinged on his music, there is little indication of any deep feelings of love in these works. In fact, this B minor mazurka and its siblings are among the composer's most emotionally detached compositions from any period. Some might conclude that the lack of passion here speaks volumes about the intensity of Chopin's love for the young girl; yet his despondent Funeral March to the Second Sonata was said to be born of the resultant depression from his breakup with her.

Marked Allegretto, this mazurka begins with a rather robust simple theme, whose emphatic but hesitant gait sounds hampered by some inward weakness. The melody appears in a slightly different guise the second time around, less assertive and still tentative, still uncertain. The piece ends without resolving the doubts it raised. In the end, one must assess this piece as worthwhile, but not a particularly compelling effort when considered in the company of the other 50 numbered mazurkas. A typical performance of this B minor mazurka lasts about a minute-and-a-half.

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The mazurkas comprising Op. 30, published in 1837, depart somewhat from the more tender, intimate mazurkas heard in earlier collections. Especially the last three of the four pieces in the set have a grand, flashy character only hinted at previously. The first is filled with rich, subtle harmonic coloring and a playful dialogue between the two octaves of the melody line. It has a rustic, feel with its many grace-note figures and its accented second beats. The second piece is dramatic, with several dynamic outbursts. The tragic and the hopeful seem to be interwoven and easily interchanged. The third mazurka is highly flamboyant, with a thick gypsy flavor reminiscent of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies. The strong dotted rhythm and the parallel thirds evoke a passionate, frothy feel. The contrasting section provides some respite, with a lighter and friendlier texture. The fourth piece in the set keeps with the essence of the other works, although it seems more approachable by the timid listener. The unusual introduction leads to a melody with a triplet trill-like figure, which, like the grace notes of the first mazurka, creates a more native sound. The middle section brings a grand and patriotic commentary before returning to the more good-natured opening theme.

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The mazurka originated in the Polish province of Mazovia, near Warsaw. In the seventeenth century, the dance began to spread beyond the boundaries of Poland. Stylized mazurkas, such as Chopin's, combine aspects of this and several other dances, but some characteristics are consistently present: an accented third beat (occasionally the second) in a 3/4 measure; the use of both the natural and raised versions of some scale degrees, particularly the fourth; and a drone bass. During the 1830s and 1840s "art" music mazurkas were very popular in drawing rooms throughout Europe.

Some of the melodies of the mazurkas are unusual in comparison to the melodies of European "art" music. Many of these are related to folk mazurkas in their "modular" melodies consisting of tiny rhythmic and melodic units. Also, some use cross rhythms, chromatic scales, and modes typically not found in Western music. Often, we find remote keys used as colorful excursions from the tonic.

Most of Chopin's Mazurkas are in strict ternary form, some of them actually sporting a da capo to indicate the return to the first section. Chopin's later Mazurkas are more stylized than the earlier ones and are in many cases the testing ground for some of his most experimental ideas. Unlike other Romantic-era manifestations of "folk" music, Chopin's Mazurkas contain no actual folk tunes. He uses typical rhythms associated with Polish music, fragments of Polish melodies and Polish rhythmic and cadential formulas and combines them in an original way. Chopin's mazurkas are far more advanced than those by his contemporaries. Chopin borrowed sounds he found outside the European "art" music tradition and used them to create music within that tradition. Some consider Chopin's mazurkas to be the most original of his works.

Chopin composed the Four Mazurkas, Op. 30, in 1836-7, setting them in C minor, B minor, D flat major, C sharp minor. They were published in 1838 in Leipzig. If the Op. 24 Mazurkas represented Chopin's first adventures into a more personal approach to the genre, the Op. 30 pieces are an even more audacious experiment, especially in the unity of the entire set.

One contemporary reviewer characterized the fourth of the Op. 30 set as, " ... very dreamy and fantastically dallying, restless and gloomily profound. For that reason it is also the longest; the picture otherwise could not take shape." What we have is the typical putting of the cart before the horse, in which the reviewer assumes that some "picture" he or she finds in the piece is the "reason" the piece is the way it is, forgetting that the music came first, the impressions and attendant mood, later.

The longest and grandest of the set, the Mazurka in C sharp minor begins with an introduction built of an ostinato figure. The tension built up by the figure heightens the passion of the first theme, fragments of which resemble parts of the main theme of Op. 30, No. 2. Throughout the first complex of themes we find some of the most florid gestures in Chopin's mazurkas. The lyrical secondary theme of the complex is a single line, in contrast to the double notes of the opening theme. When the first theme returns it does so fortissimo and is much thicker in texture, bringing the piece a weight we do not find in the other mazurkas of Op. 30.

As in Op. 24, the final piece features a lengthy coda that distorts the proportions of the mazurka. Near the end of the coda a series of unresolved seventh chords brings to mind the music of Debussy. The descending parallel fifths that result from this harmonic movement lend the close of the Mazurka a simultaneously rustic and futuristic atmosphere. The passage is all the more striking by its position in the piece: this chromaticism occurs near the end, where tonal stabilization is typically paramount, creating a sense of tonal uncertainty that is not convincingly resolved by the last measure.

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The mazurka originated in the Polish province of Mazovia, near Warsaw. In the seventeenth century, the dance began to spread beyond the boundaries of Poland. Stylized mazurkas, such as Chopin's, combine aspects of this and several other dances, but some characteristics are consistently present: an accented third beat (occasionally the second) in a 3/4 measure; the use of both the natural and raised versions of some scale degrees, particularly the fourth; and a drone bass. During the 1830s and 1840s "art" music mazurkas were very popular in drawing rooms throughout Europe.

Some of the melodies of the mazurkas are unusual in comparison to the melodies of European "art" music. Many of these are related to folk mazurkas in their "modular" melodies consisting of tiny rhythmic and melodic units. Also, some use cross rhythms, chromatic scales, and modes typically not found in Western music. Often, we find remote keys used as colorful excursions from the tonic.

Most of Chopin's Mazurkas are in strict ternary form, some of them actually sporting a da capo to indicate the return to the first section. Chopin's later Mazurkas are more stylized and are in many cases the testing ground for some of his most experimental ideas. Unlike other Romantic-era manifestations of "folk" music, Chopin's Mazurkas contain no actual folk tunes. He uses typical rhythms associated with Polish music, fragments of Polish melodies and Polish rhythmic and cadential formulas and combines them in an original way. Chopin's mazurkas are far more advanced than those by his contemporaries. Chopin borrowed sounds he found outside the European "art" music tradition and used them to create music within that tradition. Some consider Chopin's mazurkas to be the most original of his works.

Chopin composed the Four Mazurkas, Op. 30, in 1836-7, setting them in C minor, B minor, D flat major, C sharp minor. They were published in 1838 in Leipzig. If the Op. 24 Mazurkas represented Chopin's first adventures into a more personal approach to the genre, the Op. 30 pieces are an even more audacious experiment, especially in the unity of the entire set.

The only Mazurka of Op. 30 in a major key, the third of the set, in D flat major, nonetheless spends a significant amount of time in the minor mode. Throughout the piece, Chopin juxtaposes passages in the tonic major and minor. The air of contrast is augmented by the ruthless alternation of fortissimo and pianissimo dynamic markings, especially in the first section.

Chopin opens the Mazurka in D flat with an uneventful introduction, the only "tuneful" segment of which, a rising scale, reappears as part of a trio melody. The first section begins firmly in D flat major, but a proliferation of F flats before the repeat creates the unmistakable sound of D flat minor. Boldly, Chopin begins the next section with a forte F natural in the treble, but it is now part of a new harmony. This section, one of the most expressive in Chopin's mazurkas, passes through numerous harmonies and dynamic levels until a brief transition ushers in the final return of the opening material. Chopin ends the piece as the first section ends—without a coda, an extension he saves for the last Mazurka of the set.

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