Chopin’s music is known for its rare combination of emotional prowess, interwoven with enormous technical demands, which together, in the hand of the professional, sound like the most delicate and surprising music ever written. An aspect of Chopin’s music is rarely discussed and is actually of great importance to Chopin’s playing style and compositional style.

I am referring, of course, to Chopin’s Zal, the mysterious melancholic/longing anxiety that he produced in his music, and which manifested itself mainly in the mazurkas. Chopin was a master of the finest piano art, but most of his music has that melancholy touch that he became so famous for. This special treatment of music came from Chopin’s longing for his home, after leaving Warsaw, Chopin went to Vienna to start his career as a piano virtuoso, and then there was an uprising in Poland, which Russia took care of very quickly, at the expense of the Poles. people. Chopin thought of going back to Poland, but was advised against it.

He never returned to Poland and made a living in France. This incident made Chopin an exile, and made him very uncomfortable, and you can hear his aching heart for his homeland in his music. As mentioned before, the Zal is best noted in Chopin’s mazurkas.

Chopin – Mazurka Op. 63 no. 2 in F minor, is one of Chopin’s last pieces (his last living work by him was op.65), it is one of the most sublime and minimal but full of pathos, and embodies all of the above.

The main theme of this mazurka is one of the best examples of Zal sentiment. Of course there are more examples, but we will discuss them in other posts.