Opus 17, No. 1, in B flat, is bold, chivalric, and I fancy I hear the swish of the warrior’s sabre.  The peasant has vanished or else gapes through the open window while his master goes through the paces of a courtlier dance.  We encounter sequential chords of the seventh, and their use, rhythmically framed as they are, gives a line of sternness to the dance.  Niecks thinks that the second Mazurka might be called The Request, so pathetic, playful and persuasive is it.  It is in E minor and has a plaintive, appealing quality.  The G major part is very pretty.  In the last lines the passion mounts, but is never shrill.  Kullak notes that in the fifth and sixth bars there is no slur in certain editions.  Klindworth employs it, but marks the B sforzando.  A slur on two notes of the same pitch with Chopin does not always mean a tie.  The A flat Mazurka, No. 3, is pessimistic, threatening and irritable.  Though in the key of E major the trio displays a relentless sort of humor.  The return does not mend matters.  A dark page!  In A minor the fourth is called by Szulc the Little Jew.  Szulc, who wrote anecdotes of Chopin and collected them with the title of “Fryderyk Szopen,” told the story to Kleczynski.  It is this: 

Chopin did not care for programme music, though more than one of his compositions, full of expression and character, may be included under that name.  Who does not know the A minor Mazurka of op. 17, dedicated to Lena Freppa?  Itwas already known in our country as the “Little Jew” before the departure of our artist abroad.  It is one of the works of Chopin which are characterized by distinct humor.  A Jew in slippers and a long robe comes out of his inn, and seeing an unfortunate peasant, his customer, intoxicated, tumbling about the road and uttering complaints, exclaims from his threshold, “What is this?” Then, as if by way of contrast to this scene, the gay wedding party of a rich burgess comes along on its way from church, with shouts of various kinds, accompanied in a lively manner by violins and bagpipes.  The train passes by, the tipsy peasant renews his complaints—­the complaints of a man who had tried to drown his misery in the glass.  The Jew returns indoors, shaking his head and again asking, “What was this?”

The story strikes one as being both childish and commonplace.  The Mazurka is rather doleful and there is a little triplet of interrogation standing sentinel at the fourth bar.  It is also the last phrase.  But what of that?  I, too, can build you a programme as lofty or lowly as you please, but it will not be Chopin’s.  Niecks, for example, finds this very dance bleak and joyless, of intimate emotional experience, and with “jarring tones that strike in and pitilessly wake the dreamer.”  So there is no predicating the content of music except in a general way; the mood key may be struck, but in Chopin’s case this is by no means infallible.  If I write with confidence it is that begot of desperation, for I know full well that my version of the story will not be yours.  The A minor Mazurka for me is full of hectic despair, whatever that may mean, and its serpentining chromatics and apparently suspended close—­on the chord of the sixth—­gives an impression of morbid irresolution modulating into a sort of desperate gayety.  Its tonality accounts for the moods evoked, being indeterminate and restless.