Monsieur Pichon Finds His Mazurka

10 min.

April 26, 2025
Paul Hall at the Juilliard School, New York, NY
Yi-heng Yang, piano

The Kayden Music Commissioning Program at the Juilliard Pre-College

solo piano

Monsieur Pichon Finds His Mazurka explores the Ashkenazic-Jewish folk influences that Chopin was exposed to in his youth, which may have informed the stylistic nuances of Chopin’s early mazurkas. During the summer of 1824, a 14-year-old Chopin spent some weeks in the Polish village of Szafarnia, describing his experiences in a series of humorous letters to his family, alluding to himself in the third person under the name of Monsieur Pichon. He provides an account of “playing the Zydek,” apparently internalizing and imitating the Ashkenazic style at the piano so deftly that he received praise from a Jewish observer, who was so impressed that he invited Chopin to perform at a local Jewish wedding. Chopin makes light of this encounter, concluding with, “This declaration encouraged Mr. Pichon to study as much of this music as possible, and who knows whether with time he won’t devote himself entirely to such profitable harmony.” Subsequent scholars endeavored to identify a specific work of Chopin that revealed an especial stylistic influence: among others, the Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17 no. 4, was referred to as an apt example. Accordingly, I chose to engage with this particular mazurka, not only due to its melodic characteristics that can easily be transformed into an Ashkenazic-type tune (often through superficial alterations: a basic meter change, an alteration of left-hand accompaniment, the flipping of dynamic from a more festive forte to a dreamier and more nostalgic piano), but because this mazurka possesses a particularly arresting use of chromatic ambiguity and open-ended-ness that begged (to my composer’s mind and ear) to be probed further. To illustrate the musical commonalities inherent despite the more superficial differences in affect (as in, the enchanted world of grace and melancholy spun within the mazurka, as opposed to the rowdier, overtly festive world of the Ashkenazic dance), I allow each tune to undergo a radical transformation: Chopin’s own melody morphs into a Klezmer-style dance, and the Jewish melody, ultimately into a Chopin-style mazurka.

–Dalit Hadass Warshaw