Chopin composed his ''Mazurkas'' continuously from 1825 to 1849. The half-utilitarian genre was a point of departure, gradually becoming a form of meditative lyricism - the most personal statement of expression. Chopin's ''Mazurkas'' present a number of specific performance problems resulting from such causes as the diversity of individual mazurkas, their collection in opus groups by Chopin and his drawing inspiration from dance forms of Polish folk music. Volume No. 4 contains 43 mazurkas.

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