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Waltz in D flat Opus 64 No. 1
How long does it take to play the Minute Waltz? You are right! Two minutes...
Chopin wrote many waltzes, but, unlike the kings of waltz, such as the
Viennese Strauss family, he had never intended for them to be danced. Chopin's
waltzes were only meant for playing. So he was never bothered by the fact
that this rapid waltz is not fit for dancing. And so the folk dance that
became a fashionable dance-hall dance, was transformed by Chopin into a
musical form of its own.
The
"Minute waltz", a Solo piano piece, was included in the last
waltz collection Chopin composed (one of 19 waltzes, Opus 64), and is considered
one of the most popular piano works he had ever written. Chopin was known
to be a composer who never wrote down many of his pieces, since he relied
on his memory, and he also improvised on many of them. This Waltz is one
of those he actually wrote down and documented orderly. There were many
others of this kind, but they were never notated.
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