ABSTRACT
In 1852 there appeared under Franz Liszt’s name a seminal monograph, F. Chopin, which contained the notion that prototypical Polish mazurkas played a role in Chopin’s pieces: Chopin released the poetic unknown which was only suggested in the original themes of Polish mazurkas. The gesture was a common Romantic conceit; by the mid-nineteenth century, the description of art music in terms of national practice was a familiar topos in music criticism. Interestingly, though, Liszt’s original anecdote assumed a power far greater than its metaphoric value would suggest. Firing the imagination of other Chopin critics, it became the origin of one of the longest-standing myths in Chopin criticism—the myth that Chopin’s mazurkas are national works rooted in an authentic Polish folk-music tradition.
