Composition

1821

First Edition

Published in Warsaw (Publisher: Gebethner & Wolff) in 1901.

This work was composed when Chopin was 11 years old. It was dedicated in April 1821 to Wojciech Żywny, Chopin's first piano teacher. Żywny, a Czech-born musician, favored 18th-century German music and taught the young Chopin piano works by Bach, Haydn, and Mozart.

Composed four years after his previous two polonaises, this work departs from the simple dance style à la Ogiński and becomes a salon piece designed to showcase piano technique. Its structure is a compound ternary form (A [measures 1-38] - B [measures 39-59] - A [measures 1-38]), with the A section further divided into three parts. The right-hand figuration appearing in the B section (trio) is similar to passages used in Hummel's polonaises. This suggests that Chopin was absorbing the cutting-edge virtuoso idiom of his time.