I thought that waltzes in classical music were meant to be danced to. Listening to the performance from the Times article, I'm not sure how one would dance to this. I'm not hearing anything that tells me which notes I should be syncing movement to.
What makes it a waltz instead of some other form that happens to be in 3/4 time?
Chopin is associated with waltzes and mazurkas, both of which are dance forms in triple meter.
A mazurka will emphasize either its measures’ second beats or third beats. This might be kind of difficult to identify in Lang Lang’s interpretation, but a waltz differs from a mazurka by having a more steady tempo and by placing the emphasis on the first beat of each measure, usually matching what you were probably expecting.
I’m not sure how many of Chopin’s dance-form pieces were meant for actual dancing, but it is fairly common for composers to write according to stylistic elements of a dance form without intending the work for an actual dance.
Quite often you have a sequence. There is a dance that becomes popular, music is composed for dancing and played for dancing. At one point fancy composers use the rhythmic and melodic themes and compose music reminiscent of the dance which cannot be danced anymore.
Simple example: tango is a dance. A DJ playing tango music at a tango dance event will only use certain recordings that maintain tempo and don’t confuse the dancers.
You can also listen to tango music records that cannot be danced to.
Chopins dances usually fall into the “reminiscent of the dance” category.
Another classical music example is the minuet. When people danced minuets it was the time of the sun king Louis XIV. When Bach composed minuets they were just a song in 3/4 meter adhering to form.
Now that I have established another dance in 3/4, it should be clear that it’s not enough for music to be in 3/4 to qualify as a Waltz. There are various things involved that make a Waltz a Waltz. And in one of the Chopin Waltzes, enough is “fulfilled” in the sense that if you ask a pianist listening to the piece whether they here a Minuet, a Waltz or something else in 3/4 they will probably identify it as a waltz.
Pianist here uses a lot of Rubato (slowing down of the tempo), which kind of is assumed to be an innovation from the romantic period. In any case it got popular during that time. But that would be definitely appropriate for a Chopin piece. One could say it’s a historically accurate practice to use rubato here. It would be used a lot less when the musicians played music for a dance in the local village.
In any case, classical dances of European music are really interesting and there is a lot to discover throughout the centuries. We tend to assume music got more complex by the century, but if you dive into romantic dances, baroque dances, a lot of interesting rhythms are present, a lot of rhythmic playfulness is there.
I thought that waltzes in classical music were meant to be danced to. Listening to the performance from the Times article, I'm not sure how one would dance to this. I'm not hearing anything that tells me which notes I should be syncing movement to.
What makes it a waltz instead of some other form that happens to be in 3/4 time?