Beneath the mask

French Romantic composers from Chopin to Fauré were inspired by ballroom dances, which they took beyond their primary function, aiming not to create pieces actually intended for dancing, but rather to evoke, sometimes with nostalgia, sometimes with irony, the atmosphere of fashionable social gatherings of the time. And women composers also followed that path. Cécile Chaminade conjured up the mood of carnival time with its waltzes; Mel Bonis dreamed in Paris of the Venetian barcarolle or the Polish mazurka.

We sense, masked by the sophisticated rhythms of these pieces, a longing for, an attempt to recapture, a time that was perhaps gone forever.