The polonaise (also known as the polacca) had its origins as a Polish folk dance, but it was taken up by composers in western and central Europe, who often employed it as a mild form of exoticism, sometimes in suites with dance forms that stemmed from a variety of countries. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and many other non-Polish composers wrote polonaises from time to time. When Poland went into political decline in the late 18th century, Polish musicians turned it into a symbol of nationalism. Chopin continued this tradition, employing the polonaise for some of his grandest and most distinctive works.

Chopin wrote this manuscript for the F Minor polonaise in 1828 or 1829, while he was still a teenager living in Poland. The Chopin Society in Warsaw holds a second manuscript, dated 1836. It differs from our score in several places, but scholars believe that the discrepancies probably do not indicate conscious revisions, but rather Chopin’s imperfect recollection of the piece as he wrote it out from memory, about eight years after its creation. Although this polonaise dates from the early part of his career, it bears a high opus number because it was not published until 1855, six years after his death.