Polka
A Czech duple-time dance — fast, cheerful, clear downbeats
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A polka is a Czech duple-time dance: fast, cheerful, with clear downbeats and a bass–chord "oom-pah" accompaniment. It swept European ballrooms in the nineteenth century and entered opera and orchestral music.
It differs from the waltz: the waltz is triple and turning, the polka duple and springing; it differs from the galop too: the galop is faster and more like running. The usual mistake is to call a polka a fast waltz — both the metre and the step are different.
Read deeper → galop
Sources
- 波尔卡的来源与节奏特征，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Polka"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.