Polka dances, which developed from Continental quadrilles, are danced to polkas. Introduced to Ireland in the late 19th century, there are today hundreds of Irish polka tunes, which are most frequently played on the fiddle or button accordion. The Irish polka is dance music form in , typically 32 bars in length and subdivided into four parts, each 8 bars in length and played AABB. Irish polkas are typically played fast, at over 130 bpm, and are typically played with an off-beat accent. The polka also migrated to the Nordic countries where it is known by a variety of names in
Polonaise-Fantaisie (Chopin) and Vladimir Horowitz had been including it in their programs some decades earlier. It is intimately indebted to the polonaise for its metre, much of its rhythm, and some of its melodic character, but the fantaisie is the operative formal paradigm (Samson, 1988), and Chopin is said to have referred initially to the piece only as a Fantasy. Parallels with the Fantaisie in F minor include the work's overall tonality, A-flat, the key of its slower middle section, B major, and the motive of the descending fourth. Jeffrey Kallberg has suggested that the Polonaise-Fantaisie represents a change in Chopin's style