In 2023, the dance was included on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists being recognized as "a form of joint celebration", which "commemorates important moments in family and community life and symbolizes cooperation, reconciliation and equality.

2 is marked "Alla Polacca", his Horn Concertino likewise ends with a polka movement, and the finale of Chopin's Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" both feature this notation.

In his book Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style, Leonard G. Ratner cites the fourth movement from Beethoven's Serenade in D major, Op.

Händel wrote a famous one, and Wilhelm Fiedemann Bach wrote a number of beautiful ones in major minor pairs.Other composers who wrote polonaises or pieces in polonaise rhythm include Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Danzi, Bernhard Henrik Crusell, Karol Kurpiński, Józef Elsner, Maria Agata Szymanowska, Henryk Wieniawski, Franz Schubert, Carl Maria von Weber, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johann Kaspar Mertz, Moritz Moszkowski, Modest Mussorgsky, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin.

John Philip Sousa wrote the Presidential Polonaise, intended to keep visitors moving briskly through the White House receiving line.

[5] Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin, an adaption of Alexander Pushkin's novel in poetry verse, includes a famous polonaise.

[7] Polonaise originated as a peasant dance known under various names – chodzony ("pacer"), chmielowy ("hops"), pieszy ("walker") or wielki ("great"), recorded as early as the 15th century.