d exaggeration and affectation. His precept was:
"Play as you feel." But he hated the want of feeling as much as false
feeling. To a pupil whose playing gave evidence of nothing but the
possession of fingers, he said emphatically, despairingly: "METTEZ-Y
DONc TOUTE VOTRE AME!" (Do put all your soul into it!)

[FOOTNOTE: "In dynamical shading [im nuanciren]," says Mikuli, "he
was exceedingly particular about a gradual increase and decrease of
loudness." Karasowski writes: "Exaggeration in accentuation was hateful
to him, for, in his opinion, it took away the poesy from playing, and
gave it a certain didactic pedantry."]

On declamation, and rendering in general [writes Mikuli], he
gave his pupils invaluable and significant instructions and
hints, but, no doubt, effected more certain results by
repeatedly playing not only single passages, but whole pieces,
and this he did with a conscientiousness and enthusiasm that
perhaps he hardly gave anyone an opportunity of hearing when
he played in a concert-room. Frequently the whole hour passed
without the pupil having played more than a few bars, whilst
Chopin, interrupting and correcting him on a Pleyel cottage
piano (the pupil played always on an excellent grand piano;
and it was enjoined upon him as a duty to practise only on
first-class instruments), presented to him for his admiration
and imitation the life-warm ideal of the highest beauty.

With regard to Chopin's playing to his pupils we must keep in mind what
was said in foot-note 12 on page 184. On another point in the above
quotation one of Madame Dubois's communications to me throws some
welcome light:--

Chopin [she said] had always a cottage piano [pianino] by the
side of the grand piano on which he gave his lessons. It was
marvellous to hear him accompany, no matter what compositions,
from the concertos of Hummel to those of Beethoven. He
performed the role of the orchestra most wonderfully [d'une
facon prodigieuse]. When I played his own concertos, he
accompanied me in this way.

Judging from various reports, Chopin seems to have regarded his Polish
pupils as more apt than those of other nationalities to do full justice
to his compositions. Karasowski relates that when one of Chopin's
French pupils played his compositions and the auditors overwhelmed the
performer with their praise, the master used often to remark that his
pupil had done very well, but that the Polish