is thus represented. To interpret him requires
simplicity, purity of style, refined technique, poetic imagination and
genuine sentiment--not fitful, fictitious sentimentality.

In regard to the much discussed tempo rubato of Chopin many and fatal
blunders have been made. Players without number have gone stumbling over
the piano keys with a tottering, spasmodic gait, serenely fancying they
are heeding the master's design. Reckless, out-of-time playing
disfigures what is meant to express the fluctuation of thought, the
soul's agitation, the rolling of the waves of time and eternity. The
rubato, from rubare, to rob, represents a pliable movement that is
certainly as old as the Greek drama in declamation, and was employed in
intoning the Gregorian chant. The recitative of the sixteenth century
gave it prominence, and it passed into instrumental music. Indications
of it in Bach are too often neglected. Beethoven used it effectively.
Chopin appropriated it as one of his most potent auxiliaries. In playing
he emphasized the saying of Mozart: "Let your left hand be the orchestra
conductor," while his right hand balanced and swayed the melody and its
arabesques according to the natural pulsation of the emotions. "You see
that tree," exclaimed Liszt; "its leaves tremble with every breath of
the wind, but the tree remains unshaken--that is the rubato." There are
storms to which even the tree yields. To realize them, to divine the
laws which regulate the undulating, tempest-tossed rubato, requires
highly matured artistic taste and absolute musical control.

Too sensitive to enjoy playing before miscellaneous audiences whose
unsympathetic curiosity, he declared, paralyzed him, Chopin was at his
best when interpreting music in private, for a choice circle of friends
or pupils, or when absorbed in composition. It is not too much to say
for him that he ushered in a new era for his chosen instrument,
spiritualizing its timbre, liberating it from traditional orchestral and
choral effects, and elevating it to an independent power in the world of
music. Besides enriching the technique of the piano, he augmented the
materials of musical expression, contributing fresh charms to those
prime factors of music melody, harmony and rhythm. New chord extensions,
passages of double notes, arabesques and harmonic combinations were
devised by him and he so systematized the use of the pedals that the
most varied nuances could be produced by them.

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