d swaying in the measure--"Chopin leans about
freely within his bars," wrote an English critic--for the classicists
was a rank departure from the time beat. According to Liszt's
description of the rubato "a wind plays in the leaves, Life unfolds and
develops beneath them, but the tree remains the same--that is the
Chopin rubato." Elsewhere, "a tempo agitated, broken, interrupted, a
movement flexible, yet at the same time abrupt and languishing, and
vacillating as the fluctuating breath by which it is agitated." Chopin
was more commonplace in his definition: "Supposing," he explained,
"that a piece lasts a given number of minutes; it may take just so long
to perform the whole, but in detail deviations may differ."

The tempo rubato is probably as old as music itself. It is in Bach, it
was practised by the old Italian singers. Mikuli says that no matter
how free Chopin was in his treatment of the right hand in melody or
arabesque, the left kept strict time. Mozart and not Chopin it was who
first said: "Let your left hand be your conductor and always keep
time." Halle, the pianist, once asserted that he proved Chopin to be
playing four-four instead of three-four measure in a mazurka. Chopin
laughingly admitted that it was a national trait. Halle was bewildered
when he first heard Chopin play, for he did not believe such music
could be represented by musical signs. Still he holds that this style
has been woefully exaggerated by pupils and imitators. If a Beethoven
symphony or a Bach fugue be played with metronomical rigidity it loses
its quintessential flavor. Is it not time the ridiculous falsehoods
about the Chopin rubato be exposed? Naturally abhorring anything that
would do violence to the structural part of his compositions, Chopin
was a very martinet with his pupils if too much license of tempo was
taken. His music needs the greatest lucidity in presentation, and
naturally a certain elasticity of phrasing. Rhythms need not be
distorted, nor need there be absurd and vulgar haltings, silly and
explosive dynamics. Chopin sentimentalized is Chopin butchered. He
loathed false sentiment, and a man whose taste was formed by Bach and
Mozart, who was nurtured by the music of these two giants, could never
have indulged in exaggerated, jerky tempi, in meaningless expression.
Come, let us be done with this fetish of stolen time, of the wonderful
and so seldom comprehended rubato. If you wish to play Chopin, play him
in curves; le