"
The world suffered a great loss when a band of ignorant soldiers found
the bundles of letters which Chopin had written from Paris to his
parents, and used them to feed the fire which cooked their supper. But
it lost a still greater treasure when Chopin tore up the manuscript of
his pianoforte method, which he began to write in the last years of
his life, but never finished. In it he would no doubt have given many
valuable hints regarding the correct use of the _rubato_. In the
absence of other authentic hints beyond the one just quoted, Liszt
must be depended upon as the best authority on the subject; for it is
well known that Liszt could imitate Chopin so nicely that his most
intimate friends were once deceived in a dark room, imagining that
Chopin was playing when Liszt was at the piano. "Chopin," Liszt
writes, "was the first who introduced into his compositions that
peculiarity which gave such a unique color to his impetuosity, and
which he called _tempo rubato_:--an irregularly interrupted movement,
subtile, broken, and languishing, at the same time flickering like a
flame in the wind, undulating, like the surface of a wheat-field, like
the tree-tops moved by a breeze.
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