d improvises. He is
then neither a Pole, nor a Frenchman, nor a German, he reveals
then a higher origin, one perceives then that he comes from
the land of Mozart, Raphael, and Goethe, his true fatherland
is the dream-realm of poesy. When he sits at the piano and
improvises I feel as though a countryman from my beloved
native land were visiting me and telling me the most curious
things which have taken place there during my
absence...Sometimes I should like to interrupt him with
questions: And how is the beautiful little water-nymph who
knows how to fasten her silvery veil so coquettishly round her
green locks? Does the white-bearded sea-god still persecute
her with his foolish, stale love? Are the roses at home still
in their flame-hued pride? Do the trees still sing as
beautifully in the moonlight?

But to return to Liszt. A little farther on than the passage I quoted
above he says:--

In his playing the great artist rendered exquisitely that kind
of agitated trepidation, timid or breathless, which seizes the
heart when one believes one's self in the vicinity of
supernatural beings, in presence of those whom one does not
know either how to divine or to lay hold of, to embrace or to
charm. He always made the melody undulate like a skiff borne
on the bosom of a powerful wave; or he made it move vaguely
like an aerial apparition suddenly sprung up in this tangible
and palpable world. In his writings he at first indicated this
manner which gave so individual an impress to his virtuosity
by the term tempo rubato: stolen, broken time--a measure at
once supple, abrupt, and languid, vacillating like the flame
under the breath which agitates it, like the corn in a field
swayed by the soft pressure of a warm air, like the top of
trees bent hither and thither by a keen breeze.

But as the term taught nothing to him who knew, said nothing
to him who did not know, understand, and feel, Chopin
afterwards ceased to add this explanation to his music, being
persuaded that if one understood it, it was impossible not to
divine this rule of irregularity. Accordingly, all his
compositions ought to be played with that kind of accented,
rhythmical balancement, that morbidezza, the secret of which
it was difficult to seize if one had not often heard him play.

Let us try if it is not possible to obtain a clearer notion of this
mysterious tempo rubato. Among inst