rumentalists the "stolen time" was
brought into vogue especially by Chopin and Liszt. But it is not
an invention of theirs or their time. Quanz, the great flutist (see
Marpurg: "Kritische Beitrage." Vol. I.), said that he heard it for
the first time from the celebrated singer Santa Stella Lotti, who was
engaged in 1717 at the Dresden Opera, and died in 1759 at Venice. Above
all, however, we have to keep in mind that the tempo rubato is a genus
which comprehends numerous species. In short, the tempo rubato of Chopin
is not that of Liszt, that of Liszt is not that of Henselt, and so on.
As for the general definitions we find in dictionaries, they can afford
us no particular enlightenment. But help comes to us from elsewhere.
Liszt explained Chopin's tempo rubato in a very poetical and graphic
manner to his pupil the Russian pianist Neilissow:--"Look at these
trees!" he said, "the wind plays in the leaves, stirs up life among
them, the tree remains the same, that is Chopinesque rubato." But how
did the composer himself describe it? From Madame Dubois and other
pupils of Chopin we learn that he was in the habit of saying to them:
"Que votre main gauche soit votre maitre de chapelle et garde toujours
la mesure" (Let your left hand be your conductor and always keep time).
According to Lenz Chopin taught also: "Angenommen, ein Stuck dauert
so und so viel Minuten, wenn das Ganze nur so lange gedauert hat, im
Einzelnen kann's anders sein!" (Suppose a piece lasts so and so many
minutes, if only the whole lasts so long, the differences in the details
do not matter). This is somewhat ambiguous teaching, and seems to be
in contradiction to the preceding precept. Mikuli, another pupil of
Chopin's, explains his master's tempo rubato thus:--"While the singing
hand, either irresolutely lingering or as in passionate speech eagerly
anticipating with a certain impatient vehemence, freed the truth of
the musical expression from all rhythmical fetters, the other, the
accompanying hand, continued to play strictly in time." We get a very
lucid description of Chopin's tempo rubato from the critic of the
Athenaeum who after hearing the pianist-composer at a London matinee in
1848 wrote:--"He makes free use of tempo rubato; leaning about within
his bars more than any player we recollect, but still subject to a
presiding measure such as presently habituates the ear to the liberties
taken." Often, no doubt, people mistook for tempo rubato what in rea