ution and give it more repose and evenness.
With one and the same finger he took often two consecutive
keys (and this not only in gliding down from a black to the
next white key) without the least interruption of the sequence
being noticeable. The passing over each other of the longer
fingers without the aid of the thumb (see Etude, No. 2, Op.
10) he frequently made use of, and not only in passages where
the thumb stationary on a key made this unavoidably necessary.
The fingering of the chromatic thirds based on this (as he
marked it in Etude, No. 5, Op. 25) affords in a much higher
degree than that customary before him the possibility of the
most beautiful legato in the quickest tempo and with a
perfectly quiet hand.

But if with Chopin smoothness was one of the qualities upon which he
insisted strenuously in the playing of his pupils, he was by no means
satisfied with a mere mechanical perfection. He advised his pupils to
undertake betimes thorough theoretical studies, recommending his friend,
the composer and theorist Henri Reber as a teacher. He advised them
also to cultivate ensemble playing--trios, quartets, &c., if first-class
partners could be had, otherwise pianoforte duets. Most urgent, however,
he was in his advice to them to hear good singing, and even to learn to
sing. To Madame Rubio he said: "You must sing if you wish to play"; and
made her take lessons in singing and hear much Italian opera--this
last, the lady remarked, Chopin regarded as positively necessary for
a pianoforte-player. In this advice we recognise Chopin's ideal of
execution: beauty of tone, intelligent phrasing, truthfulness and warmth
of expression. The sounds which he drew from the pianoforte were pure
tone without the least admixture of anything that might be called noise.
"He never thumped," was Gutmann's remark to me. Chopin, according to
Mikuli, repeatedly said that when he heard bad phrasing it appeared
to him as if some one recited, in a language he did not know, a speech
laboriously memorised, not only neglecting to observe the right quantity
of the syllables, but perhaps even making full stops in the middle of
words. "The badly-phrasing pseudo-musician," he thought, "showed that
music was not his mother-tongue, but something foreign, unintelligible
to him," and that, consequently, "like that reciter, he must altogether
give up the idea of producing any effect on the auditor by his
rendering." Chopin hate