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." All his compositions must be played
in this peculiarly accented, spasmodic, insinuating style, a style
which he succeeded in imparting to his pupils, but which can hardly be
taught without example. As with the pedal, so with the _rubato_,
Chopin often neglected to mark its use in later years, taking it for
granted that those who understood his works would know where to apply
it.

Perhaps the importance of the _rubato_ in Chopin cannot be more
readily realized than by his concession that he could never play a
Viennese waltz properly, and by the fact that sometimes, when he was
in a jocular mood, he would play one of his mazurkas in strict,
metronomic time, to the great amusement of those who had heard him
play them properly.

When Liszt speaks of the _tempo rubato_ as a unique characteristic of
Chopin's style, he must not be understood too literally. As a matter
of fact, the _rubato_ is too important an element of expression not to
have been partially anticipated in the works of some of Chopin's
predecessors, just as Wagner's leading motives had imperfect
prototypes in the works of some preceding composers. As early as 1602,
the Italian, Caccini, describes what he calls the "Stile Nobile, in
which the singer," he says, "emancipates himself from the fetters of
the measure, by prolonging or diminishing the duration of a note by
one-half, according as the sense of the word requires it." But it is
probable that the I