" Besides the "hard, inartistic
modulations, the startling progressions and abrupt changes of
mood" that jarred on the old-fashioned Moscheles, and dipped in
vitriol the pen of Rellstab, there is in the Mazurkas the
greatest stumbling block of all, the much exploited rubato.
Berlioz swore that Chopin could not play in time--which was not
true--and later we shall see that Meyerbeer thought the same.
What to the sensitive critic is a charming wavering and swaying
in the measure--"Chopin leans about freely within his bars,"
wrote an English critic--for the classicists was a rank departure
from the time beat. According to Liszt's description of the
rubato "a wind plays in the leaves, Life unfolds and develops
beneath them, but the tree remains the same--that is the Chopin
rubato." Elsewhere, "a tempo agitated, broken, interrupted, a
movement flexible, yet at the same time abrupt and languishing,
and vacillating as the fluctuating breath by which it is
agitated." Chopin was more commonplace in his definition:
"Supposing," he explained, "that a piece lasts a given number of
minutes; it may take just so long to perform the whole, but in
detail deviations may differ.
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