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The tempo rubato is probably as old as music itself. It is in
Bach, it was practised by the old Italian singers. Mikuli says
that no matter how free Chopin was in his treatment of the right
hand in melody or arabesque, the left kept strict time. Mozart
and not Chopin it was who first said: "Let your left hand be your
conductor and always keep time." Halle, the pianist, once
asserted that he proved Chopin to be playing four-four instead of
three-four measure in a mazurka. Chopin laughingly admitted that
it was a national trait. Halle was bewildered when he first heard
Chopin play, for he did not believe such music could be
represented by musical signs. Still he holds that this style has
been woefully exaggerated by pupils and imitators. If a Beethoven
symphony or a Bach fugue be played with metronomical rigidity it
loses its quintessential flavor. Is it not time the ridiculous
falsehoods about the Chopin rubato be exposed? Naturally
abhorring anything that would do violence to the structural part
of his compositions, Chopin was a very martinet with his pupils
if too much license of tempo was taken.
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