The highest type
of artist and human being is thus represented. To interpret him requires
simplicity, purity of style, refined technique, poetic imagination and
genuine sentiment--not fitful, fictitious sentimentality.
In regard to the much discussed tempo rubato of Chopin many and fatal
blunders have been made. Players without number have gone stumbling over
the piano keys with a tottering, spasmodic gait, serenely fancying they
are heeding the master's design. Reckless, out-of-time playing
disfigures what is meant to express the fluctuation of thought, the
soul's agitation, the rolling of the waves of time and eternity. The
rubato, from rubare, to rob, represents a pliable movement that is
certainly as old as the Greek drama in declamation, and was employed in
intoning the Gregorian chant. The recitative of the sixteenth century
gave it prominence, and it passed into instrumental music. Indications
of it in Bach are too often neglected. Beethoven used it effectively.
Chopin appropriated it as one of his most potent auxiliaries.
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