Yes, one must admit that Chopin has genius in the full sense of the word; he is not only a virtuoso, he is also a poet; he can embody for us the poesy which lives within his soul, he is a tone-poet, and nothing can be compared to the pleasure which he gives us when he sits at the piano and improvises.  He is then neither a Pole, nor a Frenchman, nor a German, he reveals then a higher origin, one perceives then that he comes from the land of Mozart, Raphael, and Goethe, his true fatherland is the dream-realm of poesy.  When he sits at the piano and improvises I feel as though a countryman from my beloved native land were visiting me and telling me the most curious things which have taken place there during my absence...Sometimes I should like to interrupt him with questions:  And how is the beautiful little water-nymph who knows how to fasten her silvery veil so coquettishly round her green locks?  Does the white-bearded sea-god still persecute her with his foolish, stale love?  Are the roses at home still in their flame-hued pride?  Do the trees still sing as beautifully in the moonlight?

But to return to Liszt.  A little farther on than the passage I quoted above he says:—­

In his playing the great artist rendered exquisitely that kind of agitated trepidation, timid or breathless, which seizes the heart when one believes one’s self in the vicinity of supernatural beings, in presence of those whom one does not know either how to divine or to lay hold of, to embrace or to charm.  He always made the melody undulate like a skiff borne on the bosom of a powerful wave; or he made it move vaguely like an aerial apparition suddenly sprung up in this tangible and palpable world.  In his writings he at first indicated this manner which gave so individual an impress to his virtuosity by the term tempo rubato:  stolen, broken time—­a measure at once supple, abrupt, and languid, vacillating like the flame under the breath which agitates it, like the corn in a field swayed by the soft pressure of a warm air, like the top of trees bent hither and thither by a keen breeze.

But as the term taught nothing to him who knew, said nothing to him who did not know, understand, and feel, Chopin afterwards ceased to add this explanation to his music, being persuaded that if one understood it, it was impossible not to divine this rule of irregularity.  Accordingly, all his compositions ought to be played with that kind of accented, rhythmical balancement, that morbidezza, the secret of which it was difficult to seize if one had not often heard him play.

Let us try if it is not possible to obtain a clearer notion of this mysterious tempo rubato.  Among instrumentalists the “stolen time” was brought into vogue especially by Chopin and Liszt.  But it is not an invention of theirs or their time.  Quanz, the great flutist (see Marpurg:  “Kritische Beitrage.”  Vol.  I.), said that he heard it for the first time from the celebrated singer