Santa Stella Lotti, who was engaged in 1717 at the Dresden Opera, and died in 1759 at Venice.  Above all, however, we have to keep in mind that the tempo rubato is a genus which comprehends numerous species.  In short, the tempo rubato of Chopin is not that of Liszt, that of Liszt is not that of Henselt, and so on.  As for the general definitions we find in dictionaries, they can afford us no particular enlightenment.  But help comes to us from elsewhere.  Liszt explained Chopin’s tempo rubato in a very poetical and graphic manner to his pupil the Russian pianist Neilissow:—­“Look at these trees!” he said, “the wind plays in the leaves, stirs up life among them, the tree remains the same, that is Chopinesque rubato.”  But how did the composer himself describe it?  From Madame Dubois and other pupils of Chopin we learn that he was in the habit of saying to them:  “Que votre main gauche soit votre maitre de chapelle et garde toujours la mesure” (Let your left hand be your conductor and always keep time).  According to Lenz Chopin taught also:  “Angenommen, ein Stuck dauert so und so viel Minuten, wenn das Ganze nur so lange gedauert hat, im Einzelnen kann’s anders sein!” (Suppose a piece lasts so and so many minutes, if only the whole lasts so long, the differences in the details do not matter).  This is somewhat ambiguous teaching, and seems to be in contradiction to the preceding precept.  Mikuli, another pupil of Chopin’s, explains his master’s tempo rubato thus:—­“While the singing hand, either irresolutely lingering or as in passionate speech eagerly anticipating with a certain impatient vehemence, freed the truth of the musical expression from all rhythmical fetters, the other, the accompanying hand, continued to play strictly in time.”  We get a very lucid description of Chopin’s tempo rubato from the critic of the Athenaeum who after hearing the pianist-composer at a London matinee in 1848 wrote:—­“He makes free use of tempo rubato; leaning about within his bars more than any player we recollect, but still subject to a presiding measure such as presently habituates the ear to the liberties taken.”  Often, no doubt, people mistook for tempo rubato what in reality was a suppression or displacement of accent, to which kind of playing the term is indeed sometimes applied.  The reader will remember the following passage from a criticism in the “Wiener Theaterzeitung” of 1829:—­“There are defects noticeable in the young man’s [Chopin’s] playing, among which is perhaps especially to be mentioned the non-observance of the indication by accent of the commencement of musical phrases.”  Mr. Halle related to me an interesting dispute bearing on this matter.  The German pianist told Chopin one day that he played in his mazurkas often 4/4 instead of 3/4 time.  Chopin would not admit it at first, but when Mr. Halle proved his case by counting to Chopin’s playing, the latter admitted the correctness of the observation, and laughing said that this was national.  Lenz reports a similar dispute between