Thomas's audiences. Not so with Chopin. Liszt remarks, somewhere, that
Chopin might have easily written for orchestra, because his
compositions can be so readily arranged for it. I venture to differ
from this opinion. Chopin's Funeral March has been repeatedly arranged
for orchestra--first by Reber at Chopin's funeral (when Meyerbeer
regretted that he had not been asked to do this labor of love); and
more recently by Mr. Theodore Thomas. Mr. Thomas's version is very
clever and effective, yet I very _much_ prefer this sublime dirge on
the piano. In a small room the piano has almost as great a capacity
for dynamic shading as the orchestra has in a large hall; and, as I
have just pointed out, one who knows how to use the pedal can secure
an endless (almost orchestral) variety of tone-colors on the piano,
thanks to the hundreds of overtones which can be made to accompany the
tones played. Chopin spoke the language of the piano. His pieces are
so idiomatic that they cannot be translated into orchestral language
any more than Heine's lyrics can be translated into English. Chopin
exhausted the possibilities of the pianoforte, and the piano exhausts
the possibilities of Chopin's compositions.

The innovations of Chopin which I have so far alluded to, have been to
some extent adopted by all modern composers, and the more they have
adopted them the more their works ingratiate themselves in the favor
of amateurs. But there is another epoch-making feature of Chopin's
style, which is less easy, especially to Germans, because it is a
Slavic characteristic; I mean the _tempo rubato_. This is a phrase
much used among musicians, but if pressed for an exact definition, few
would be able to give one. Let us see first what Chopin's
contemporaries have to say of the way in which he himself treats it.
Chopin visited England in 1848, and on June 21 gave a concert in
London. Mr. Chorley, the well-known critic, wrote a criticism on this