Did Chopin use hairpins (adjacent crescendo and decrescendo) to indicate rubato rather than dynamics?
In her answer to Liszt's B minor sonata crescendo, user @Madeleine writes:
In many places in Chopin's music, he wrote hairpins ... to indicate rubato rather than a crescendo or decrescendo.
The answer itself doesn't include any further reference(s).
Did Chopin use hairpins in this way?
Is the answer to #1 a matter of primary documentation, later scholarship, tradition, or individual interpretation?
(2)2 Comments
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Besides the source mentioned by TobyRush, there is a very readable and extensive (60+ pages) discussion of this in Chapter 1 of "The Secret Life of Musical Notation" by Roberto Poli (Amadeus Press 2010). Particular attention is given to Chopin, but Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and others are also covered.
It wasn't limited to Chopin; the hairpin symbols weren't universally tied to dynamics until the twentieth century. Before then, usage was a little more varied. A good source for this is David Hyun-Su Kim. "The Brahmsian Hairpin." 19th-Century Music 36, no. 1 (2012): 46-57.
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