Tempo rubato

Rubato, even when not notated, is often used liberally by musicians, e.g. singers frequently use it intuitively to let the tempo of the melody expressively shift slightly and freely above that of the accompaniment.

This intuitive shifting leads to rubato's main effect: making music sound expressive and natural.

In Chopin's music, rubato functioned as a way to make a melody more emotional through changing the tempo by, for instance, accelerando, ritenuto and syncopations.

Chopin "often played with the melody subtly lingering or passionately anticipating the beat while the accompaniment stayed at least relatively, if not strictly, in time".

While it is often associated with music of the Romantic Period, classical performers frequently use rubato for emotional expressiveness in all kinds of works.

[10] Late 19th century dictionaries of musical terms defined tempo rubato as "robbed or stolen time."

This effect can be achieved by a slight quickening of speed in ascending passages, for instance, and calando on descending phrases.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski says that tempo rubato relies on "more or less important slackening or quickening of the time or rate of the movement.

[12] However, the balance theory caused controversy, as many theoreticians dismissed the assumption that the "stolen" time should necessarily be "paid back."

In the third edition of Grove's Dictionary we read: "The rule has been given and repeated indiscriminately that the "robbed" time must be "paid back" within the bar.

[13] The first writer who extended the theory of "agogics" was Hugo Riemann in his book Musikalische Dynamik und Agogik (1884).

Should a triplet be written by the composer, care must be taken here to make the first note of the three a trifle longer than the rest, and thus give a musicianly rendering of it.

"[15] Robert Philip's further research shows that these three components (accelerando and rallentando, tenuto and agogic accents, and melodic rubato) were most often used together, as each performer could combine all of them and give the melody flexibility in their own specific way.

There are three purposes why Chopin marks the word rubato in his compositions: to articulate a repetition, to emphasize an expressive high point or appoggiatura and to set a particular mood at the beginning of a piece.

Chopin's second main purpose for using rubato is to create an intensely expressive moment such as at the high point of a melodic line or at an appoggiatura.

Therefore, Chopin marked poco rubato to signify to the player that they can emphasize the intensely expressive moment, but to also hold back for the actual climax occurring one measure later.

In a similar situation, the melody leaps up to three A-flat played consecutively and the rubato marked tells the player to perform them in a singing quality.

3, Chopin marked Languido e rubato in the first bar, as a general suggestion of the work's comprehensive way of delivery.

[20] The rubato in a languid manner would affect the tempo, tone color, touch, and dynamics, which influence performers to set the mood at the beginning of the piece.

[23]Tempo Rubato is a potent factor in musical oratory, and every interpreter should be able to use it skillfully and judiciously, as it emphasizes the expression, introduces variety, infuses life into mechanical execution.

It softens the sharpness of lines, blunts the structural angles without ruining them, because its action is not destructive: it intensifies, subtilizes, idealizes the rhythm.

Even in his much-slandered rubato, one hand, the accompanying hand, always played in strict tempo, while the other - singing, either indecisively hesitating or entering ahead of the beat and moving more quickly with a certain impatient vehemence, as in passionate speech - freed the truth of the musical expression from all rhythmic bonds.

The type of rubato in which the accompaniment is kept regular does not require absolute regularity; the accompaniment still gives full regard to the melody (often the singer or soloist) and yields tempo where necessary: It is amusing to note that even some serious persons express the idea that in tempo rubato "the right hand may use a certain freedom while the left hand must keep strict time."

Something like the singing of a good vocalist accompanied by a poor blockhead who hammers away in strict time without yielding to the singer who, in sheer despair, must renounce all artistic expression.

While other composers (such as Schumann and Mahler) are ignored in regards to this issue, we often fail to consider the German terms, like "Zeit lassen", for the same principle.

[...] nothing in general can be more disagreeable than this species of brilliant accompaniment, where the voice is only considered as an accessory and where the accompanier, without regarding the taste, feeling, compass, or style of the singer, the pathos of the air, or sense of the words, either mechanically runs through the prescribed solemnity of the adagio, with the one two three precision of the metronome, or rattles away without mercy through the allegro whenever an occasion presents itself for the luxuriant ad libitum introduction of turns, variations, and embellishments.[...]

[29]Sergei Rachmaninoff is one of the composers who uses the proper term "tempo rubato" in some passages of his orchestral works, such as the buzzy introduction for the 2nd movement of his Symphonic Dances.