What's the Point of Rubato?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If I understand it correctly, in the time of Mozart and Chopin rubato was the maintenance of a steady pulse in the accompaniment while allowing departure from strict note-values in the melody.

That's the way rubato is still described in some recent books.

[David-G]

I would tend to agree with the comments above that refer to the Vienna Piano Trio's phrasing "gaps" as a mannerism rather than rubato. I have always tended to think of rubato as meaning a steady pulse in the LH, with flexibillity in the RH. There is an interesting discussion of this topic here: http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbt.../Rubato??.html. It is interesting to listen to the two different types of rubato exemplified in the youtube links referred to in post #2554682. Note also the comments in #2554716, particularly in regard to rubato and singing in opera.

[richardfinegold]

I had always thought that the idea behind rubato is to give "shape" to phrasing; to point out moments of particular structural significance; and/or to prevent "mechanical" performance.

The reason I ask is that I was recently at a concert given by the Vienna Piano Trio; otherwise very enjoyable, it was marred for me by their habit of putting a slight (say a fifth of a second) but unignorable "break" between a great many of the phrases, creating a "hiccup" that acted for me like watching somebody speaking with a bit of spinach stuck between their teeth - eventually, you can't concentrate on whatever they're saying because your fascinated by the "flaw".

It recurred again and again with such predictability, that if its intention were to act as a sort of rubato-like feature, it failed significantly. Have I missed the point?

That doesn't sound like rubato to me. It just sounds like taking a long pause.
I'm not a musician. But I thought rubato meant to rob--one phrase has extra time added, at the expense of another, usually adjacent phrase or bar line which is shortened by the equivalent amount. It is supposed to be a zero sum event. You seem to be describing something that prolongs the whole piece. I would call it a mannerism.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That doesn't sound like rubato to me. It just sounds like taking a long pause.
I'm not a musician. But I thought rubato meant to rob--one phrase has extra time added, at the expense of another, usually adjacent phrase or bar line which is shortened by the equivalent amount. It is supposed to be a zero sum event. You seem to be describing something that prolongs the whole piece. I would call it a mannerism.

I agree with you - it didn't "prolong" very much - just made it sound as if the performance had been spliced together by a very incompetent tape editor - I prefer my performances to be gapless!

Many thanks to everyone for their replies - something that strikes me is that "robbed" isn't the right word if any ralls are compensated by an accel (or vice versa): it's more of a "loan" isn't it - adding <ahem> "interest" to the performance.

It's Late!

[ahinton]

I agree with you - it didn't "prolong" very much - just made it sound as if the performance had been spliced together by a very incompetent tape editor - I prefer my performances to be gapless!

Many thanks to everyone for their replies - something that strikes me is that "robbed" isn't the right word if any ralls are compensated by an accel (or vice versa): it's more of a "loan" isn't it - adding <ahem> "interest" to the performance.

It's Late!

So not daylight "robbery", then?!...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Ultimately I suppose it depends upon personal preference and how well it's done. Elgar wrote many such subtleties into his scores and then added unwritten ones into his performances, as did Jacqueline du Pre to great effect, though many still regard these as mannerisms.

[cloughie]

Ultimately I suppose it depends upon personal preference and how well it's done. Elgar wrote many such subtleties into his scores and then added unwritten ones into his performances, as did Jacqueline du Pre to great effect, though many still regard these as mannerisms.

I remember Barenboim's 1970s Elgar 2 was criticised for unnatural exaggerated rubato

[EnemyoftheStoat]

...something that strikes me is that "robbed" isn't the right word if any ralls are compensated by an accel (or vice versa): it's more of a "loan" isn't it - adding <ahem> "interest" to the performance.

I had the same thought early this morning on a bus on the Old Kent Road. "Rubato" implies that there's no giving back - though in some cases locking-up would be appropriate.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I had the same thought early this morning on a bus on the Old Kent Road. "Rubato" implies that there's no giving back - though in some cases locking-up would be appropriate.

[Richard Barrett]

Maybe a more accurate phrase for the rubato fg is describing is a "trickle-down effect" - letting people believe you're going to give back what you robbed but actually never doing so.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[vinteuil]

.

... but then, rubato is also the right time -

after all, time = T, and we all know that proper T is theft


[ who has stolen my coat? ]










.

[ahinton]

.

... but then, rubato is also the right time -

after all, time = T, and we all know that proper T is theft

...yet for quite some time before I first read that assertion, I'd laboured(!?) under the apparent delusion that it was in fact Lapsang or Earl Grey (and most decidedly not P G Tips, with no disrespect intended towards our member of a similar name).

Anyway, rubato's all about Max Davies and Hindemith, isn't it?

[EnemyoftheStoat]

Maybe a more accurate phrase for the rubato fg is describing is a "trickle-down effect" - letting people believe you're going to give back what you robbed but actually never doing so.

Locking-up all the more appropriate...

[jayne lee wilson]

For me, rubato - unmarked or unwritten variation of tempo for expressive purposes - is a principal means by which performers make the music their own; turn the set of instructions known as the score into a personal communication from composer and performer to the listener, making it a living presence rather than an obeisance, or a restored artefact of museological reverence. An essential part of musical interpretation.
It can be done well or badly, or go too far (though, mirroring rubato itself, this will be a very subjective judgement!), but I often feel that sanctimonious comments from performers or critics about “just play what’s in the score… always be faithful to the composers’s intentions…” etc., exhibit as much fear of creativity or freedom as any justifiable, necessary or unnecessary devotion. And a fear of the unfixed: so many scores are changed in rehearsal, or revised after a performance, often in discussion with soloists and conductors. A Work of Art is not finished, only abandoned, as Paul Valéry almost said.

***

Example - take a historical journey through Bruckner performances from the 1940s to now, and take a lesson in how to make music live and breathe, make it dramatic, compelling and above all: individual. Note how “reverence for the score” applied to those editions most frequently recorded across the 1960s to the 1990s, produced too many unvarying, inexpressive, steady-state results (and still do, even in a potentially very creative newer performer like Yannick Nézet-Séguin), not least because (but not only because) those editions - usually Haas or Nowak - had very few expression or dynamic markings in them. Earlier, initially and still less-respected editions, often those published in Bruckner’s lifetime, had far more - which may well have encouraged earlier conductors like Knappertsbusch or Konwitschny to go much further in their tempo variabile - but what a shame conductors like Karajan or Wand didn’t take a more subjective, recreative view themselves a little more often, without the need for such explicit instructions.

“The truly lost tradition would seem to be Furtwängler’s unique style of rubato that almost convinces that there really is a technical dimension to conducting beyond time-beating, that the conductor is ultimately a performer rather than the vehicle of a mystic vision…”
(John Williamson, in “Conductors and Bruckner” in The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner, CUP 2004).

(I’m not sure it’s “unique” - you find something similar in Knappertsbusch, Andreae and even Heinz Rögner too - and it often changes across performances - the differences between Kna’s can be almost shocking: he only truly came alive in performance, being a performer was the shapeshifting point of his creative life, really).
Heinz Rögner is often freer in his live concerts than in his studio tapings, a fascinating point in itself. Almost a lost tradition, this conductor-confidence to vary pace and phrase very dramatically, moment-to-moment, and I would say very expressively: it becomes an essential part of their, and Bruckner’s musical message; you’re not only supposed to notice it, but find a particular musical pleasure in it too).

***

“A performer rather than the vehicle of...”
My point would simply be that we should trust performers to breathe life into musical works by their own individual interpretive means, and not just through an attempt to follow, or divine the composer’s “intentions”. (In any case, two different interpretations of “ritardando” will end up sounding different for similar, individualised reasons. One might exaggerate, another might almost ignore. You could argue that rubato is only an extension of that written-in request, so why not go with it, go with it as far as you can dare….)
So what if it goes wrong sometimes? Isn’t that more interesting than score-reverence anyway? Provocative of response and reflection and refreshed interpretation?

I think there’s a deep human need for new or re-newed experiences, creative change and variation, making things our own. There’s a vital creative tension between rules or instructions and what the performer decides to do with them. Alike yet different…, like the arrival of Spring.
The aleatoric conductor- or performer-choice music in Lutosławski or Boulez probably arose from a similar impulse taken further: the creator's need for more subjective performer-input, more creative performer involvement, to a musical realisation. To try to “Make it New” every time.
So too for the listener: why does someone buy 3 or 4 or 5 Sibelius Symphony cycles? It’s not in the hope that they’re the same, or more “faithful” than the last one, is it?