Grove Music Online

Rubato [tempo rubato] (It.: ‘robbed or stolen

time’)
Richard Hudson

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.24039
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001
updated bibliography, 22 September 2005

The expressive alteration of rhythm or tempo. In an earlier type the

melody is altered while the accompaniment maintains strict time. A
later type involves rhythmic flexibility of the entire musical
substance. Both originated as a part of unnotated performing
practice, but were later sometimes indicated in scores. Some
modern writers refer to the earlier and later types as melodic and
structural, borrowed and stolen, contrametric and agogic, or bound
and free.

1. The earlier rubato.

In 1723 Tosi referred to rubamento di tempo in Italian arias of the

late 17th century. Galliard explained the technique in his translation
of 1743: ‘When the bass goes an exactly regular pace, the other part
retards or anticipates in a singular manner, for the sake of
expression, but after that returns to its exactness, to be guided by
the bass’. Ex.1 , one of Roger North’s illustrations of Tosi’s ‘breaking
and yet keeping of time’ shows the following features: (1) the a
steals time from the bs on either side and thus increases its length;
(2) while this is happening the bass keeps strict time; (3) the steady
bass imposes compensation, so that the total time stolen from the
opening and closing notes (a crotchet in each case) exactly equals
the time acquired by the a (a minim); (4) the appearance of a is
anticipated, whereas the following b and c′ are both delayed; (5)
although delayed, the second b loses none of its value – it is simply
shifted later in time; (6) the second, third and fourth notes of the
melody do not sound simultaneously with the bass notes with which
they are vertically aligned; (7) the dissonance of a 9th occurs when a
is heard with the G in the bass and when b is heard with A; and (8)
the a could have been anticipated without delaying any of the other
notes, for no balance is required between these two effects which
are both determined by the starting-point rather than the length of a
note.

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 Rubato tempo rubato ‘robbed or stolen time’ 1. The earlier rubato.: Ex.1
North: ‘Breaking and yet keeping time’ (GB-Lbl Add.32532, f.7v [c1695]

In 1752 Quantz used the expression tempo rubato and demonstrated

anticipation and delay separately (ex.2 ). Vocal rubato was
subsequently described by writers in Germany such as Agricola
(1757), Marpurg (1763), Hiller (1774, 1780) and Lasser (1798), as
well as by Domenico Corri (1810), Bacon (1824) and Nathan (1836)
in London, and, with special thoroughness and numerous musical
examples, by García (1847) in Paris. According to the latter, the
temps d'arrêt or prolongation (the lengthening of a in ex.1) ‘is the
first element of tempo rubato’. Famous singers known to have used
the device include Antonio Pasi, Cuzzoni and Santa Scarabelli Stella
(wife of Lotti) in the Baroque period and Pasta, Sontag, Cinti-
Damoreau and Malibran during the first half of the 19th century.

Rubato tempo rubato ‘robbed or stolen time’ 1. The earlier rubato.: Ex.2
Quantz: Eine Art vom Tempo rubato (1752)

Descriptions of violin rubato appear in books by Leopold Mozart

(1756), Spohr (1832) and Baillot (1834), and it was part of the
performing style of artists such as Franz Benda and Paganini. Baillot
urged the performer to use ‘the syncopation called temps dérobé or
troublé, tempo rubato or disturbato’ only when the intensity of
expression ‘forces him to lose all sense of pulse and to be delivered
by this means from the trouble that besets him’. This sort of metrical
dissolution is illustrated by ex.3 from a manuscript copy of sonatas
composed, probably during the 1760s, by Benda: the stepwise

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 descent from g″ to a′ which begins at the end of the opening bar was
shifted in performance to bar 2, and the ascent at the end of bar 2
was moved to bar 3. This effect was emphasized by the long slur and
the continuous beam, and the seven notes in bar 2 of the performed
version created conspicuous displacement against the crotchets in
the bass.

Rubato tempo rubato ‘robbed or stolen time’ 1. The earlier rubato.: Ex.3
Benda: Violin sonata (D-Bsb Mus.ms.1315/15)

While the singer and the violinist conceived of rubato as the

alteration of note values in a melody, the keyboard performer tended
to think more about the displacement between the accompaniment,
usually played by the left hand, and the melody, played by the right.
In keyboard rubato, as W.A. Mozart explained, ‘the left hand should
go on playing in strict time’. Clementi, Dussek, Thalberg and Field
employed the technique; Marpurg (1755, 1756), E.W. Wolf (1785),
Türk (1789, 2/1802) and Herz (c1837) described it. From about 1770
to 1840 ‘rubato’ occasionally referred also to syncopation caused by
unusual groups of notes (C.P.E. Bach), to unexpected melodic or
dynamic accentuation on weak beats, or to the setting of short
syllables on long notes.

Vocal and violin rubato remained, for the most part, an unnotated
part of performance. The word ‘rubato’, however, started to appear
in keyboard scores with Chopin, who marked it in 14 different works
written between 1828 and 1835. He usually wrote the single word
rubato, but sometimes poco rubato, sempre rubato or languido e
rubato, employing such terms to establish a mood, articulate the
repetition of a unit of music, or intensify an expressive effect such as
the high point of a phrase or an unusual non-harmonic note. Ex.4
shows an unpublished rubato in a manuscript version of his Waltz in
A♭ major. Played without rubato, the dissonance on the second beat
of bar 2 is startling. But if the accompaniment keeps strict time and
the note values in the right hand are slightly altered (by including
perhaps an anticipation of the notes on the second beat), the
dissonances are softened and the melody flows more smoothly.
Chopin's rubatos are brief and may involve anticipation or delay, as
determined by the performer. The manner of execution depends
upon the motivation provided by the sense of the music before and
after the rubato. This sort of keyboard rubato also appears in the
scores of some of Chopin's contemporaries such as Károly Filtsch
(his pupil), Clara Schumann, Pauline Viardot and Gottschalk, and
perhaps in the earlier works of Liszt.

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 Rubato tempo rubato ‘robbed or stolen time’ 1. The earlier rubato.: Ex.4
Chopin: Waltz op.34 no.1 (lost MS from 1835)

The earlier type of rubato is associated with the aria, sonata,

concerto and character piece, but not with the rhythmically free
styles of the recitative, the cadenza, or preludial forms such as the
prelude, toccata or fantasia. It requires an accompaniment that can
conspicuously project the sound of strict time: the basso continuo of
the Baroque, the Alberti bass figurations of the Classical period, or
the waltz-like patterns in ex.4 and in many aria accompaniments in
19th-century French and Italian opera. During the later years of the
19th century the earlier meaning of rubato gradually disappeared,
although isolated elements of the technique lingered on in the
controversial concept of ‘compensation’ (meaning then that retard
and acceleration should be exactly equal within a bar, phrase or
piece) and in the pianists’ custom of arpeggiating chords or
‘breaking hands’. During the 1930s, however, the earlier rubato was
reborn in American popular music, with vocal or instrumental
soloists sometimes placing notes ‘behind’ or ‘ahead of’ the strict
beat of the rhythm section. This combination of strict and free
rhythm influenced composers such as Copland and Carter.

2. The later rubato.

The later type of rubato was described by Kalkbrenner in 1789. For

Busby in 1801 rubato was ‘time alternately accelerated and retarded
for the purpose of enforcing the expression’. Türk listed the later
type of rubato in 1802 as one of the ‘extraordinary means’ by which
‘the expression may be improved’, but added that ‘one usually
intends to indicate thereby only the hesitation or pausing (not the
hastening)’. The later rubato occurred at first in keyboard music. It
served the same structural and expressive purposes as the earlier
type and similarly appeared in the strict forms rather than the free
and for passages of very brief duration (P.A. Corri in 1810 suggested
‘a bar or two or a few notes’). Eventually, however, Hummel (1828),
Czerny (1839) and others complained of its excessive use.

Liszt's ‘rubato’ referred neither to the rhythmic flexibility of gypsy

music, nor to the retards and accelerations marked in a score, added
by a performer, or indicated by expressions such as a piacere, ad
libitum or senza tempo. His ‘deceptive’ or ‘seductive’ rubato,
according to his student Carl Lachmund, was ‘like a sudden light
suspension of the rhythm on this or that significant note’. It usually

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 occurred in music that was soft and dolce, often in ritenuto passages
or those calling for portato touch, and sometimes in the company of
notated syncopation, arpeggiation in one hand or both, accent or
tenuto signs, or a juxtaposition of different metrical patterns. His
concept of rubato seemed to broaden, however, when he wrote
sempre rubato for an entire melody or included the word in the
tempo marking for an entire section, or when he used it in orchestral
scores.

During the later Romantic period there was a gradual increase in the
use of tempo fluctuation for subjective expressive purposes. Rhythm
became the principal element in expressive performance, and many
books on piano playing included lists of places to hasten or retard.
The word rubato now often encompassed not only momentary and
‘capricious’ tempo changing on one or a few notes, but also the
expressive shaping of phrases, and sometimes even the ‘tempo
modification’ of Wagner applied to entire movements. The word,
occasionally in the form rubando, appeared in the orchestral and
vocal scores of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Mascagni and
Puccini.

Debussy often marked rubato for brief passages. His own recordings
reveal an intensity of touch rather than noticeable tempo change in
such places, an effect described by Marguerite Long as ‘delicate’
and ‘confined by a rigorous precision’. Bartók distinguished in his
notations of folk melodies between parlando-rubato and tempo
giusto, and in his own works also used non rubato. Stravinsky
sometimes attempted to notate rubato. At some passages marked
rubato his recordings show heavily articulated ritenuto or seem
more concerned with articulation than with tempo. After the
mid-20th century Lukas Foss and Elliott Carter used rubato as an
important element in the contrast of different musical forces. Rubato
has been employed in more conventional ways in the music of neo-
Romantic composers.

At the end of the century psychologists were investigating both types

of rubato, and other researchers had begun to study their use in
early vocal and instrumental recordings. There are still so many
different meanings for the word, however, that it might be wise for a
modern composer to write ‘hesitant’ or ‘reluctant’, for example, for a
capricious rubato on a few notes, or ‘espressivo’ for the expressive
but more placid shaping of a phrase.

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 Florid Song, London, 1742, 2/1743/R; Ger. trans., ed. J.F.
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 C. Palmer: ‘Mapping Musical Thought to Musical
Performance’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
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Performance and Perception of Rubato’, Contemporary
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Rubato in Contemporary Nonmusical Sources’, The Echo
of Music: Essays in Honor of Marie Louise Göllner
(Warren, MI, 2004), 169–82
See also
Agogic

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