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Updated: June 8, 2025
To Chopin, therefore, chiefly belongs the honor of having emancipated music from the monotony of the Western European dance-beat by means of the tempo rubato in its varied aspects.
Beethoven, according to Seyfried, "was very particular at rehearsals about the frequent passages in tempo rubato;" and there are other remarks by contemporaries of Beethoven which indicate that although he wrote in the classical style, in his playing and conducting he often introduced a romantic rubato.
But it is probable that the Italian singers of that period, as to-day, used this kind of rubato merely to display the beauty of their voice on a loud high note, and not, like Chopin, for the sake of emphasizing a pathetic or otherwise expressive note or chord. Of the Germans it may be said that, as a rule, they had, until recently, no special liking for the tempo rubato. Dr.
As soon as the singer has grasped the idea, he says, the bar should be thrown aside as a useless incumbrance, and the singer, ignoring strict time, should be guided by his feelings alone, while the conductor should follow and preserve harmony between him and the orchestra. It might be said that this dramatic rubato is something different from Chopin's rubato.
He also attempts to regulate the rubato this is the first of the studies wherein the rubato's rights must be acknowledged. The bars are even mentioned 32, 33, 36 and 37, where tempo license may be indulged. But here is a case which innate taste and feeling must guide. You can no more teach a real Chopin rubato not the mawkish imitation, than you can make a donkey comprehend Kant.
But help comes to us from elsewhere. Liszt explained Chopin's tempo rubato in a very poetical and graphic manner to his pupil the Russian pianist Neilissow: "Look at these trees!" he said, "the wind plays in the leaves, stirs up life among them, the tree remains the same, that is Chopinesque rubato." But how did the composer himself describe it?
It was all mere tempo rubato; no sort of style or delivery. That infernal tempo rubato is the ruin of the very best players; they neglect their bowing over it. I played him my sonatas; he saw his error, and asked me to give him some lessons, which I was very glad to do. But he was too far sunk into his old method. He had grown too old in it he was ninety-one.
To interpret him requires simplicity, purity of style, refined technique, poetic imagination and genuine sentiment not fitful, fictitious sentimentality. In regard to the much discussed tempo rubato of Chopin many and fatal blunders have been made.
I am convinced that even Richard Wagner was, unconsciously, influenced by it through Liszt; for one of the chief peculiarities of his style is a sort of dramatic rubato which emancipates his music from the tyranny of the strict dance measure.
The tempo rubato is probably as old as music itself. It is in Bach, it was practised by the old Italian singers. Mikuli says that no matter how free Chopin was in his treatment of the right hand in melody or arabesque, the left kept strict time. Mozart and not Chopin it was who first said: "Let your left hand be your conductor and always keep time."
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