Chopin's rubato

[faulty_damper]

From all accounts, Chopin kept the left hand in strict time and the right hand melody was free to sing.  I've never actually heard anyone play in such a manner, at least not musically successfully.  Are there recordings/YT of pianists performing Chopin's works this way?  The Berceuse is said by his students to be great for this kind of rubato.

[carl_h]

I'm also interested in this, since I have a hard time accepting this 'left hand in strict time'. If you would take this too far, the rythm would be "altered" and even the harmony. I'm not thinking about asynchronizing bass and melody notes as was the trend in the romantic era, but rather about altering the score...
In a lot of music left hand (or 2 hand) rubato is very important so we shouldn't look at this black & white, imo.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Grts,
Carl

[mjames]

I wouldn't take romanticized descriptions of Chopin's playing too seriously.

[faulty_damper]

I wouldn't take romanticized descriptions of Chopin's playing too seriously.

From all accounts, his left hand was in strict time.  However, the melody was allowed to do as it pleased.  Just because these descriptions of him playing were written in the 19th century, by his students and by his contemporaries, doesn't mean they were romanticized descriptions.

"In keeping time Chopin was inexorable, and some readers will be surprised to learn that the metronome never left his piano. Even in his much maligned tempo rubato, the hand responsible for the accompaniment would keep strict time, while the other hand, singing the melody, would free the essence of the musical thought from all rhythmic fetters, either by lingering hesitantly or by eagerly anticipating the movement with a certain impatient vehemence akin to passionate speech."
~ Mikuli

"Through Mme Viardot [...] I learned the true secret of tempo rubato [... where] the accompaniment holds its rhythm while the melody wavers capriciously, rushes or lingers, sooner or later to fall back upon undisturbed its axis. This way of playing is very difficult since it requires complete independence of the two hands; and those lacking this give both themselves and others the illusion of it playing the melody in time and dislocating the accompaniment so that it falls beside the beat; or else - worst of all - content themselves with simply playing one hand after the other.  It would be a hundred times better just to play in time, with both hands together."
~ Viardot/Saint-Saens

"Everyone knows that rubato is an indication often encountered in old music; its essence is fluctuation of movement, on of the two principal means of expression in music, namely the modification of tone and of tempo, as in the art or oration, whereby the speaker, moved by this or that emotion, raises or lowers his voice, and accelerates or draws out his diction. Thus rubato is  a nuance of movement, involving anticipation and delay, anxiety and indolence, agitation and calm; but what moderation is needed in its use, and how all too often it is abused! [...] There was another aspect: Chopin, as Mme Camille Dubois explains so well, often required simultaneously that the left hand, playing the accompaniment, should maintain strict time, while the melodic line should enjoy freedom of expression with fluctuations of speed. This is quite feasible: you can bye early, you can be late, the two hands are not in phase; then you make a compensation which re-establishes the ensemble. In Weber's music, for example, Chopin recommended this way of playing. He often told me to use it, it's as though I still hear him: in the Sonata in A flat, in the A flat passage of the agitato in the Concertstuck..."
~ Mathias

"What characterized Chopin's playing was his rubato, in which the totality of the rhythm was constantly respected. 'The left hand,' I often heard him say, 'is the choir master: it mustn't relent or bend,. It's a clock. Do with the right hand what you want and can.' He would say, 'A piece lasts for, say, five minutes, only in that it occupies this time for its overall performance; internal details [of pace within the piece] are another matter. And there you have rubato."
~ Lenz

There are many more of such accounts.

*Quotes taken from Chopin: pianist and teacher, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger. Cambridge University Press, 1986.

[awesom_o]

I'd say those are excellent descriptions of rubato, actually, and can be taken quite seriously indeed!

[mikeowski]

Check out the 2nd prelude (~1:22). Not chopin, but still.

[mjames]

Well sh*t, I stand corrected.

[awesom_o]

Well sh*t, I stand corrected.

Ultimately, rubato is somewhat subjective, and highly personal.

It's not something in particular that  you "do" so much as it is a language of expression that you learn to understand.

There isn't one "correct" way of doing rubato. There are certainly a million "incorrect ways" it can be done, but once you really understand the expressive content of what you are playing, good rubato tends to happen quite naturally.

[j_menz]

There isn't one "correct" way of doing rubato. There are certainly a million "incorrect ways" it can be done, but once you really understand the expressive content of what you are playing, good rubato tends to happen quite naturally.

I agree, but offer a word of caution.

Bad rubato can also happen "quite naturally", and is common early on and in pianists who never got out of the habit. Rubato is never a case of slowing down because things got a bit tricky, or speeding up because they got easier.  If you can't play it in strict tempo, what you are doing probably isn't so much "rubato" as a poor excuse for sloppiness.

[faulty_damper]

I'm thinking that the best way to hear how this rubato actually sounds is to simply listen to good classical singers accompanied by piano.

[awesom_o]

I agree, but offer a word of caution.

Bad rubato can also happen "quite naturally", and is common early on and in pianists who never got out of the habit. Rubato is never a case of slowing down because things got a bit tricky, or speeding up because they got easier.  If you can't play it in strict tempo, what you are doing probably isn't so much "rubato" as a poor excuse for sloppiness.

This is 100% correct.

[nyiregyhazi]

I agree, but offer a word of caution.

Bad rubato can also happen "quite naturally", and is common early on and in pianists who never got out of the habit. Rubato is never a case of slowing down because things got a bit tricky, or speeding up because they got easier.  If you can't play it in strict tempo, what you are doing probably isn't so much "rubato" as a poor excuse for sloppiness.

That's sometimes true but not always. Sometimes things like wide melodic intervals should absolutely never be conceived in anything approaching strict time. A minor 9th for example is never to be played "quickly" no matter how rapidly it is notated, if it's in a melodic context. Sometimes the trick to feeling the right musical execution is to embrace a feeling of difficulty and use that to guide the sense of melodic space. It's a very typical thing to encounter pianists who have so little sense of what the Russians calls intonatsia, that they rush through every single interval without the faintest measure of its character or worth. The character of a significant interval should never be lost, even in the straightest style of practising. Those who charge through with no feeling of melodic "difficulty" (I use inverted commas because it may or may not be genuinely difficult on a technical level) in preparatory work will never learn how to inject life into a melody, as a separate process. In many cases technical difficulties must be overcome but in many others they actively guide the sense of where space should be injected to a phrase. In such cases, "overcoming" technical difficulties in order to keep meter simply amounts to wiping out all sense of the music's character. It's places where you perceive a sense of physical distance where you generally want to take time, when emulating the vocal style. It takes experience, but in melodic writing there is a huge correlation between  more difficult intervals to get physically behind with the arm and the places where extra time makes musical sense. It pains me when I hear people playing melodies metronomically- without hearing or feeling the character of a single interval. It's totally destructive- more so than playing the passage in completely free time, yet listening to every interval.

PS I agree that rushing easier bits is always bad. But feeling "difficulty" in the right places (and never trying to overcome it for the sake of strict time) is one if the most important fundaments of sound melodic shaping. The core of rubato is something you feel from the intervals-not something that is tacked on separately. You can play around with additional adjustments in some places or exaggerate things, but the foundation of rubato is intrinsic to the feel for the melody, not an add-on.