The Art of Rubato: The Musical Expression of Tempo

To students:  Udemy forces instructors to make the "first" video in a course a "free preview."  I didn't want the earlier optional stuff to be previewed as it is not the heart and soul of the course, but I also didn't want to move this lecture to the beginning and have it be missing here.  That's why it appears twice in the lineup.

Question from student:  "Many recognize that rhythm and movement are inextricably linked. How does the element of MOVEMENT play into this discussion of rubato? I wanted to MOVE while listening to the excerpts (or, at least, audiate/think movement). Is this something you would encourage or invite course/presentation participants to do?"

Answer:   I believe that anything people do to help perceive tempo while listening to these excerpts should be done!  I haven't studied the inextricable link between rhythm and movement that you mention, but it certainly doesn't surprise me as I find even myself (one who hates to dance!) moving a toe, finger, foot, hand, certain leg muscles, or sometimes tapping teeth (very lightly) when listening to music, marking the beat.  I'm certain that if I were a student in my own course, I'd be doing all of that stuff, and I'm sure it would help to perceive various tempo changes.

Question from a student:  "What is the difference between phrasing and shaping?  I tend to think of phrasing as creating breaks between slurs, whereas shaping is more abut the dynamics (volume) used subtly to make the phrase sound natural and expressive."

Answer:  I used to think of phrasing and shaping similarly, but as time has gone on in my teaching, I find myself using the word shaping as a mere component of phrasing.  I use phrasing to refer more generally to both dynamic and articulative features that help to convey where phrases begin and end.  Physical lifts between slurs obviously convey phrasing to the listener, but sometimes we have musical contexts where everything is legato/pedaled, like in a Chopin nocturne.  In that case, the listener still hears phrases in the pianist's playing even when everything is legato and there is no rubato, so it doesn't feel right to me to avoid calling that phrasing just because there is no opportunity for audible lifts/rests/breaths.  The phrase is created by so much more than just articulation - it's created with dynamic and rubato nuance as well.  In my mind, shaping just refers more specifically to dynamic nuance without any regard for articulation or rubato.

Question from student:  Does the cadential type tend to emphasize the pre-dominant, the resolution, or either?

Answer:  Both!  In the compound rubato lecture (which is a few videos from now), in the example where “Uchida plus Perahia equals Sofronitsky,” you had one pianist essentially placing the dot on the dominant, and another pianist placing the dot on the resolution. Sofronitsky does both. All of them work. I guess it could be similar to the idea that in a “question – answer” scenario (when speaking in English), do we emphasize the question, or the answer? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both. I’m not sure if there is a pattern to when we would want to emphasize one or the other.  It might have more to do with personal habit and preferences of the performer.

Question from student:  I would love to know more about the "why" here - why does it benefit us/students to recognize these compound rubato types?

Answer:  Nested rubato doesn’t occur too frequently, so that will be marginally useful to point out (but depending on the student, could be a stimulating/interesting thing to point out). But coinciding rubato is something I point out to every student eventually, because coinciding rubato happens almost constantly in music with rubato. Rubato instances that have more than one reason going on for the rubato are more common than instances where the rubato is done for one and only one reason.

And then while I wouldn’t say joining rubato occurs in every piece, I also wouldn’t call it a “rare” occurrence.  Mostly I would just encourage teachers to point things like that out as they appear in music, unless the student is particularly curious about all the ways rubato can work. On the other hand, when my students get to an early or mid advanced level, I give all of them my whole system of rubato, compound and all.

One student who went to NTU majoring in piano wrote me in her sophomore year out of the blue, thanking me for giving her such a great foundation in rubato. She said both peers and professors had been noticing her intelligent and creative use of rubato in music, and she was also able to better understand the rubato her professor used in his demonstrations of music she was learning.  She said it made a real difference in preparing her for further study.

Question from Student:  "How can we guide students to choose rubato -- in particular, tasteful distance or intensity? Do we try a few ways, and then choose together in good taste? I would love to hear a theoretical example of how you would talk through adding rubato to a student for a particular piece!"

Answer:  I approach the teaching of rubato with students the same way I approach dynamics, pedaling, fingering, etc.  In the earlier years, students don't have enough experience listening to music or performing music to be able to participate very much in the creative component of musical interpretation.  I write my interpretation into the music and say, "Let's do this fingering/dynamics/rubato here, because X and/or Y."  If it's fingering, I might also show the student a couple other fingering options and have the student try those options so that by the time they try the fingering I actually wrote in, they have a deeper appreciation for why we're going with that particular fingering.  If it's dynamics (say, in Bach, which allows any dynamics we please), I might also show the student other dynamic options that don't seem as convincing, or sometimes I let the student choose between two dynamic options that work equally well.  As the student progresses into more advanced levels, I might ask the student to come up with their own dynamic plan, or figure out their own fingering in some particular spot.

Likewise, with rubato, how I guide the student depends heavily on where the student is in their studies.  At the early level, I almost never give the student a choice of this much or that much rubato in certain places.  But then at an advanced level, I might just be very open-ended and tell the student, "These two pages need a lot more rubato.  Take a week to figure out where you think rubato should go and why it should go there, and we'll go over it again next week."  (I only do this for students who are very familiar with rubato from working with me through the years.  But this is exactly how I approached rubato with my daughter's Pieczonka performance in one of the videos!  I'd say probably 80% of the rubato she put in herself was masterful.  The other 20% I added or had her tweak.)

As for distance and intensity specifically, there are many, many different scenarios that necessitate a "rubato tweak session" with the student.  Here are some examples (and all of these would be paired with teacher demonstration):

• "The anticipatory rubato here needs to be more pointed because we don't want to give away the surprise."  

• "The lingering rubato here needs to be much more pointed and/or less intense because this is just a humble little cadence in the middle of the piece, not a big giant ending to a Wagner opera."  [In cases like this I love to exaggerate what the student did to make them laugh.]

• "The rubato here needs to be less pointed and more fluid because your sudden slowing down ends up distorting the rhythm."

• "You didn't do any lingering rubato, so it sounded like you took off in a sudden sprint, which doesn't fit the character of this piece / what's going on in this piece right here."

And of course the possibilities are endless.  As advertised in one of my videos, my rubato system doesn't pretend to give any formula to calculate where to put rubato, how much to use, etc., but it does make us think much more systematically about rubato, why we put it where we put it, the factors that help to determine intensity, location, etc.  When we reason through it with students like this, over the years the students learn to reason with rubato the same way they reason with any other aspect of music. 

Once in a while, you [the teacher] may not even be 100% sure what exactly to do, and you might have to experiment right there in front of the student.  A very enlightening process for a student to witness!

In summary, with or without my system, an inexperienced student is still hugely dependent on the expertise of the teacher, and the teacher still relies on a lot of demonstration for the student.  The difference is that, when this expertise and demonstration is paired with tools (vocabulary and principles), it gives students the ability to be independent with rubato much sooner than they normally would, not to mention reach a higher level of intelligent creativity in how they approach rubato in their advanced years.