Tempo rubato

What it means

Rubato means “stolen”; tempo rubato is thus “stolen time”. What is meant is a free shaping of tempo, in which individual notes or turns of phrase get more time than their notated value entitles them to, and others correspondingly less. The performance detaches itself from the rigid pulse without changing the overall tempo.

Historically two conceptions are distinguished. In the older one, the accompaniment keeps the pulse steadily going, while the melody above it freely hurries ahead and lags behind; what it takes at one point it gives back at the next. In the more recent conception, widespread in the nineteenth century, the whole texture stretches and pushes together. Both forms occur, and which is meant depends on style and work.

The counterpart is tempo giusto, which expressly demands strictness. The overarching term for such small tempo deviations for shaping is agogics.

In the notation

The marking stands in italics above the staff, mostly at the beginning of a movement or section, and holds until a new instruction. Often it does not stand at all, because the rubato is assumed as a stylistic matter of course — in large parts of the piano and song literature of the nineteenth century that is the normal case.

Musical use

The free shaping is used above all in singing music: in nocturnes, songs, slow movements with pronounced melody. It serves to make the phrase speak and to bring out points of arrival. In dance-like music and in polyphonic movements, by contrast, it is to be used sparingly, because the metre is load-bearing there.

Performance practice

Take and give in equal measure: what you stretch at one point you make up at the next — otherwise the rubato becomes a creeping slowing-down. Keep the basic pulse inwardly present, even as you depart from it. Use the device sparingly; a permanently free performance loses its effect. And practise the passage first strictly in time, so that you know what you are departing from.