What Did Rubato Mean to Mozart? | Jause, WoO5
This Jause is a highlight from Classical Cake, op. 6. In this excerpt, we’re talking with Malcolm Bilson, professor of music emeritus at Cornell University, about the differences between classical and romantic rubato.
TRANSCRIPT
So one thing you say over and over is ‘never, ever play evenly.’ Now, this is radically different to what most musicians are taught. Please explain this.
Well, that's what I was just talking about. If music is like speech, then [robotic voice] you-can-not-play-an-y-thing-like-this.
You know, it's very interesting that when you started having robots answering your calls, they said all sounded like that, you know. [robotic voice] The number is 4-5-3-2… and little by little they realized that this does not sound like a person even though there's a person saying it and so they had to introduce [natural-sounding voice] The number is 4-5-3-7-8… whatever it is, because it's unnatural to speak without inflection. Even if you're just giving a telephone number.
So in the past few minutes we've challenged many accepted modern conventions for interpreting classical music and that's just the beginning of your teachings. In the interest of time, I want to discuss just one more concept and that is tempo rubato.
Tempo rubato has two meanings. One is a later 19th century meaning, which means that you speed up and slow down. But, the 17th and 18th and early 19th century meaning of tempo rubato was quite different. It means that the accompaniment stays steady while the right hand or the violin or the flute or the voice or whatever it is, floats freely above it.
Mozart talks about it. Chopin insisted on it: He insisted on the students practicing, first, the left hand by itself, and then only bringing in the melody later. And, to try to do this, it's very hard. It's very, very hard to do.
It takes a lot of training and, if you want to hear how it's done really superbly, then you go to recordings of people like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, who did this spectacularly.
You know, there's a recording of Louis Armstrong playing “Summertime” on his trumpet with an orchestra in the background. He's never near them anywhere. And it's just… it sends you right to heaven.