Dear Friends,
It's been a busy week, as would be expected in the tenth week of the semester. The other night some of my students performed a recital at a nearby retirement community, where they were warmly received by a large and enthusiastic audience.
This weekend a graduate student of mine performed her final recital, and my Butler piano students are playing their studio recital today.
Last Wednesday the amazing Busch Trio performed on campus and worked with my students, and on Thursday I gave a presentation to a piano pedagogy class at another university over Zoom.
Just a typical week in the life of a piano prof! 🙂
Anyway, this week I want to have a chat with you about rubato.
What is “rubato”?
Rubato is an Italian word that literally means "robbed" or "stolen." The idea behind rubato is that you take a little bit of time from one place and give it to another place so that your musical line can be more expressive and flexible.
On the page, music is written in well-defined beats and measures, but when we play, we want to create a musical line that lives and breathes, and doesn't feel robotic.
Effective rubato is not just slowing down or speeding up whenever you feel like it. You still need to keep actively subdividing and feeling the underlying beat, even while you are "bending" it for expression.
In lessons, I often notice that when students decide to “take time,” they simply slam on the brakes, losing all sense of pulse or continuity of the beat.
This matters because playing an instrument is something that you do in relation to an audience. Music happens in real time, and therefore creates a shared experience between the performer and the listener. When a performer approaches pulse and rhythm in a way that feels natural to the listener, the listener can relax. When it doesn't make intuitive sense, the listener feels jerked around.
Think of the performer as the driver of a car, and the listener as a passenger. If the driver suddenly slams on the brakes at a stop sign, the passenger gets thrown forward. It’s jarring, and could even result in the passenger complaining to the driver!
But if the driver instead eases onto the brakes and gradually approaches the stop sign, the passenger can anticipate what is happening and go along with it; the experience is much smoother.
Rubato works the same way. It needs to grow out of a shared perception of time between the performer and the listener. You can slow down or speed up, but it should feel like the musical equivalent of gently pressing on the gas or the brakes, not like you're riding the Knight Bus from Harry Potter! 🚌
Feeling the Beat in Your Body
This week, I’d like to give you an exercise that will help you feel the beat in your body.
Pick one piece you love that uses obvious rubato. It could be a Chopin nocturne, a slow movement of a Beethoven sonata, a piece by Rachmaninoff or Schumann, or even a Romantic-era orchestral work.
Listen to it twice this week.
The first time, just enjoy it.
The second time, stand up and lightly conduct, step, or sway along to the beat. You can:
- move your hand like a conductor might (it’s okay if you don’t mimic the exact beat pattern)
- gently sway side to side
- or even step in place on each beat
Notice what the performer does with the timing:
- Where do they stretch the beat?
- Where do they ease back into the tempo?
- Does it still feel like there is an underlying heartbeat, even when they slow down?
You do not need to analyze or write anything down. The goal is simply to notice how a good performance can bend time without making you feel like the passenger getting jerked around in a car.
Let me know how this exercise goes for you! Next week, I’ll go deeper into this idea of rubato and some additional ways you can think about it. See you then!
Happy practicing! 👋
Kate