Tempo Rubato - "Accompaniment Yields/adjusts To Melody"

"Accompaniment Yields/adjusts To Melody"

Dictionary definitions of musical concepts (such as rubato), may sometimes cause misinterpretations – often because of explanations that disregard artistic musical expression, or fail to recognize artistic musical expression as the actual source of the concept discussed. Concerning the type of rubato, in which the accompaniment is kept regular, it must therefore be mentioned that this does not refer to absolute strict regularity: the accompaniment does still give full regard to the melody (often singer or soloist) and yields tempo where necessary. It is critically viewed, when the accompaniment is just played absolutely regularly and with complete disregard for the melody:

It is amusing to note that even some serious persons express the idea that in tempo rubato "the right hand may use a certain freedom while the left hand must' keep strict time." (See Frederick Niecks' Life of Chopin, II, p. 101.) A nice sort of music would result from such playing ! Something like the singing of a good vocalist accompanied by a poor blockhead who hammers away in strict time without yielding to the singer who, in sheer despair, must renounce all artistic expression. nothing in general can be more disagreeable than this species of brilliant accompaniment, where the voice is only considered as an accessory and where the accompanier, without regarding the taste, feeling, compass, or style of the singer, the pathos of the air, or sense of the words, either mechanically runs though the prescribed solemnity of the adagio, with the one two three precision of the metronome, or rattles away without mercy through the allegro whenever an occasion presents itself for the luxuriant ad libitum introduction of turns, variations, and embellishments. —Almack's revisited: or, Herbert Milton (1828) by Charles White) Some people, evidently led by laudable principle of equity, while insisting on the fact of stolen time, pretend that what is stolen ought to be restored. The value of notes diminished in one period through accelerando, cannot always be restored in another by ritardando. What is lost is lost. a Metronome is apt to kill the finer Time-sense implied by Rubato.

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