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(Received: February 2008; accepted: May 2008)
Abstract: 'Parlando-rubato' rhythm in Bartók's thinking, does not mean complete rhythmic freedom; it is not necessarily accompanied by rubato tempi or rubato modes of interpretation. Musical declamation approximating to the rhythm of speech can be regulated by strict metrical structures, even if these do not follow a regular beat. Bartók's writings dealing with the parlando phenomenon support the complexity and variability of 'parlando-rubato' as folk rhythms and performing practices. It was precisely the manifold nature of the parlando-rubato rhythm that enabled it to become the most important rhythmic foundation for musical declamation in Bluebeard's Castle. The different level of rhythmic freedom of the characters not only reveal the contrast between their characteristic parlando types but also communicate their own personal rhythmic profile. The main aim of this study is to highlight those aspects of this musical phenomenon which greatly contributed to the 20th-century renewal and emancipation of rhythm while not eliminating rhythmic patterns based on bars.
Keywords: Béla Bartók, rhythm, parlando-rubato, Bluebeard's Castle
Fundamentally, Bartók classified the rhythm of folk music into two groups, denoting the character of both tempo and performance, namely 'parlando-rubato' and 'tempo giusto'. In his editions of folk music, the use of the latter term is more clear-cut. As he explains in the fragmentary draft for his fourth Harvard lecture, it refers textually to the character of regularly ordered melodies which generally follow 2/4 time.1 From Olga Szalay's table summarizing Kodály's study on folk music notation in connection with performance practice,2 we may conclude that Bartók was the first to use the term 'tempo giusto' in printed collections of folk melodies. This was in his study on the melodies of Hungarian soldier's songs (1918),3 where he used it to replace the phrases 'dance step', 'taut rhythm', and 'stable rhythm', which had been in use before. The 'parlando' instruction had first appeared above a folk song much earlier, in 1911, once again in a work by Bartók: his paper on the folklore of instrumental music in Hungary.4 The 'rubato' instruction, while principally used for instrumental melodies, also occurs in Bartók's very first publication on folk music, accompanying the 'Burián káplár' melody in his Székely balladák.5 It presumably signals a completely unrestricted manner of performance...