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The June 2010 issues of American Music Teacher and Clavier Companion both featured several articles about Frederick Chopin in honor of his bicentennial. These informative pieces were filled with interesting insights into Chopin's life, music and teaching style. Surprisingly, none of these articles addressed a particular musical issue that has become strongly associated with Chopin - the issue of rubato. In fact, the only sentence in both journals that even mentioned rubato as it relates to Chopin was inaccurate.1 Contrary to what was stated in the AMT article, Chopin was not the "first composer in history" to write tempo rubato in his scores.
Chopin actually never wrote the phrase "tempo rubato" in his music, but rather just indicated "rubato" by itself, and rubato indications had been used in keyboard music as early as the late 18th century.2
It is tempting to avoid the matter of rubato when talking about Chopin since it is an extremely complicated topic based on inconclusive, and sometimes even contradictory, research. Nevertheless, some basic observations can be made about Chopin's rubato that may inform our performance practice as well as our teaching. In his 1994 book, Stolen Time, Richard Hudson endeavors to trace the history and development of rubato in Western art music, and he includes a wonderfully informative chapter discussing rubato as it applies to Chopin's music.3 His findings support many of the following observations.
Rubato In Chopin's Performances
It would be easy to determine how to play Chopin's music if we knew exactly how Chopin himself played his own music. Unfortunately, there are conflicting accounts of Chopin as a performer. Observers such as Hector Berlioz noted that Chopin "pushed rhythmic freedom much too far" and "simply could not play in strict time," while Charles Salaman described "how precise he was in the matter of time, accent, and rhythm."4 Thus, it is hard to draw any conclusions based on Chopin's performance style.
Rubato In Chopin's Music