The Short

Ex. 11.11. Mozart, Rondo K. 511
TYPE OF TEMPO MODIFICATION 405
passage illustrating how he might perhaps have envisaged the use of the technique at moments of particular
expressiveness (Ex. 11.12.)
On occasion, nineteenth-century composers incorporated the stylized, syncopated tempo rubato into their music.
Good examples are to be found in Liszt's Canzona napolitana, in which for the first sixteen bars the right hand is a
semiquaver behind the left (Ex. 11.13,) and the fourth piece from Schumann's Noveletten op. 21, where a theme is
varied in this way on its repetition (Ex. 11.14.) Yet, despite the neat and convenient notation of tempo rubato by many
writers as simple syncopation or displaced accent, it seems clear that rhythmic displacement as practised by many of
the best players and singers was, as Baillot's caveat suggests, considerably more complex. Perhaps the most subtle
attempts to notÄte tempo rubato are to be found in the works of Chopin, who was noted for his mastery of the type
of keyboard tempo rubato, practised by Mozart, in which the left hand remained firmly in time while the right hand
anticipated or retarded the notes of the melody. Chopin employed intricate, carefully elaborated notation to convey the
free and improvisatory impression that his performances conveyed; indeed he was criticized in a Parisian review of his
Nocturnes op. 15 in 1834 for his ‘affectation’ in writing his music ‘almost as it should be played’; the reviewer went on
to remark that, in any case, it was not possible to notate adequately ‘this swaying, languid, groping style, this style which
no known arrangement of note values can well express’. 794 Since Chopin
794 Le Pianiste, 1/5 (Mar. 1834), 78, cited in Richard Hudson, Stolen Time: A History of Tempo Rubato (Oxford, 1994), 190.