Laurence Sherwood wrote:

>Bill Blank indicated "rubato" was the word he was seeking, whereas I had
>thought Len Feshkens came up with a good answer ("ad libitum", which
>probably is not Italian).   Could someone describe how the two terms
>differ?  Are they in any sense interchangeable?

"ad libitum" is LATIN (ancient Rome and stuff). It means "do something
as you wish", for example "cadenza ad libitum" means "do the cadenza
as you wish", i.e. non measured and so on (add or remove time, pause,
expression etc.). RUBATO, which is an italian word, literally means
STEALED, steal the rhythm, alter it eating progressively or steadily a
bit of the time in the phrase. They are not interchangeable, they means
totally different things.  Regards

Fabio Hauptstueck