Play it again, Sam

[rauschwerk]

Are you telling the spirit of Mackerras that he got it wrong in a given Mozart minuet?

No, of course not. He liked it one way and I like it another. I wish we could move this discussion away from dogma and talk about personal preferences. As a home listener, I have the right to exercise mine. Nobody here has yet persuaded me that it's always correct to observe all the repeats in minuets and trios, or shown me evidence that that is what Haydn and Mozart would have done.

As far as I am concerned, a repeat marks says to the performer, "If you wish to make a repeat, this is where you go back from and that is where you go back to (if not the beginning)." Omitting a repeat therefore does not have the same significance as the wilful misreading of other aspects of a text.

As for Brahms, does not an exposition repeat in the first movement of Symphony 1 result in an uncomfortable lurch at the join? It does to my ears, and I have never got used to it.

[MrGongGong]

As far as I am concerned, a repeat marks says to the performer, "If you wish to make a repeat, this is where you go back from and that is where you go back to (if not the beginning)." Omitting a repeat therefore does not have the same significance as the wilful misreading of other aspects of a text.

not for Saite or La Monte Young
If I write a repeat in a piece it's because I want people to hear the material more than once
If I write a piece where the order of materials can be chosen by the performer then I would tend to make that explicit in the score

having said this i'm all in favour of people making alternative versions of music (and Dickens !!)

[rauschwerk]

not for Saite or La Monte Young

By 'Saite' I presume you mean 'Satie'. As for the second, I don't expect to have the pleasure of performing any music by that esteemed gentleman.

If I write a repeat in a piece it's because I want people to hear the material more than once
If I write a piece where the order of materials can be chosen by the performer then I would tend to make that explicit in the score

Yes, but that's 20th/21st century practice. What did an 18th century composer mean?

having said this i'm all in favour of people making alternative versions of music (and Dickens !!)

Good.

[salymap]

Surely 'Da Capo' doesn't mean 'do this if you want to'.

[Pabmusic]

Surely 'Da Capo' doesn't mean 'do this if you want to'.

No it doesn't - and neither do the dots. They're all shorthand for "play this passage again" - a clear instruction - so we need to justify it whenever we omit repeats.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wish we could move this discussion away from dogma and talk about personal preferences.

Well, - but isn't that one of those irregular verbs: "I have a personal preference, You have wierd tastes, S/he is dogmatic"?

As for Brahms, does not an exposition repeat in the first movement of Symphony 1 result in an uncomfortable lurch at the join? It does to my ears, and I have never got used to it.

Yes. That's partly why I love it - nothing worse (personal preference here!) than getting "comfortable" too soon!

In fact, I might take a leaf from your book and put two of Karajan's recordings onto Audacity and splice an Expo repeat onto it! (Where to get the two "Prima volta" bars from, though?)

Best Wishes

[vinteuil]

. What did an 18th century composer mean?



.

Yes - but as I indicated above (#4), the composer will at least in part have had in mind when composing what the listening experience of his audience would be - which of course in the 18th century wd have been radically different from what ours is now...

altho' I wd begin from a position of always trying to observe the composer's intentions it is also worth while considering what the expected listening experience would be too. When the works were first composed, most people at that time hearing a Mozart - Haydn - Beethoven symphony - piano concerto - quartet etc wd be lucky to hear them once or twice, very seldom more often. And so a composer may well have needed to repeat a subject to establish it firmly enough in the noddles of the audience. We now, of course, thro' concerts and recordings and scores, hear the works endlessly and 'know' them in a way that wd have been unimaginable to their composers. So the need to establish a subject 'memorably' is not the issue it was for the original composer, and perhaps the sensitive performer can reflect this...

[Flosshilde]

Perhaps composers now should develop a new marking - or even two new markings; one to indicate 'you must repeat this passage', and another to indicate 'you can repeat this passage if you wish'. It might not help with music from the past, but could be a great help for future performers of new music.

I wonder if recordings of composers performing their own music would be of any help? WE have recordings going back getting on for 100 years; if composers observe the repeats in their own music surely that would give an indication of their expectations & wishes? To therefore ignore the repeats would be somewhat presumptuous (basically saying 'I know better than the composer')

[rauschwerk]

In fact, I might take a leaf from your book and put two of Karajan's recordings onto Audacity and splice an Expo repeat onto it! (Where to get the two "Prima volta" bars from, though?)
Best Wishes

Tricky one, that! Those bars are musically identical with the first two bars of the Allegro but differently scored. Also the reverb from the last notes before the repeat will be chopped off.

[aeolium]

I think there's some force to vinteuil's argument (msg 4 and quoted msg 37) about the repeat being used in the C18 to allow listeners to have a second chance to hear material in what was then new music, which might not be heard again - something that is now a redundant requirement. Having said that, I prefer to hear repeats (where indicated) in classical music - and especially in the first movement of Schubert's last sonata where he has written music linking to the repeat. In Friedrich Gulda's recording of 10 Mozart sonatas ('The Gulda Mozart Tapes') every repeat is observed but with such vivid and eloquent playing that it never sounds simply mechanical or predictable.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder if recordings of composers performing their own music would be of any help? WE have recordings going back getting on for 100 years; if composers observe the repeats in their own music surely that would give an indication of their expectations & wishes? To therefore ignore the repeats would be somewhat presumptuous (basically saying 'I know better than the composer')

There are problems here, too: earlier recordings (up to the LP era) had a limited time-span, and performers often cut material (not just repeats) to fit the sides! "Taped" radio performances would be better, but even here Music might be "trimmed" to fit the schedules, or the nerves of a composer who was a less-than-fully-accomplished performer.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Surely 'Da Capo' doesn't mean 'do this if you want to'.

To be a bad host for a brief moment and go stightly off topic, it is interesting to note what Mozart does to the aria "Why do the Nations..." in his arrangement of Handel's Messiah. Handel has two distinct sections, played one afterr the other, but Mozart turns it into a Da Capo aria, which sounds so "right", making me wonder whether Handel had simply forgotten to write in the D.C. indication.

Just to clear things up, I am generally in favour of repeats being observed - just not in sonata form movements. (I wish Hornspieler were around to defend me on this one. )

[Flosshilde]

I think there's some force to vinteuil's argument (msg 4 and quoted msg 37) about the repeat being used in the C18 to allow listeners to have a second chance to hear material in what was then new music, which might not be heard again

I'm not sure if I'm convinced by this - why that particular bit of the composition? Are the sections marked as repeat usually especially novel or difficult to take in on first hearing? Or perhaps it was a section the composer was especially pleased with, & wanted to 'play it again'?

In Friedrich Gulda's recording of 10 Mozart sonatas ('The Gulda Mozart Tapes') every repeat is observed but with such vivid and eloquent playing that it never sounds simply mechanical or predictable.

Well, surely that's the point - the passage is repeated for emphasis, & shouldn't be played in exactly the same way as it was at first. If I'm making a speech, or discussing something with someone, & want to emphasise a point, I might repeat it, but perhaps slightly more slowly, or in a different tone of voice.

[jayne lee wilson]

I don't think it's dogmatic to stand up for performers and producers who, most especially in classical recordings, make their choices from the score with the greatest care and artistic sensitivity. If you were conducting the Mozart, I couldn't possibly tell you which repeats to observe, that would be up to you. But altering the creative choices made on a recording is, for me, a step too far. I feel you keep avoiding this point, but I accept I'm almost on my own in this discussion!

I also think, JS, that calling recordings mere mechanical reproductions does a huge disservice to so many sonic documents created with great love and dedication over several decades! The sheer amount of music available now, and the ease with which you can adapt it to your own pleasure, is for me an adulteration, since it always puts you, the listener, in the foreground with your preferences.

Isn't it better to be shaken by entering into someone else's vision, performer and composer alike?
Sometimes being forced to see things differently, rather than saying, "I'll do it my way!"

No, of course not. He liked it one way and I like it another. I wish we could move this discussion away from dogma and talk about personal preferences. As a home listener, I have the right to exercise mine. Nobody here has yet persuaded me that it's always correct to observe all the repeats in minuets and trios, or shown me evidence that that is what Haydn and Mozart would have done.

As far as I am concerned, a repeat marks says to the performer, "If you wish to make a repeat, this is where you go back from and that is where you go back to (if not the beginning)." Omitting a repeat therefore does not have the same significance as the wilful misreading of other aspects of a text.

As for Brahms, does not an exposition repeat in the first movement of Symphony 1 result in an uncomfortable lurch at the join? It does to my ears, and I have never got used to it.

[aeolium]

I'm not sure if I'm convinced by this - why that particular bit of the composition? Are the sections marked as repeat usually especially novel or difficult to take in on first hearing? Or perhaps it was a section the composer was especially pleased with, & wanted to 'play it again'?

Well, vinteuil was talking about a musical subject that the composer may have been trying to establish 'memorably'. Listening to the first movement of Mozart's C major sonata K330 in the Gulda recording, all the material is repeated (in two sections, exposition and development/coda) - and that material itself contains repeated motifs and phrases. Perhaps it was for a particularly inattentive audience - I don't really know.

I think the greater familiarity of today's audiences with classical works was also a factor in Brendel's reluctance to observe all marked repeats.