Eroica First Movement Exposition Repeat

[Guest]

Seems that most versions of the Eroica, taking their cue from Beethoven's ambivalence on the matter, omit this repeat. I must admit that the simple turn back to the beginning does seem to weaken the structure. I just wondered what other opinions there were on this topic with examples.

[rauschwerk]

Beethoven did vacillate because he was initially worried that the first movement would seem too long with the repeat. In the end, though, he instructed his publishers to include it.

In the hands of conductors who trust the composer's metronome mark, observing the repeat seems fine to me.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sonata Form emerged from much shorter dance-like movements which repeated both halves. Some Mozart Sonata form movements do have both exposition repeats and development/recapitulation repeats (e.g. the last 3 symphonies).

That said, the gradual dropping of exposition repeats, either by composers or conductors, does seem to make better structural sense. I've said this before, but repeating the exposition is a bit like reading the first 3 chapters of a novel again, before moving on to the rest of the book. It wasn't only Beethoven who was ambivalent about it. Brahms regarded the repeat as unnecessary if the audience knew the work already. Dvorak wanted to remove repeats after publication (which was a bit late ). I suspect that Elgar only introduced the exposition repeat in the 3rd Symphony because he thought it otherwise be rather short when compared with his first two symphonies.

[Roehre]

At the other hand, as Mendelssohn had to re-write te score of the Italian from the top of his head as he needed the score to have the parts copied for a planned performance (and the original score was elsewhere), he did include the 1st mvt's repeat, including the lovely transitional bars leading back to the opening of the movement.

[kernelbogey]

We forget - don't we? - that in Beethoven's day, many people would have heard the Eroica only once. Doesn't the repeat make more sense in this context than it does for us, who have heard the symphony dozens or hundreds of times, and can listen to it at the touch of a button? Establishing the theme, tonality etc with a repeat would in the original days have been more important (I humbly suggest).

[Roehre]

We forget - don't we? - that in Beethoven's day, many people would have heard the Eroica only once. Doesn't the repeat make more sense in this context than it does for us, who have heard the symphony dozens or hundreds of times, and can listen to it at the touch of a button? Establishing the theme, tonality etc with a repeat would in the original days have been more important (I humbly suggest).

which is the raison d'etre of the repeat in sonata-form movements at least.

[Lion-of-Vienna]

In my view Beethoven was very clear about his requirements regarding repeats. In the Opus 59 string quartets he has no repeat in the first movement of Quartet No1 but includes both repeats in the corresponding movement of Quartet No2. This surely means that when he writes a repeat into the music he means it. The same can be said about the Trio sections of the scherzos of the symphonies - in some works it is written to be played twice, in other works only once. Why would Beethoven vary his practice regarding repeats if it was not important to him?

[mathias broucek]

"Seems that most versions of the Eroica, taking their cue from Beethoven's ambivalence on the matter, omit this repeat."

Is this true? Many conductors in the 1950s and 1960s didn't take the repeat (although Kleiber did in the mid 1950s) but by the 1980s it was pretty common, surely?

[verismissimo]

In the wrong hands, with the repeat can seem interminable. :)

[EnemyoftheStoat]

In the wrong hands, the whole piece can seem interminable.

[Martin Reynolds]

I have 5 versions of the Eroica: Karajan, Furtwangler, Bohm, Sargent and Kovacevich none of which take the repeat. Mum has a Naxos version which does. For my 50th birthday on 5th November I'm going to the Bridgewater Hall to hear Sir Mark Elder conducting the Halle in this piece. I am full of the most agreeable kind of anticipation. Let's see what happens then.

[rauschwerk]

I have a suspicion that in the LP era the repeat was hardly ever taken purely because then the first and second movements would not fit together on one side. The VPO/Kleiber (which I once had on the Ace of Clubs label) was a case in point, and that was in mono where longer playing times were possible! I can still remember where the side break occurred.

[Martin Reynolds]

I have a suspicion that in the LP era the repeat was hardly ever taken purely because then the first and second movements would not fit together on one side.

My 1961 version with Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has no repeat but has a break in the Marcia Funebre at a point which is a natural break but is infuriating as it's at an important place. I forgot to mention that I have the DVD 'Eroica' which also does not observe the repeat but is by far the best version I own. Stirling work by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique.

[Alison]

Whatever the musicological arguments I simply feel I want the repeat; only a bad performance would make me feel otherwise.

[ostuni]

I must say that I'm not convinced by eA's 'structural sense' argument (#3). Listening to a symphony is a very different experience from reading a novel (where you can flip back through the pages if you forget just what a character did in those 1st 3 chapters); I agree with #6 & #7.

Martin R's recordings are rather 'old school', so I'm not surprised by the lack of repeats. Looking in my score, I see I have 6, of which 2 (Szell, Blomstedt) omit the repeat, and 4 (Harnoncourt, Savall, P Jarvi, Antonini) take it. Rauschwerk's comment on tempi is spot on: Savall and PJarvi take just 15 & 19 seconds longer than Blomstedt, despite repeating 150 bars of music...