BaL 30.12.17 - Mozart: Symphony no. 38 in D, K.504 "Prague"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Do you never read a piece of music and hear it in your head?...or think of a new tune in your head to be whistled, played or written down later?

Does Hamlet need performers? Dostoevsky only needs interpretation for those of us who (like me) don't can't read Russian.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

A few musicians on Desert Island Discs have asked for scores rather than recordings.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

A few musicians on Desert Island Discs have asked for scores rather than recordings.

Yes - I'm sort-of trying (and failing miser ... well, quite happily, actually) to wean myself off recordings and onto scores. Listening to Music Live is one of my greatest pleasures, and recordings have been essential to my learning works that were/are not often performed, and whose scores were/are not easily (or cheaply!) accessible. And Improvisation depends on performance, of course.

But, with Music from the written traditions - or, at least, that which most appeals to me - the score of the work is more than just dots on a page: it's something that I hear as I look at it (in the same way that I hear different voices when I look at the text of a play) - it contains all possible performances. With a work like K504, more than 90% of the work is in those dots (the remainder is in contemporary literature about performance practice, and the recreated sound of the instruments he would have heard) - which leaves enormous scope for imaginative presentation of the score, and I love it it when performances come along which, whilst adhering to the "script", reveal completely different aspects of it that I would never have imagined. But the "adherence" is what's essential for me. And, should some personal or global catastrophe occur that prevents me from hearing performances (Live, broadcast, or recorded) - I'll still have access to the Music.

[french frank]

And, should some personal or global catastrophe occur that prevents me from hearing performances (Live, broadcast, or recorded) - I'll still have access to the Music.

My score-reading lacks your knowledge and expertise, ferney, but I've always felt my enjoyment, or otherwise, of a piece of music is the result - to a great extent - of the performance I'm listening to; the music is actually something different from my immediate hearing and reaction.

But when people hear a piece in their heads (I only have a very limited facility to do this), are they hearing their own performance - or someone else's, or what?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But when people hear a piece in their heads (I only have a very limited facility to do this), are they hearing their own performance - or someone else's, or what?

I wouldn't be surprised if this were different for different people - just as I presume people "hear" different things when they read a novel: some will imagine voices of people they know, others will imagine particular actors ... some might even just see the words and not imagine vocal sounds at all? And everybody will have a different image of descriptions of surroundings, I presume.

My imagined hearing of K504 is something like Bernstein's tempi played by an ensemble such as the Freiburgers. And at the moment I'm familiarising myself with the second-half repeat in the First Movement. How I'd conduct it should I ever be asked, in other words . It's a different matter if I'm reading the score of a work I don't know.

[silvestrione]

I've just purchased and listened to the Danish NCO/Fischer performance, absolutely marvellous. The Norrington (also on order!) is going to have to be soemthing really exceptional to beat that, i feel.

BUT...I don't like the second-half repeats. I don't see the point. Or rather, they undermine the impact of the work. In the first movement, it's always exciting to see what the development does with the material, and then to be delightfully surprised by a subtle new bit in the recapitulation, as with the new continuation of the woodwind part in the first subject....an effect not there when you're expecting it second time round.

And even more in the finale, you just don't expect another D minor outburst once the recap starts...unless you've just heard it a few minutes ago!

[silvestrione]

I've just purchased and listened to the Danish NCO/Fischer performance, absolutely marvellous. The Norrington (also on order!) is going to have to be soemthing really exceptional to beat that, i feel.

BUT...I don't like the second-half repeats. I don't see the point. Or rather, they undermine the impact of the work. In the first movement, it's always exciting to see what the development does with the material, and then to be delightfully surprised by a subtle new bit in the recapitulation, as with the new continuation of the woodwind part in the first subject....an effect not there when you're expecting it second time round.

And even more in the finale, you just don't expect another D minor outburst once the recap starts...unless you've just heard it a few minutes ago!

[Rolmill]

...though you give the impression of being quite keen on repeats

[Barbirollians]

...though you give the impression of being quite keen on repeats

[silvestrione]

Yes that is funny! I thought my computer was not responding, but it was just on a go slow. Apologies

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I've just purchased and listened to the Danish NCO/Fischer performance, absolutely marvellous. The Norrington (also on order!) is going to have to be soemthing really exceptional to beat that, i feel.

BUT...I don't like the second-half repeats. I don't see the point. Or rather, they undermine the impact of the work. In the first movement, it's always exciting to see what the development does with the material, and then to be delightfully surprised by a subtle new bit in the recapitulation, as with the new continuation of the woodwind part in the first subject....an effect not there when you're expecting it second time round.

And even more in the finale, you just don't expect another D minor outburst once the recap starts...unless you've just heard it a few minutes ago!

It's all a throwback to the binary minuet, but simply doesn't work in sonata form movements, for the reasons you've given, plus the illogical abrupt key chains involved.

[french frank]

It's all a throwback to the binary minuet, but simply doesn't work in sonata form movements, for the reasons you've given, plus the illogical abrupt key chains involved.

But can you explain why it doesn't work for you while others find the repeat essential?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's all a throwback to the binary minuet, but simply doesn't work in sonata form movements, for the reasons you've given, plus the illogical abrupt key chains involved.

Why do you call them "illogical"? (And I'm puzzled by silve's "you just don't expect another D minor outburst once the recap starts...unless you've just heard it a few minutes ago".


So, having heard the D minor chord at the start of the Development, "you" do expect it just two minutes later after the Recap has finished for the first time?
Brainstorm there - the opening of the Devlt is A major, of course - but everything heard in the Develt/Recap is only two minutes away from its repetition.

(2mins 50" - 4mins 432 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2PIW13pM7I

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Why do you call them "illogical"? (And I'm puzzled by silve's "you just don't expect another D minor outburst once the recap starts...unless you've just heard it a few minutes ago". So, having heard the D minor chord at the start of the Development, "you" do expect it just two minutes later after the Recap has finished for the first time? (2mins 50" - 4mins 432 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2PIW13pM7I

The movement has effectively ended, like this, the sonata for argument having been fully processed:-



Time to settle down for the slow movement, but, hey, no, hang on, someone's dragged the stylus back to the middle of the movement. We're hearing this:-



which we've already heard. We were listening first time, so there's absolutely no need. Plus the jump-cut doesn't really work to go back to something that was really intended to be preceded by this:-



where the key is appropriate.

Yes, I know it's Mozart, and therefore beyond criticism. Even though I consider repeating a development section when the movement (or even the whole symphony) is effectively over, it does work much better when the composer does so with 1st time bars, as Mozart does in the finale of K.551, where there is still the climax of the four-and-a-half-part counterpoint of the coda still to come.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

So - when you were agreeing with silve about how particularly "wrong" the second-half repeat is in the finale, you illustrate this with the First movement? And by suggesting that ending a Sonata Form (of a work in D major) in the Dominant? (Was your first illustration meant to have been the D major ending of the Movement, not the ending of the Exposition?)

I - V - I - V - V - I - V - I

What's "illogical" and/or "abrupt" about those "key chains"?