Bal 8.02.20/13.6.20 - Mozart: Symphony no. 39 in E flat K.543

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  • Felix the Gnat
    Banned
    • Jun 2019
    • 136

    #46
    Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View Post
    You are not alone. I think that when you get to the end, it's the best time to stop. An ugly abrupt gear change to the middle of the work never seems to me to be a great idea at all, whatever the reason:-
    "The composer wrote it, so it should be played",
    "The composer needed to full a time slot, so played the same bit again",
    "They did it in old minuets, so logically they should do the same in symphonic movements",
    "Maybe the audience wasn't listening properly the first time around",
    "It's such great music that it deserves to be played again".

    Personally, I think first half (exposition) repeats are often better omitted. Beethoven dropped them in his later works, and they became increasingly less common in the 19th century, with Brahms and Dvorak expressing a preference for not playing repeats they'd actually written themselves.

    But then, I'm a heretic.
    Having bold ideas that run against the popular grain, or thinking in a way that others might not be ready for, doesn't make you a heretic.

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    • Eine Alpensinfonie
      Host
      • Nov 2010
      • 20575

      #47
      Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
      You've missed out "Because the Music sounds better with the repeats".
      Well I sort of did, with the last on the list.

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      • ferneyhoughgeliebte
        Gone fishin'
        • Sep 2011
        • 30163

        #48
        Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View Post
        Well I sort of did, with the last on the list.
        I don't think so - I'd say the structural balance "demands" the repeats, rather than merely "deserves" them. Just stopping after the first time sounds incomplete - it hasn't "reached the end" until after the second playing.

        Still - plenty of choice for whichever approach.
        [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

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        • Eine Alpensinfonie
          Host
          • Nov 2010
          • 20575

          #49
          Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
          I don't think so - I'd say the structural balance "demands" the repeats, rather than merely "deserves" them. Just stopping after the first time sounds incomplete - it hasn't "reached the end" until after the second playing.
          But isn't this being a little "precious", in that composers themselves were not always rigid?

          There are examples of composers revising works and changing their minds about repeats. Also, we as listeners get used to what we have heard and that becomes almost set in stone. Unfinished symphonies by Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler become frozen in the form they were left in, and in the eyes of some, it is sacrilegious to do otherwise. With repeats, we do at least know the composer actually wrote them, but do we know whether Mozart would always have observed his own repeats in the 2nd movement of K.550, resulting in a 15 minute slow movement?

          On the other hand, I was delighted when Britten's recording of Mozart's 40th did include all the repeats, because it was fascinating to hear it played in this way. It was the same with Solti's Beethoven symphony cycle. Solti liked the concept, but said one or two of the repeats in the scherzo of the 7th symphony seemed excessive, and he only included them to be 100% consistent.

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          • ferneyhoughgeliebte
            Gone fishin'
            • Sep 2011
            • 30163

            #50
            Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View Post
            But isn't this being a little "precious", in that composers themselves were not always rigid?
            You'd prefer us to be a little "cheap"?

            Does the work sound better with or without the repeats? I cannot think of a work that, having known for many years done in the late 19th Century abridged way, didn't sound much more exciting and satisfying to me when the composer's designated repeats were observed. Solti's opinions are of no real interest (as opposed to "curiosity") to me - Beethoven was an infinitely greater Musical thinker than he was. Would Mozart have always observed his own repeats in K550? Of course he would, if he wanted the work to be presented in its best light. Why do you question this?
            [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

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            • cloughie
              Full Member
              • Dec 2011
              • 22205

              #51
              I like repeats not least because those little links which take them back are interesting and if it is a work that I like then there are a few more minutes of listening!

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              • Eine Alpensinfonie
                Host
                • Nov 2010
                • 20575

                #52
                Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
                Would Mozart have always observed his own repeats in K550? Of course he would, if he wanted the work to be presented in its best light. Why do you question this?
                Mozart was known to be very flexible. Although it hurts me to say it, he would play individual movements of a symphony in isolation - note the description of the premiere of his Paris Symphony in a letter to his father. When he was commissioned to compose two flute concertos and ran out of time, he simply took his oboe concerto and bumped it up a tone. (You could call that "cheap", but I would call it expediency.) Repeats could be used to extend a work's length when necessary.

                Elgar didn't repeat the expositions in his two completed symphonies, but he did in the draft of his 3rd. Maybe I'm being cynical, but in this case, I suspect that EE did so because by this stage his creativity wasn't quite up to what it had been in earlier years, so padding it out with a repeat was an option worth following. Expediency!

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                • ferneyhoughgeliebte
                  Gone fishin'
                  • Sep 2011
                  • 30163

                  #53
                  Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Post
                  Would Mozart have always observed his own repeats in K550? Of course he would, if he wanted the work to be presented in its best light. Why do you question this?
                  The question remains.
                  [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

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                  • Felix the Gnat
                    Banned
                    • Jun 2019
                    • 136

                    #54
                    Don't want to get involved in the detail of this line of discussion, I'm a bit out of my depth, but I think I'm with Eine Alpensinfonie on this one. I was at a performance of 39 a few years ago and there were no repeats. It was marvellous. The proof of the pudding is in the eating - the audience loved it and applauded loudly at the end of the first movement. Who's right, the punter or the talking heads? I rest my case.

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                    • cloughie
                      Full Member
                      • Dec 2011
                      • 22205

                      #55
                      Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View Post
                      Mozart was known to be very flexible. Although it hurts me to say it, he would play individual movements of a symphony in isolation - note the description of the premiere of his Paris Symphony in a letter to his father. When he was commissioned to compose two flute concertos and ran out of time, he simply took his oboe concerto and bumped it up a tone. (You could call that "cheap", but I would call it expediency.) Repeats could be used to extend a work's length when necessary.

                      Elgar didn't repeat the expositions in his two completed symphonies, but he did in the draft of his 3rd. Maybe I'm being cynical, but in this case, I suspect that EE did so because by this stage his creativity wasn't quite up to what it had been in earlier years, so padding it out with a repeat was an option worth following. Expediency!
                      ...and he didn’t finish the 3rd which has become a real Paine!

                      Comment

                      • ferneyhoughgeliebte
                        Gone fishin'
                        • Sep 2011
                        • 30163

                        #56
                        Originally posted by Felix The Gnat View Post
                        Don't want to get involved in the detail of this line of discussion, I'm a bit out of my depth, but I think I'm with Eine Alpensinfonie on this one. I was at a performance of 39 a few years ago and there were no repeats. It was marvellous. The proof of the pudding is in the eating - the audience loved it and applauded loudly at the end of the first movement. Who's right, the punter or the talking heads? I rest my case.
                        I don't think that we should bring David Byrne into this - that'll just lead us on the road to nowhere. But, as I said earlier, the punters have plenty of choices on offer - and it's not as if performances of this work are once in a lifetime events, so there's no need to stay up late arguing about this.
                        [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

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                        • Edgy 2
                          Guest
                          • Jan 2019
                          • 2035

                          #57
                          I don’t understand why if a composer asks for repeats this isn’t observed without question.
                          And music as good as Mozart 39,why wouldn’t you want to hear big chunks of it more than once ?
                          “Music is the best means we have of digesting time." — Igor Stravinsky

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                          • Petrushka
                            Full Member
                            • Nov 2010
                            • 12329

                            #58
                            Originally posted by Edgy 2 View Post
                            I don’t understand why if a composer asks for repeats this isn’t observed without question.
                            Is Mozart's own handwritten score in existence? I can't find any mention online after a rudimentary search and while I'm only an interested punter and not a musicologist, I'd be intrigued to know what it has to say.
                            "The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink

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                            • jayne lee wilson
                              Banned
                              • Jul 2011
                              • 10711

                              #59
                              I always want the exposition repeats in classical symphonies; a sonata structure without its repeat always feels unbalanced to me now, as if diluting the essential statement/development contrast. There is an almost metaphysical sense of establishing how the world is, before adventuring away and finding an unusual way home. Then the "everything has changed, nothing has changed" ***, sense of the recap/coda.....
                              (***Endlessly useful title, Mr Barrett...rather like Mandy Rice Davies' would-say-that-wouldn't-he...)

                              There's also the scarcely mentioned point of the sheer variety in the balance of such contrasts: take Schubert's first two symphonies, where the expositions are remarkable lengthy elaborate and inventive, but the developments extremely brief; almost anti-developments of a kind Mozart often offers. So you lose track of the movement's structure if that repeat is omitted, it can feel like endless development and quite hard to follow. Not to mention cases where the composer requests the omission explicitly - Mozart 35.

                              Then there are those landmark works which use the expectation of a repeat to dive off into a very inventive development without one: Beethoven Op.59/1, Brahms 4, Mahler 4.... then take Mahler 6, so designedly a "classical symphony" throughout, whose concept is badly damaged by the 1st movement repeat's omission.
                              If conductors nearly always omitted repeats, these works would lose some of their vital structural force and point.

                              As for the 2ndhalf repeats, these have become much more frequent in the recent Haydn series from Thomas Fey and Giovanni Antonini; I always enjoy them, and note that they are carefully chosen: the conductor doesn't include them in every work, which surely any listener should respect.
                              These may seem harder to justify musically or metaphysically (just give me time, I'm sure I'll come up with something).... but one way out of this endless but still stimulating debate would be to accept a given composer's/performer's choices, surely.

                              The first time I heard a substantial, epoch-making set of great symphonies with every repeat was Harnoncourt's CMW set of the Paris Symphonies, which attain a uniquely epic yet earthy grandeur that no other set has matched, (though many are the beloved favourites...). Like Massive Attack's
                              Big Wheel there's a profound sense of the World's Endless Turning.... always going on, even when you're asleep...

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                              • pastoralguy
                                Full Member
                                • Nov 2010
                                • 7816

                                #60
                                You do realise that playing repeats eats into musician's pub going time?!

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