Dramatic Developments...

[Roehre]

- my C90 SA-X tape (remember them?)

I still use them from time to time

[Serial_Apologist]

I still use them from time to time

Me too, Roehr! The TDKs I've mainly bought over 25 + years have lasted remarkably well, even with repeat playings - probably because they've been kept in reasonable conditions - but I'm now down to my last few. a) I don't find much on R3 worth recording anymore ; b) my recorded collection is pretty much complete for the inclusiveness pov; and c) the digital switchover is soon to arrive.

[jayne lee wilson]

Dare one ask for chapter-and-verse about Brahms on repeats, EA?

But there's a point I keep forgetting to make...

which is, we're discussing all this on the far side of the musical landslide called "recordings"!
If repeats were truly redundant, boring and unnecessary presumably we'd have all long since condemned them, and recordings would largely do without them (or program them, or expositions, on an extra track) - performances too, as familiarity would be assumed, and the HIPS set would be remarkable for reintroducing REPEATS!... and repeats of developments would seem insane.

So why do some of us need them? Brahms Symphony No.1 (i) is a good example of a movement where the repeat is rarely observed but, coming after a profoundly weighty slow introduction, its inclusion radically alters the balance and emotional heft of the movement as it careers into that tremendous climax at the development's end, and the dramatic conclusion to the movement, so altered from the (repeated!) exposition. Recordings have allowed us to savour symphonic music, to better appreciate how its structures work - and if the essential contrast is that between statement and development then the more intense the contrast between them the clearer the musical meaning will be. (Which is why I have such a problem with second-half repeats).

It may be mere historical accident or habit that has led to repeats being more generally included in both performances and recordings recently, but the resulting musical satisfaction suggests something beyond mere familiarisation is at work.

The truth may ultimately lie in metaphysics, mysterious and inexplicable, but...

"Within this principle of blemished air
We hear a God who isn't there..."
(Peter Porter)

...only Brahms was the one who said the repeats in his expositions were not really necessary when the listeners knwe the works.
Which suggests that the repeat was there only knock the themes into the listeners' heads before doing something interesting with the music in the development section.
A kind of brainwashing, I suppose.

[Pabmusic]

Dare one ask for chapter-and-verse about Brahms on repeats, EA?

Perhaps this may help. Brahms wrote exposition repeats in symphonies 1-3, but not in 4. He is known to have been at least ambivalent about repeats, and so we can ask whether the repeats in 1-3 are there just for show, or whether he intended that they should add to the experience. There is a plausible case for leaving out the repeat in no. 1, summed up by Norman del Mar in Conducting Brahms [OUP 1993]:

"It is a mistake to take the repeat; the first-time bars are perfunctory and the homogeneity of the movement is too great to require so long and mechanical a restatement. It is to new experiences that the fervour of bars 185-8 is leading and to the sudden B major glowing brightness of the second-time bars".

I think he has a point (and I am always very reluctant to omit repeats). Interestingly, his view of no. 2 is different:

"Until recently the repeat in this symphony, as in the C minor, was never observed, so that the touchingly lovely first-time bars have taken on the quality of a discovery. There is much to be said therefore for restoring them if the programme's overall length and structure will permit..."

No. 3 is more straightforward. Omit the repeat and the movement seems a bit short, especially next to the substantial second movement (a phenomenon shared with the New World).

Dvorak, who also disliked exposition repeats, dispensed with them in the 7th and 8th symphonies, but used one in the 9th. This (to me, at least) has the force of a direct order: "I could have left this out altogether, as I did in the last two, but I've written it here, so play it". Likewise, Elgar intended one for the 3rd symphony (it's clearly marked in the sketches) where he'd not had one in either of the two completed ones, so I think the same should apply to Payne's marvellous realisation.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Likewise, Elgar intended one for the 3rd symphony (it's clearly marked in the sketches) where he'd not had one in either of the two completed ones, so I think the same should apply to Payne's marvellous realisation.

No-one is a bigger Elgar fand than I am, but I do believe that Elgar only put in that repeat because he had so little material. He had simply run out of ideas. Nearly all the symphony's melodic material is recycled from old sketches and even earlier works. Having said that, Anthony Payne turned these sketches into something quite brilliant. But we've been here before...

[Pabmusic]

...Elgar only put in that repeat because he had so little material. He had simply run out of ideas. Nearly all the symphony's melodic material is recycled from old sketches and even earlier works...

I don't follow you. Having an exposition repeat does not make up for not having enough material; it just means that you hear some of the material you have got twice. Likewise, the recycling of material cannot be compensated for by repeating the exposition.

Actually, if we are to believe contemporary accounts, Elgar did have enough material, since he played the symphony right through more than once. He just didn't write it down. Here's Fred Gaisberg of EMI, for whom Elgar played the work on 27 August 1933:

"The whole work strikes me as youthful and fresh - 100% Elgar without a trace of decay...The work is complete as far as structure & design..."

The truth was that it was (more or less) complete in Elgar's head - alas not on paper.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

...only Brahms was the one who said the repeats in his expositions were not really necessary when the listeners knwe the works.

Where? When? And in what circumstances?

Brahms was also the one who "said" that the repeats should be done.
Where? In the scores.
When? Every time he marks them to be repeated.
In what circumstances? When he was writing them.