Paert songs (and the Pärt COTW generally...)

[vinteuil]

... I imagine in Mozart's day most audiences wd be lucky to hear any of the symphonies once, rarely more often. In which context, repeats, development sections etc provide material for the brain to grasp what's going on. Subsequent generations had the chance to hear the works more often ; we now hear them over and over again in ways unimaginable to the composer or his first audiences. Hence, perhaps, the feeling that some parts of the works are superfetatory.

[Roehre]

Really? That's more surprising, given Mahler's own sense of what constituted the "tradition" to which he felt he belonged.....

A recollection of Webern's (see Moldenhauer p.75)

[Nick Armstrong]

... I imagine in Mozart's day most audiences wd be lucky to hear any of the symphonies once, rarely more often. In which context, repeats, development sections etc provide material for the brain to grasp what's going on. Subsequent generations had the chance to hear the works more often ; we now hear them over and over again in ways unimaginable to the composer or his first audiences. Hence, perhaps, the feeling that some parts of the works are superfetatory.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... I imagine in Mozart's day most audiences wd be lucky to hear any of the symphonies once, rarely more often. In which context, repeats, development sections etc provide material for the brain to grasp what's going on. Subsequent generations had the chance to hear the works more often ; we now hear them over and over again in ways unimaginable to the composer or his first audiences. Hence, perhaps, the feeling that some parts of the works are superfetatory.

Yes - but it's this very familiarity which enables us to discern patterns and relationships that might have escaped those listeners who did not have access to (piano reductions of) the scores. We get the architecture - the way that the first movement "in" (say) C major spends so much time "away from home" - and can become aware that other features are afoot than thematicism - that what might seem on fifth hearing as a rather redundant repetition of a melodic/motivic fragment becomes (on twelfth hearing ) rather an important moment in the progress both from and back to the central Tonality. With this further appreciation of other Musical aspects/parameters than "the melodies", Mozart's (and Haydn's/Beethoven's/Schubert's) skill as a composer becomes ever more awe-inspiring.

[Flay]

I thought it outstayed its welcome a long long time before it took its leave!

I agree it was ten minutes too long.

I confess that I was decorating at the time so was already watching paint dry...

[Nick Armstrong]

I agree it was ten minutes too long.

I confess that I was decorating at the time so was already watching paint dry...

You realise it's under 11 minutes long ?

[Flay]

You realise it's under 11 minutes long ?

Yes!

[Nick Armstrong]

Yes!