With Mozart, if the sans-repeat No. 34 seems to look ahead to Beethoven 9, why are the repeats indicated in 36, and 38-41, where the exposition is far longer? Why omit it here (and in Nos. 31, 33 and 35) but then reinstate it? This surely indicates a very deliberate, and meaningful, creative choice.
With Brahms, No.4 (i) makes as if to repeat the 1st movement expo, but then dives off into the most eventful of all his developments. This is only so meaningful in the context of his first three symphonies - in all of which, the repeat is indicated -and Brahms expects it to be observed.
Similar manoeuvres can be observed in Beethoven Op 59/1 and Mahler's 4th. Mere unfamiliarity of material seems an impossibly shallow reason for composers of such complex masterpieces to mark such repeats; they were working with the background and foreground of classical forms, the expectation/contradiction of the form and its individual treatment in each work. If repeats are omitted arbitrarily, a rich layer of meaning is lost; the crucial statement/development contrast/conflict becomes diluted. (Mozart's Prague Symphony seems to invoke the recurring ritornello against the sonata-repeat in its 1st movement).
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It does seem strange that the concept of the varied repeat never became established in the Symphonic works of the classical or Romantic era (Franck's D Minor a rare exception). Especially given its very prevalence in concerto-sonata forms. There is little evidence for "composers gradually dropping" repeats in the 19th Century. In the 20thC the increasingly organic, developmentally eventful and complex 1st movement statements/structures evolved away from the repeat, as the statement/development contrast became more blurred; and symphonic architecture far more varied (e.g continuous or single-movement eg Nielsen 4, Sibelius 7). Sibelius 3-5 is the locus classicus for such such an evolution.
With Mahler, the 1st and 6th Symphonies repeats are surely essential, given their inclusion, in his most classically-modelled sonata-forms; significant creative choices, surely. Yet some conductors have omitted them on (presumably) flimsy familiarity grounds.
As in so many other ways, Bruckner is a case apart: only in his earliest extant symphony, the F Minor, are repeats called for in first and last movements.
After which his signature three-theme sonata forms have very eventful and expansive expositions, whose constant, often contrapuntal thematic evolutions render them pretty developmental in themselves.
So I think there is far more to the life of the sonata-repeat, the statement/development dichotomy with its contrasts and conflicts, than musical familiarity or unfamiliarity or the following of formal model.
For me it is an artistic phenomenon on an almost metaphysical level, recurring cross-generically across film, literature, art and sculpture; part of the World's Turning, just as The Seasons recur with infinite variations each year.
You may focus on the routine, or its disruption; on what is constant, or what is in flux; their ever-changing balance.
With Brahms, No.4 (i) makes as if to repeat the 1st movement expo, but then dives off into the most eventful of all his developments. This is only so meaningful in the context of his first three symphonies - in all of which, the repeat is indicated -and Brahms expects it to be observed.
Similar manoeuvres can be observed in Beethoven Op 59/1 and Mahler's 4th. Mere unfamiliarity of material seems an impossibly shallow reason for composers of such complex masterpieces to mark such repeats; they were working with the background and foreground of classical forms, the expectation/contradiction of the form and its individual treatment in each work. If repeats are omitted arbitrarily, a rich layer of meaning is lost; the crucial statement/development contrast/conflict becomes diluted. (Mozart's Prague Symphony seems to invoke the recurring ritornello against the sonata-repeat in its 1st movement).
*****
It does seem strange that the concept of the varied repeat never became established in the Symphonic works of the classical or Romantic era (Franck's D Minor a rare exception). Especially given its very prevalence in concerto-sonata forms. There is little evidence for "composers gradually dropping" repeats in the 19th Century. In the 20thC the increasingly organic, developmentally eventful and complex 1st movement statements/structures evolved away from the repeat, as the statement/development contrast became more blurred; and symphonic architecture far more varied (e.g continuous or single-movement eg Nielsen 4, Sibelius 7). Sibelius 3-5 is the locus classicus for such such an evolution.
With Mahler, the 1st and 6th Symphonies repeats are surely essential, given their inclusion, in his most classically-modelled sonata-forms; significant creative choices, surely. Yet some conductors have omitted them on (presumably) flimsy familiarity grounds.
As in so many other ways, Bruckner is a case apart: only in his earliest extant symphony, the F Minor, are repeats called for in first and last movements.
After which his signature three-theme sonata forms have very eventful and expansive expositions, whose constant, often contrapuntal thematic evolutions render them pretty developmental in themselves.
So I think there is far more to the life of the sonata-repeat, the statement/development dichotomy with its contrasts and conflicts, than musical familiarity or unfamiliarity or the following of formal model.
For me it is an artistic phenomenon on an almost metaphysical level, recurring cross-generically across film, literature, art and sculpture; part of the World's Turning, just as The Seasons recur with infinite variations each year.
You may focus on the routine, or its disruption; on what is constant, or what is in flux; their ever-changing balance.
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