Chris Bonds wrote:

>...he DID NOT KNOW IN ADVANCE and hence there was no a priori reason to
>repeat or not.  He treated the music as a living organism not as a museum
>artifact.

And that makes it ok to eliminate the repeat? As if deciding on the spur
of the moment makes it legit? Though it's an interesting story, I can't
take that as artistic justification for not taking a repeat.

The wonderful thing about music is that a "museum artifact" like a
symphony, which we admire time and time again like a painting, remains a
living organism as long as we are around to give it life.  You don't have
to change it, or, in this case, improvise taking the repeats, to render it
a living organism.  In fact, the more you change a piece, the less of a
living "museum artifact" it becomes and more a lifeless toy for a
performer's ego.

David Runnion
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