Stirling Newberry writes:

>I know we have fought this thread before.  Which is why I would ak that
>people go back to the sources of why repeats grew rarer - expressed most
>forcefully in Liszt's private letters, and in Wagner's very influential
>work "on conducting".  Some will not be moved by the arguments there in,
>some will be so persuaded that they will se no other way.  But this
>artistic tradition has given us too many great performances to be ignored.
>To play works in the manner which Wagner advises and not dispense with
>many of the repeats would be as grave an error as playing the music in
>Beethoven's age and dispensing with them, or worrying about notes over
>grammar.

While reading this post, I had Sandra Rosenblum's "Performance Practices in
Classic Piano Music" handy.  This does not directly apply to 19th century
practice, but I thought some ideas mentioned in it might prove interesting:

According to Quantz:

   "If there are two dots on each side of a double bar..., they signify
   that the piece consists of two parts, and that each part must be
   played twice."

Turk, Koch, and Hummel agree.  However, Clementi said:

   "The dotted bars [repeat signs] denote the repeat of the foregoing,
   and following strain.  N.B.  The second part of a piece, if VERY
   LONG, is seldom repeated; notwithstanding the DOTS."

Andre Gretry:

   "I see almost all instrumental music chained to worn-out forms that
   are repeated for us without end...Hullmandel, one of the most perfect
   composers of this type [of music], was...the first to connect the
   two parts of his sonatas so that they do not repeat slavishly...A
   sonata is a discourse.  What would we think of a man who, cutting
   his discourse in two, repeated each half?"

Rosenblum suggests that "a performer needs to consider its [a repeat]
effect on the listener's perception of the entire form and of the
relationships of the parts to each other."

In the case of Beethoven's music, Rosenblum believes "casual disregard of
Beethoven's repeats would seem an affront to his formal designs." She cites
the letter from Beethoven's brother Carl to Breitkopf & Hartel (12 Feb
1805) containing a request that the exposition ofthe first movement of the
3rd Symphony be repeated:

   "Before he had heard the music Beethoven had believed that the symphony
   would be too long if the first part were repeated; but after more
   frequent performance he found that it was actually detrimental not
   to have that repeat.  Beethoven's thoughtfulness regarding repeats
   is observed as late as the String Quartet Op.  135, in which,
   surprisingly, his note at the end of the final movement, 'Si ripete
   la seconda parte al suo piacere' (repeat the second part if you wish),
   leaves the choice to the performer."

All of this (and much more of such evidence) suggests that each case should
be looked at individually, without a slavish devotion to a repeat sign
merely because it is there.

Dick Hihn