Jocelyn Wang replies to me:

>No, only you seem to have that doubt.  I haven't seen anyone else say that
>what the composer wrote is not what he intended, even the antirepeatites.

More accurately, I'm certainly one of the few who's expressed that doubt in
these terms.

>Why you have that doubt is a mystery, something you still have not
>explained clearly.

Well, it goes back to Locke, moves through Hume to Kant, and ends up in the
20th century with New Critics and deconstructionists (the latter I do not
understand at all).  It comes down to this:  by claiming you know intent,
you imply that you've read the composer's mind and that the composer always
writes what he or she intends.  I doubt your clairvoyance on the first and
if artists always wrote what they intended, they wouldn't revise.  Flaubert
said, famously, "Works of art are never completed, only abandoned."

I view with dismay the idea that artists - even at the level of Beethoven,
Mozart, Brahms, Ravel, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, whomever - are demigods
beyond criticism, that they are so far above non-artists, non-artists
shouldn't have the temerity to criticise, but take what's offered.  First,
you learn nothing about nothing with that attitude.  Second, it implies
that listeners are dolts.  Third, and most important, you can argue the
absolute or relative adherence to following repeats without resorting to
Intent - which, again, you do not know.  It comes down to pronouncing
about something you have no way of knowing.  I certainly wouldn't justify
following or not following a particular repeat on the spurious grounds that
I know what the composer intended.  It's arrogant and fraudulent for me to
claim such knowledge.  I'd try to argue for it on the basis of what I infer
about the music's effect through the score and, more importantly, through
trying things out.

>Moreover, to use your own argument against you: How do we know that you
>mean what you say merely because you wrote it?

You don't.  But obviously that doesn't make my words impossible to
criticise.  In fact, knowing my intent is mostly irrelevant to such
criticism.

>If what one writes is not necessarily what one means, then I really think
>no one has any reason to take seriously anything you've written at all.

It doesn't follow, and it's a bit irrelevant.  The words and the thoughts
exist, whether I mean them or not.  Noone says you *have* to deal with
them, any more than I must deal with yours.  However, by taking your
arguments very seriously indeed, without necessarily agreeing with you,
I've learned something about confronting a work of art.  I don't need to
know whether you "meant it."

>>>There is no basis to conclude otherwise.  If what he wrote is no
>>>indication of what he wanted, why bother playing it at all?
>>
>>There's no basis to conclude your way either.  At least, you've
>>offered none.
>
>Yes, I have: see those two lines and two dots down on that score? The
>composer put those there.  They mean to repeat that passage.

No question.  But it's trivial knowledge.  It's like St. Anselm's proof
of the existence of God (a flawed proof, incidentally, but one that held
up for centuries).  It may prove God exists, but it tells you nothing about
God you want to know.  The repeat sign is there, but it in itself tells you
nothing you really want to know about the music, except to play it twice.
Should you play it twice? Why might you play it only once? Is playing it
twice better than playing it once? Is playing dreck better twice better
than playing it once because the composer thought so? Please don't tell me
about a composer's vision, because all that is just beyond me.  I don't
know what Beethoven saw.  I have no way to know what Beethoven saw.

>>In any case, I'm out of luck in that regard.  Bach and Beethoven (even
>>Lutoslawski) aren't around to tell me what they intend.
>
>They don't need to be.  They've left ample record of what they intended.

No, they left a record.  PERIOD.  etc, etc

>Prefer whatever suits you.  Just don't mess up the art.

How in heaven's name am I doing that? I'm not painting a mustache on the
Mona Lisa or taking a jackhammer to the Pieta.  If you want the repeat
followed, there are any number of performers willing to oblige you.  As you
continually point out, the score is there.  Now for the hard question:
what if the repeat messes up the art?

>...  And no composer of merit will expect or desire a performer to put
>nothing of himself in the performance.  I never argued thusly, so your
>straw-man version of my position doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Sure it does, and it's one you supplied.  Score=intent.

>Therefore, what you like has nothing to do with whether a repeat should be
>observed.  What the composer likes, however, has everything to do with it.
>Artistic Truth, at least insofar as the form that his own work should take,
>lies with the composer, and no one else.

In that case, ban all reviews.  Why look seriously at Beethoven at all?
He's beyond criticism.  He has written Genuwine Masterpieces That Will
Live Through the Ages.  All we need do is smile with appropriate rapture
and switch our brains to off.  One asks these questions, not to tear down
Beethoven, but to learn something, and one can learn from an artist's
failures - even an artist at Beethoven's level - as from his successes.
I'm not talking about Eternal Verities of Art, but about the critical
musculature a really good listener develops.  Sometimes one agrees with the
consensus, other times not.  Does this mean either is the "correct" view?
Not necessarily.  Our view of Beethoven has changed because enough people
have indeed asked these questions and received answers that did go against
What Everybody Knows.

>>On the other hand, it doesn't matter to me how good a composer people
>>believe him to be.  When I say he miscalculates, I merely point to
>>something in the score that doesn't work for me and I can point out the
>>reason why.
>
>And then do what? "Correct" it, like an orangutan trying to obviate flaws
>in the theory of relativity?

I'm not capable of that, but unlike you, I don't rule out that someone
might be.  I don't understand why you are so unwilling even to entertain
the hypothesis.

>In all the volumes you have written about this, you have yet to say
>why Beethoven (or anyone else) failed.

The reason I haven't said it I've already given.  I didn't want to be
bogged down with a back-and-forth of "this doesn't work/yes it does,"
because that's not the main point.  You haven't been very specific either.
You simply assure us that Composer Knows Best.  I don't fault you for
non-specificity, for the same reason I don't fault myself in this instance.
In fact, I suspect that for any example you'd bring up as to whether to
repeat, I'd agree with you that the repeat should be taken.

Here's an example where a repeat is questionable:  "9,999 Bottles of Beer
on the Wall." The composer intends a repeat, obviously.  Does the composer
know best, or will you run screaming from the room by the 9800th bottle?

>On the other hand, it's his composition, not yours, so it really doesn't
>matter.  Beethoven wrote it, whether you like it or not.

Granted.  And your point is ...?

>>See Stirling Newberry's excellent post.
>
>I haven't seen an excellent post by him on this thread.  In what I *have*
>seen, he only said that things have changed that would justify omitting
>repeats.  He did not specify what those were.

Okay, I'll try to recap.  The Romantic era emphasized the uniqueness
of the artistic experience - an attitude which persists into our own
time.  Repeats run counter to that and to the Romantic idea of artistic
transformation and becoming.  Our experiences are not identical, but unique
(I'm not saying whether I agree with this).  Schoenberg, for example,
thought exact repeats "bad form," although he never criticized Beethoven,
Bach, or Mozart for them.  He certainly was against them in modern
compositions.

>>>And name one composer whose reputation has been ruined by respecting his
>>>score.  I won't hold my breath waiting for the answer.
>>
>>Any composer, right?  OK, Andrew Lloyd Webber.
>
>How has his reputation been ruined? We can dislike or like them, but his
>reputation has hardly suffered.  His bank account certainly hasn't.

It's been ruined, because with each repetition, we like the work less and
less.  Besides, you're now equating artistic merit with the composer's
bank account? I doubt you are.  Still, there's this distressing idea that
reputation=merit.  In the Billy Wilder movie, a prisoner is tortured by
constant repetitions of "Itsy-Bitsy, Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini."
This ditty too made a lot of money.

>>You're condemning all these things without having seen them.  Seems
>>unreasonable because you don't know what's possible.  Why not see them
>>first, and, if you don't like them, condemn them then? Hell, I can cry
>>"shame on you" for all sorts of reasons against things I haven't seen.
>
>I haven't eaten a vomit sandwich, either.  Shame on me for being so certain
>of the outcome that I wouldn't try it.

Have you tried it with tarragon?

>Where are all those "Jupiter" recordings recordings that observe all the
>repeats then?

Have no idea.  But you *do* know that repeats are possible, because the
score exists.  You haven't "lost the original." This is overstatement.
You simply don't have the realization of the score you think you want.

>For someone who wrote a zillion pages ago "Just this last, and I'm done"
>you've certainly gone on.  But, then, I don't really know what you meant.
>I only know what you wrote.

That's because you keep bringing up such interesting points.  It's your own
fault.

Steve Schwartz