Thanks to Steve Schwartz for filling in for me here earlier. I suppose I had nevertheless better answer this. But this is the last time I write on this subject! Len Fehskens wrote: > >>But is it not conceivable that there will be cases where the exposition >>repeat continues to be used as a convention, but with no clear >>ramifications for the musical substance? > >If you conclude such, then you are you not implying that composer was >in some sense in error, either out of negligence or stupidity? Perhaps, but so what if I am? Schubert was a man, not a god, and thus necessarily fallible. You can't shut me up by invoking taboos! However, I don't think I went that far. Schubert wasn't an idiot and he certainly knew more about composition than me. But for reasons which I set out earlier, it does look to me as if the exposition repeat was for him a conventional matter. Now that wouldn't matter much, if not for the fact that his whole style changes radically in some of his late works - they become broader, more Romantic, less classical, more discursive, the contrasts are less marked - and in some cases that seems to me to pull the rug out from under the repeat, so to speak. That doesn't mean Schubert is stupid - it merely says that formal coventions sometimes persist beyond their practical use. I chose Schubert as an example for what seems to me a problem in the use of the repeat in Sonata form when we come to the Romantic period. Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, earlier Schubert composed in a style in which the repeats made sense, so to speak; somewhere along the line musical thinking changed radically, and Schubert's last sonatas seem to me to be on the other side of the divide. In that new style, where proportions are less clear, where psychological concerns seem more important than structural ones, the presence or absence of the repeat seems to make *less of a difference*. That's all I am trying to argue - people like Jocelyn seem to think that omitting it would kill the piece in each and every case, but as far as I can see that is question-begging. I may well be wrong about these particular repeats, I'm no musicologist, but I want a posteriori reasons, pointing to specific losses in the particular work at hand. You did so by pointing to the lead-in back to the beginning, and that is certainly arguable. But since in this case the lead-in may well be prompted by the prior 'necessity' for the repeat rather than be an end in itself (and that is arguable too, see Brendel on the subject), you have to go further: why *in terms of its own musical substance* is the lead-in so important to the scheme of the piece, beyond the fact that it is there? As I said, the answer will depend on your view of the movement as a whole. Note that the only reason I feel it is legitimate to make these judgment calls here is because the repeat seems to be conventional. So will someone who is able please tell me if I am wrong about this - *not* by simple question-begging - 'Schubert intended it because Schubert wrote it. He did it for the structure of the music' etc. If, say, Schubert had included the repeats in only some works, like Beethoven, then that would be evidence that they had particular significance in the scheme of those works, and we would have to make sense of them whether we like them or not >If you can conclude this about a repeat sign, why can't you conclude >this about other aspects of the work's structure, or harmonic progression, >or rhythm, or ... Why not? My final reply to Jocelyn gave examples where this had been done by respected scholars. You would say - 'yes, but you were talking about misprints - things the composer clearly didn't intend'. Maybe, but in some of those cases there was no actual documentary evidence to show that these were misprints - what the scholar had to rely on was *his own judgment* - his knowledge of the logic of harmonic progressions, similar passages elsewhere in the score, rhythmic and rhetorical proportion. Where there was an anomaly, he then had to decide whether that anomaly could somehow be justified within the work's overall scheme or not. >>what justifies the repeat (other than the fact that Schubert wrote it!)? > >What other justification is necessary? Once we feel free to second >guess the composer's justification for any aesthetic decision, how do we >decide how much second guessing is legitimate and how much intrudes on the >composer's prerogative as the composer? I don't know. I don't care, either, as long as the second-guessing is informed and responsible, rather than merely whim-based. I suppose the more you know about the musical theory at a particular time, the style of a particular era and that of earlier eras, of the composer himself (at a particular stage in his career), the more familiar you are with the composer's entire repertoire, the more you will be in a position to second-guess. And of course I'm not in that position with regard to Schubert. But Schubert was just a possible example. >Again, I believe that where the composer wishes the interpretor to >exercise judgment, the composer gives clear indication thereof (e.g., >ad lib, ossia, ...) That can't be an iron-cast rule. He may just assume that that is what the performer will do. As Satoshi Akima pointed out, this textual literalism only really became widespread in this century. Felix Delbruck [log in to unmask]