# “…and now, the exposition repeat.”



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Some people like to understand the formal design of works new to them; others could care less. I’m among the former. A sense of the design helps me focus and usually keeps my mind from wandering too far afield.

Of course, I also punch my destinations into the GPS invariably because, much as I like road trips, I want to know exactly where I am at all times. My wife, though, is very different. She just says, “Don’t worry, we’ll find it.” And usually she does. Somehow!

Which are you? Do you care about the formal design of the music you listen to? Or do you find, like some, that it actually interferes with your enjoyment of the music?


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Formal design for me is fundamentally necessary to fully appreciating and enjoying the work. Without knowing the rules of compositional form, one cannot appreciate how a composer manipulates form and audience expectations to create art. You can enjoy a work without knowledge of form, but understanding the construction of a work and how composers manipulate that construction takes appreciation to another level.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The major deal with classical music, as opposed to popular music and jazz, is that you don't know what the notes you're hearing at the moment mean unless you have a sense of where you are in relation to what you've already heard and what you may be about to hear. The more acute your sense of form the greater your enjoyment will be.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Maybe the first time I hear a work the expo repeat is a good idea, but frankly after that, with music I've heard before, it's unnecessary and often annoying -- get on with it!!! It's funny, most people I know don't want those repeats either in hallowed classical symphonies, but boy, don't skip them in the Mahler 1st or 6th or there's hell to pay! Some repeats are just too long: Rachmaninoff 2nd, Beethoven 3, Brahms 1 & 2. As a player I really get irritated with some conductors who think they're necessary, especially in less-than-thrilling music like Mendelssohn symphonies. Some composers were smart and realized that these repeats are annoying, unwanted and impede the flow of the music and so they didn't write them, like Tchaikovsky. There are some, like Dvorak, whom I suspect only wrote them to be formally correct. Neither he or Brahms expected them to always be played.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mbhaub said:


> Maybe the first time I hear a work the expo repeat is a good idea, but frankly after that, with music I've heard before, it's unnecessary and often annoying -- get on with it!!! It's funny, most people I know don't want those repeats either in hallowed classical symphonies, but boy, don't skip them in the Mahler 1st or 6th or there's hell to pay! Some repeats are just too long: Rachmaninoff 2nd, Beethoven 3, Brahms 1 & 2. As a player I really get irritated with some conductors who think they're necessary, especially in less-than-thrilling music like Mendelssohn symphonies. Some composers were smart and realized that these repeats are annoying, unwanted and impede the flow of the music and so they didn't write them, like Tchaikovsky. There are some, like Dvorak, whom I suspect only wrote them to be formally correct. Neither he or Brahms expected them to always be played.


Beyond questions of structural balance, I think the repeats were important because people back then wanted to hear the music again. It was the music of their time, after all, and they didn't get to hear it often. Everything comes too easily to us now.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Lest this turn into a discussion of expo repeats, the TDP (Thread Drift Police) have been called to come and punish the wicked.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

There are some forms I like to recognize or follow -- variations, passacaglia -- some I intuit but don't usually follow landmark by landmark-- sonata, rondo -- some just force themselves on me unmistakably -- scherzo or minuet, and trio. It's nice to know they're there when I'm trying to figure out how piece "works." But the liking of the piece usually comes first, then the figuring out.

(And often, whether or not I require an exposition repeat can be traced back to what performance I "learned" the work on.)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Which are you? Do you care about the formal design of the music you listen to? Or do you find, like some, that it actually interferes with your enjoyment of the music?


The formal design is an essential element of the music and hearing it is an essential part of the enjoyment. As far as I'm concerned, you might as well ask: Is flavor important to you or does it interfere with your enjoyment of the meal?

As for GPS and navigation: Having to rely on GPS pretty much means you never _know_ where you are, you are always waiting to be told where you are by a higher power.  I navigate by map and compass because I like _knowing_ where I am.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I like to be surprised, and so I tend to prefer free forms (preludes, fantasias, toccatas, etc). I don't care if I feel a bit lost by them in a first listening; if that's the case, I will simple listen again and again to the work until I can assimilate it. I would have loved if Beethoven had introduced fantasias as an structural element for his symphonies instead of those simple and predictable AABA scherzos.

About repeats: I think that sometimes they are vital and necessary, such as in the Mahler symphonies, but most of the time for the Classical period I believe that they are overused. I think that the music flows much more without some of them, and may manually cut some in performances that I like.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

KenOC said:


> Lest this turn into a discussion of expo repeats, the TDP (Thread Drift Police) have been called to come and punish the wicked.


Ok - but clearly exposition repeats are one of the most basic ways to understand formal design. Of course there's a lot more. One of my favorite works to discuss in this regard is the warhorse of them all: Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. Reading music appreciation books from the mid-20th c you get nothing but disdain for this beloved work. Critics dismiss it for it's lack of formal design. A way too long first movement, a slight second, and then a barnstorming third that has nothing to do with the others. And what the heck is that famous introduction to the first movement? It has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the concerto. Then some writers draw diagrams as it they explain the formal flaws in the concerto. Well, audiences sure don't care - they love the work design flaws and all. In fact, most listeners are completely unaware that there are flaws.

There are a lot of works with so-called formal flaws: the Bruckner 3rd, Balakirev 1st (no expo repeat there, no recapitulation either). Sometimes musicologists spend so much time with Schenkerian analysis that they fail to hear the music.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The overall structure, the direction, the _story_ - these are more important to me than detail. Not that detail is unimportant to me but the meaning and raison d'etre of the detail is in the overall structure (as Woodduck has already said). This is why I hardly ever participate in threads about favourite tune or movement or moment. When I first listened to those slow recordings that Celibidache made with the Munich Phil I would often find myself shocked and horrified by what he did and then, as the performance progressed, suddenly understanding why and what it was all for.

However, I am not so interested in where I am in a piece - I can even fail to notice one variation finishes and another starts and I might not be able to say for a performance I know really well whether or not the conductor observes the repeats. Those things don't matter to me. What matters is the effect of the music on me and I find that that is in the long story.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Some people like to understand the formal design of works new to them; others could care less.


No, no, NO! It is _couldn't_ care less. I repeat: could_*n't*_*.
*
Could care less does not exist as an idiom. It means the exact opposite of what people intend when using it.

Don't make me repeat this admonition!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

eugeneonagain said:


> No, no, NO! It is _couldn't_ care less. I repeat: could_*n't*_*.
> *
> Could care less does not exist as an idiom. It means the exact opposite of what people intend when using it.
> 
> Don't make me repeat this admonition!


Thanks for your kind advice, though frankly, I could care less about it. :tiphat:


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Thanks for your kind advice, though frankly, I could care less about it. :tiphat:


So you still care a bit. That's good.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> No, no, NO! It is _couldn't_ care less. I repeat: could_*n't*_*.
> *
> Could care less does not exist as an idiom. It means the exact opposite of what people intend when using it.
> 
> Don't make me repeat this admonition!


Your linguistic punctiliousness elicits my deepest sympathies (well, almost my deepest; I'm deeper than that), but on this side of the Atlantic "could care less" is indeed an idiom which exists for unknowable reasons and is intended to mean the opposite of what it says. Let me assure you that I do not use it, and I intend no apology for it. One can get very tired of apologizing for the stuff people over here do.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Thanks for your kind advice, though frankly, I could care less about it. :tiphat:


Just curious: Are you originally from Greater Boston (where that expression has been common for 60 years)?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

MarkW said:


> Just curious: Are you originally from Greater Boston (where that expression has been common for 60 years)?


:lol: Nah, Pacific Northwest.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> The major deal with classical music, as opposed to popular music and jazz, is that you don't know what the notes you're hearing at the moment mean unless you have a sense of where you are in relation to what you've already heard and what you may be about to hear. The more acute your sense of form the greater your enjoyment will be.


Yikes! That sounds like work.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Fritz Kobus said:


> Yikes! That sounds like work.


No pain, no gain. :lol:


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

I love the sound of the Richard Strauss Tone Poems, but I often lose my place, so to speak, because of their lack of formal design. At least they're not designed like symphonies, which make sense to me. I'm sure there is some formal design to his tone poems, but I don't know what that form is. Would it help if I followed along with a score? Or read some book that describes in words a particular tone poem? Would it help if I printed a first violin part and started to learn it? All of the above?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ I had the same problem - Strauss tone poems often seemed episodic to me and that killed them for me. But Reiner's recordings somehow helped me get past that and now I do find some narrative thread.


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Some people like to understand the formal design of works new to them; others could care less. I'm among the former. A sense of the design helps me focus and usually keeps my mind from wandering too far afield.


I'm exactly the same way. For opera or music with lyrics, following along with the words is the most effective method for me, but for instrumental music listening to a piece in trying to take it all in just doesn't work for me. At least not until I'm familiar enough with a work to be able to take in the overall narrative. I find that being able to understand and follow the structure of the work (here's the first theme, here's a contrasting theme, here's a development) helps my enjoyment immeasurably.

When I first got into classical music in my late teens I picked up one of those "Classical Music for Dummies" books, which came with a bonus cd and some guided listening examples, and I thought those were absolutely wonderful! I still think those kind of detailed guides that get into the nuts and bolts of what you're hearing from one minute to the next always help me deepen my appreciation for the work. That's why I have several of those "Unlocking the Masters" books that feature those in depth guides. Or even better, something like Andras Schiffs lectures on the Beethoven piano sonatas where he breaks down each of the sonatas as he plays them.

But even just a general analysis is better than nothing. Knowing if this movement is in sonata form, or built from two contrasting themes, or rondo helps immensely. I was never able to fully understand and enjoy the Brahms symphonies until I listened to them while reading Michael Steinberg's analysis in "The Symphony".



senza sordino said:


> I love the sound of the Richard Strauss Tone Poems, but I often lose my place, so to speak, because of their lack of formal design. At least they're not designed like symphonies, which make sense to me. I'm sure there is some formal design to his tone poems, but I don't know what that form is. Would it help if I followed along with a score? Or read some book that describes in words a particular tone poem? Would it help if I printed a first violin part and started to learn it? All of the above?


You can find performance notes on most of his tone poems easily enough online. They do usually give you a general sense of the formal design of the poems (theme and variations, etc.) as well as talking discussing the extramusical narrative they poems convey.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Then there are the works whose formal organizing principle has eluded me for years -- like Sibelius symphonies.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MarkW said:


> Then there are the works whose formal organizing principle has eluded me for years -- like Sibelius symphonies.


The nice thing about musical form is that you don't necessarily have to know what it is to know it's there.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Actually, music listening is more a product of memory than anything else, for at any given moment (and what, after all, is a "moment" anyhow?) one can hear only the tiniest smidgin of sound happening. It is in the memory that all of the sounds are compiled, connected together, and given a substance of meaning. Or, in other words, a form.

Thus, knowing something about form helps one's memory to register the various tiny sound fragments into a recognizable fabric.

In my own experiences, some music strikes me as more difficult to process than other music. I think off hand of free jazz, which I greatly enjoy. But I find it more difficult to process free jazz than I do to process a standard classical composition, even one that I am hearing for the first time. In the first place, with a classical piece (and most other music genres in general) I have an expectation of form begin present, and once discovered, my memory of that form helps me organize the smidgins of sounds into a music piece or song, which is complete in some sense. Free jazz throws me for a loop because I can't find a form to hang the sounds on, so I tend to rather simply enjoy the sounds themselves and not think in terms of the piece being in any sense a complete piece or song (a form construct). I note that free jazz pieces often have titles; I sometimes wonder about that. I suspect free jazz pieces are "organized" in some way, even when improvised spontaneously. The musicians confront the coming sound moments in their own ways, each one having some sort of personal means or method of organizing what he/she will play next. But free jazz interests me not in the way a sonata interests me, and perhaps I find sonatas much more interesting because they do have one additional component -- form.

With a sonata (solo instrument, small ensemble, orchestra, whatever) I can still listen for sound combinations and still be surprised by sounds produced, but the addition of form adds another dimension to the piece which makes it all the more pleasing. And then there are codas to deal with. I especially enjoy a surprisingly enjoined coda.

Music is quite wonderful, isn't it?


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

My choir director once described the existence (and value) of the exposition repeat as a way to ensure the audience hums the main theme(s) after the concert.

I know people that never want to hear anything repeated and there is a recording -- https://www.amazon.com/Vaughan-Will...&sr=1-1&keywords=mozart+symphony+35+stokowski -- where a late Mozart symphony is played without repeats. It takes about 15 minutes, about half the time it normally takes.

Hearing that recording rather enhanced my concept of the repeat and its relative value. It doesn't change it from being filler but it does manufacture volume.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

MarkW said:


> Then there are the works whose formal organizing principle has eluded me for years -- like Sibelius symphonies.


The best way to really understand the design of some music is to play it at the keyboard from a piano reduction if available. Piano reductions of most every major work were common from roughly 1800-1900. Then things got complex and the reductions became the domain of professionals. I can plunk my way thru a Beethoven symphony but the piano 2-hand version of the Rite of Spring? Forget it. Playing through piano versions clears up all kinds of questions besides the formal design. The harmony, counterpoint...it all becomes clear(er). I'm no virtusoso pianist, but I gotten much pleasure over the decades playing through music of Beethoven, Brahms, Schmidt, Tchaikovsky, Raff, Mahler and others in 2-hand and 4-hand versions. I know people who can sit a piano with the full orchestral score and make a decent presentation of it. I can't do that but it would be nice. Anyway, playing through a score this way and you really begin to understand its organization, harmonic procedures, etc. Just read through the 2-hand version of the Schmidt 4th last night. Wonderful way to spend an hour.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Exposition repeats give the performer a chance to play that section slightly differently each time, to interpret it with more intensity, variety or emphasis the second time around, especially if the work is in sonata form. If not slightly varied it can sound too predictable and boring. But if I'm familiar with a work, depending on what it is, I don't mind if the repeat is sometimes left out.

I go along with what makes the _performer_ happy, which can vary from one to another, and sometimes there may be time constraints or practical considerations that may have to do with whether the repeat is left in or out.

It's also possible that the composers themselves put in repeats that were intended to be _discretionary_ according to the mood of the performer or audience. The repeat simply indicates WHERE it's supposed to take place if the performer decides to include it. The problem is in deciding whether a repeat might be discretionary or not, but I feel that some of the repeats in Bach were never intended to be absolute requirements, or he might have gotten bored himself with the possible redundancies... So sometime it may not be as much a matter of form to include the repeats but a matter of considering the overly familiar or the possible redundancies.

It may sound like heresy, but sometimes I prefer that the repeats are left out of the Goldberg Variations, including the opening Aria, which can last an entire hour if they're included. Imagine playing them at 3 AM and feeling obligated to include them all. 

But if the overall structure of the work goes too far out of whack because of an omitted repeat, it may be better to leave it in.

I don't mind when some of the repeats are left out in works by Schubert, especially if the performer doesn't know how to sufficiently vary it. I feel that sometimes they simply aren't necessary for the work to be satisfying.


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