Repeated sections in (classical) music

I don't think it was laziness. It was more likely a way for the composer to get the exposition (the tune) in the audiences ear before moving on to the development section where the material would go through modulations, inversions, etc. The repeat is often skipped in public performances of classical music, likely because the audience is already familiar with the material so they don't need to hear a repeat of the themes to understand what's happening in the development section.

 

My thought would be

(Come on Francesco!)

This is not a battle you will win. The piece is far over your head. op. 53 is a fucking master piece.
Yes, it is an odd piece, but also so brilliant it must be accepted flaws and all.

This is like standing in front of the Mona Lisa going "I don't know.... she's not that hot. Few beers and I'd bang her, maybe"

Sean is correct here. Remember there were no audio recordings. No one would have ever heard this piece before going to the concert to hear it.

You can make the same argument for every pop song that has verse, chorus, verse 2 chorus. Why repeat the chorus ? Why go to a bridge and then come back to another chorus. Because it is more memorable it you do. It was a rhetorical device to influence the audience.

Another point is you are looking at the sheet music, not listening to the performance. The performer adds in nuance of expression. Like the difference to listening to a person speak vs written word.

Beethoven in this piece is dealing with such large scale - time span - structural devices that it's slipping by you. There are gold in them hills, but you have to dig.

One final point: Classical musicians used to be highly trained in improvisation. Beethoven in particular. We have no idea if when he played his pieces if he embellished them during the repeats. There are countless papers on the virtuosity of Beethoven's improvisations.

 

A perfect analogy

It is interesting that most musicians who study classical music today completely ignore improvisation. Many of the great composers, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, were also great performers who could improvise, and they were basically the pop stars of those times. The sheet music was just a necessary means of getting the ideas from the insides of their heads onto paper, but I would bet that all of these guys would embellish and improvise over their own compositions.

 

That's cool. No problem. I like a good ruckus.

I talked about the work, not the person.

Sure, of course not everything was a masterpiece. You just happened to pick a masterpiece for an example.

Of course. Most sonatas fall in this category. Plus personal preferences. I like dark sad shit, so anything in a major key makes me squirm. But I am pretty good at putting that aside and trying to evaluate a movement on its own terms. (ie. how well the composer achieve what they want to convey)

That's good. We're cool then.

Well not if we are talking about op. 53. There are plenty of "shit-kicker" pieces in the rep. and not everything Beethoven wrote is a zinger. Such is life.

People say it all the time. Only a few classes I have ever been in have people all agreed. Usually the conversation is like this.

Of course it is .... go for it. That's called "thinking". I like it.

You're better than that. That is total bullshit. There are two main problems with this (aside from factually being way off the mark)

1. There are Real Cults in the world. Using the word "willy-nilly" diminishes its potency.
(* as an aside. About 4-5 years ago I spent a year studying a harmony course called EIS with the orchestrator from "The Simpsons". I posted a few compositions on another forum demonstrating some of the lessons...... man I got 4-5 emails from people asking first..... what was the secret to EIS, then if it was a cult. I would explain that cults want to keep you in there group. I would then kindly explain that I did not know who the fuck they were, could not give a shit about them, that they contacted me, and that they could go fucking kill themselves tomorrow and I would sleep like a baby at night. That's the ray of sunshine I am)

2. It also falls into this category you are railing against: "there is a tendency of shutting down every form of criticism".

Exactly..... at the end you get there with "(that I wouldn't dare to make, I'm too ignorant in that field)".

I do too. I apologize. That came out wrong. As I tell my wife " I don't try and be an asshole, I just have some much practice at it, now it's effortless"
It's not over your head. I just meant that when 1.) the work is put in context within it's own time, and 2.) once a deeper investigation (ie. attention) is put into how the piece was built I think it is clear it's not "lazy". You may never like it, but that's different.

 

I happy at a later time to discuss why I think the opening movement is a worthy composition.

Ok .... here is the central crux of my argument. Say you worked for a police department, or spy agency or whatever. There is a crime spree. Someone is a serial killer ...... got it..... let's say you are hunting that unknown person who made anthrax and sent it to people. Well, only a few people are going to know how to handle Anthrax and cultivate it. No fingerprints, the strand of Anthrax is stronger than ever seen in even the highest grade labs. Now let's say you get a call and an anonymous person telling you the villain is actually a few blocks away, eating potato chips in his underwear. You go over and he is there watching SpongeBob. You ask him, and he says "yeah I did it. I was too lazy to kill them in person so I made some Anthrax over there" He points to a peanut butter jar that has mold coming out.

Now..... based on all the evidence, you -- mr investigator-- would probably be able to do some very quick test of deductive reasoning to see if this was true. Not if you had an opinion, or if you wanted it to be true. But logic, critical deductive reasoning would give certain things credibility.

I'm an atheist. What's with all this religious stuff ?

Not the chorus. Often they are literal repetitions.

I get your point, and today of course you are right. However you are taking it out of context. Let me offer one last analogy.

Bach did not put dynamics and has whole sections repeat, with repeat signs. Most of his solo works contain this. Lazy ?

You don't have to LIKE any of these works...... I am just saying they are not LAZY

 

As Doug mentioned, Bach would often leave out dynamics and articulations, leaving more room for interpretation and improvisation. As we moved into the Romantic era, composers started putting more and more detail into the score leaving less room for interpretation and improvisation. Orchestras were also getting bigger, which makes it more difficult to leave room for interpretation because of the amount of musicians. Perhaps this is why classical music is often performed the way it is today. At some point the original intention of the music was lost as composers started to expect the orchestra to perform their pieces exactly as written.

 

Hey, sorry I haven't read all the replies but just though I'd contribute a few thoughts. First it became a tradition of sonata form that the exposition would repeat.

Also one ideology of the classical era is that the form of the music be clear and recognisable by the non-musically-litterate audience and therefore composers would mark structural aspect clearly to make it easier for people to follow. A repeated exposition speaks to this. Also as sonata form is an extended structure where all material is based on the exposition, you do well to firmly establish with at least two listenings before you start messing with the material.

However, I do think there was also an economy incentive for repetition. Being able to produce a longer duration of music without unnecessarily reinventing all the time. I think this would have been especially true to dance forms (literally music that was being danced to in the courts) where the band could choose to repeat section in order to make the music last as long as they needed.

To my previous point, when Beethoven chose to deviate from the established form (in the numerous ways that he did), he would do it full knowledge and understanding of what the audience of the day were expecting, and thus these deviations resulted in exciting surprise, but in principal people would still be able to follow and identify these deviations.

 

What about party music from 1399? Into dark and sad but not that?

 

Ha !! You're a good man RVR.

In a word: Yes.

 

Interesting topic...

I also have one more point of view about this.
You know, even piece is timeless you should concerned about what time is written, and is written by trends of that time ...
Now, time has been changed, and we're living in fast time, and that leads us to thesis that music and the way music is being played and listened has been changed too. Trends are different too. The way how to keep attention to listeners these days has been changed.