On 1 Jun 2006 at 14:53, Johannes Gebauer wrote: > But then why did Boccherini, and later Beethoven, specifically > indicate "senza repetitione"? This is precisely the question, and we > are now turning around in circles.
Well, why is it that sometime between 1770 and 1790, all composers started becoming substantially more specific in notating dynamics and articulations than they were before? Does the absence of the explicit performance indications mean that they played the music straight, with no dynamic changes and no contrasts of articulation? I don't believe so, but if you argue that the composers who explicitly specified no repeats were doing so because everybody before then played the repeats, then logically you'd have to argue that the missing dynamics and articulations were also not observed. All we know is that for some reason, it began to be specified. My guess is that it began to be specified precisely because there was widespread difference of opinion on the standard practice and because composers in the 1790s and on no longer wanted to leave those kinds of choices up to their performers. So, they started specifying exactly what they wanted. That new specificity does not imply anything about the way the music was actually interpreted and performed before then -- it's only a change in the way composers felt about how specific their conceptions of the music were and what was necessary to notate to get the results they wanted. The notational specificity itself implies a narrowing of possibilities. And the specification of no repeats seems to me to indicate that composers no longer felt it was an optional item that could be left up to performer discretion. And that's *all* it can be known to imply, as, logically speaking, we haven't enough information to know if it indicates anything more than that. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
