Which Musical Repeats are Genuinely “Musical?”

One of the most familiar indications in musical notation is the repeat sign:

When the sign appears, the performer(s) may play the section in question again.  Sometimes, as in the opening movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata in C minor, Op. 13, there is some controversy as to whether the performer should return all the way to the introduction, marked Grave, or to the beginning of the main movement, marked Allegro di molto e con brio.  There is a similar controversy in the opening movement of Chopin’s Sonata in B-flat minor, Op. 35.  I’ll return to these specific examples later.

Unpopular opinion: I believe slavish adherence to musical repeats often betrays a lack of musical imagination—and, sometimes, laziness on the part of the interpreter.  After all, if a performer, particularly an instrumentalist, takes all the repeats, he can essentially master less material because much of what he learns will be repeated: learn it once, play it twice.

This is not to say that one should never take repeats.  Several questions come into play. How long is the work, and how does it fit within the entire program?  What about the balance between movements? Does the repeat involve first and second endings which are substantially different?  Does it include unique material that would otherwise not be heard?  

Then there is the question of how the repeated material is played.  This is where a performer’s imagination comes into play.  Is it simply a carbon copy of the first traversal—the same tempos, rubato, voicing, dynamics?  Or should some variety be introduced the second time around?  With certain composers, particularly Baroque composers like Scarlatti, there's also the question of introducing embellishments in repeated passages.  You can bet that if I hear a recording exemplifying the former approach, I won’t listen to it more than a few times.

I’ve admired Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony since I was 13 years old, and I looked forward to hearing the work under music director Franz Welser-Möst in 2020—a performance that was canceled because of COVID.  The orchestra recorded it instead and, while the result was technically immaculate, with sensible tempos and phrasing, Welser-Möst’s literalist approach to the repeats ultimately drained the life from the music.  Hearing the work in concert once COVID restrictions were lifted proved no more satisfying.

On the other hand, the same composer’s B-flat major Piano Sonata, D. 960, includes a repeat in the opening movement that contains a dramatic nine-bar passage heard nowhere else in the movement.  If the repeat is omitted, that outburst disappears with it, fundamentally altering the movement’s character and, to my ears, overly taming the music.

Thus it seems to me that the repeat here is not optional.  But there are well-known pianists who have disagreed with me.

At the other end of the spectrum is the repeat in the March to the Scaffold movement from Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. This is a programmatic work depicting an illusory event—the condemned man being led to the guillotine for his execution. The repeat is placed just at the point where the condemned man has reached the guillotine. What happened? Why is he going back to his prison cell? Did he forget his final cigarette, or did the guard forget the blindfold? Narratively, structurally, and musically, it makes no sense and, in my strong opinion, should not be observed.

The piano sonatas mentioned at the beginning of this article illustrate why I believe cut-and-dried rules can drain the life from artistic pursuits. 

In the opening movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata, I feel it is best to observe the exposition repeat but return only to the beginning of the main Allegro di molto e con brio, rather than to the opening Grave.

Observing the repeat in the first movement of Chopin’s B-flat minor Sonata presents a double entanglement. First, there is the question of whether to return to the slow introduction or to the beginning of the movement proper.  But either way, I believe observing the repeat weakens the movement for two reasons.

First, there is the notoriously awkward modulation at the repeat—one that Harold C. Schonberg singled out for particular criticism, and which strikes me as a real aberration in Chopin’s compositional style.  Second, the repeat throws the movement’s proportions off kilter.  The climax, where the primary theme and the short motif from the Grave introduction battle with each other, is both the emotional and temporal core of the movement.  Repeating the exposition shifts that balance and delays the music’s arrival at its natural center of gravity.

For those reasons, I find the movement considerably more convincing when the repeat is omitted altogether.

Then there is the question of internal continuity.  For example, Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13, have repeats for the A and B sections for most of the variations.  It seems to me that logically the repeats must be treated consistently to maintain the continuity of this, one of  Schumann’s most structurally formal piano works.

So which repeats are genuinely “musical?”  Those that serve the architecture, drama, and expressive trajectory of the music.  A repeat sign is an instruction deserving serious consideration, not a substitute for musical judgment.  Sometimes taking the repeat makes the piece whole; sometimes omitting it does.  And sometimes, as Beethoven demonstrates, the most musical answer lies somewhere in between.

And there is one final question: did the composer ever express an opinion about observing a repeat in actual performance, apart from the indication in the score?  On that point, I’m thinking of Antonín Dvořák, who wrote in a copy of the score of his Sixth Symphony—an underrated work, in my opinion—“once and for all, without the repetition” regarding the first movement exposition.

In the final analysis, performing musicians are interpreters, not automatons.  Slavish adherence to a printed score must never be allowed to defeat the role of educated and informed judgement.