As Walter Legge used to say, the best test of a young conductor's potential is the opening slow movement of an early/middle period Haydn symphony. Perhaps another problem today is exposure. The old guys languished in the provinces for years, where they learned their craft in relative privacy. Now everything is exposed. Too early. Great music making is a form of story telling. It takes a hell if a time to understand that, let alone execute it...

This is why I consider this channel the number one in classical music: seventeen minutes of wisdom, clarity, music theory, references and humor. I am not a musician, but concerning repetitions... historically, the first repetition I can think of is the da capo in "In questo lieto e fortunato giorno" in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. Now, traditionally the da capo in baroque opera gives the interpreter the freedom to embellish the melodic line, to make something recognisable but different. And so I understand repeats: if using your freedom as interpreter you can do something a little bit different that contributes to enhance the drive and intensity of the piece, then do it. Mechanical and literal repetitions... I dont see the point.

In most cases, the first movement repeat is absolutely necessary for the overall structural balance. Otherwise the 1st movement will become too short compared to the other movements. Also the solo concerto sort of "repeats" the exposition, i.e. the first time the orchestra plays the exposition and the second time the exposition is dominated by the solo instrument.

Very well observed Dave! Its said that you can tell a good conductor from less good from how convincing the 'development' section is. If theres not a strong hand on the tiller, I soon lose interest and turn off.

Your videos on musicological topics are among my favorites. This particular issue has long puzzled me when you've mentioned it in passing. I think it will take time and concentration to begin to perceive it in recordings (and live performances, for the matter)--but after all, that's where the "keep on listening" comes in. This makes me think of the oboe solo in the recapitulation of Beethoven's Fifth as a composer's prank!

I always think it's difficult for young conductors, because their opportunities to learn their craft are much more limited. A pianist can hit the practise room any time he likes to work on a piece until he's got the technique and understanding of the work to his satisfaction. A conductor has to wait for an opportunity to have 30 - 100 living bodies in front of them before they can begin that sort of work - and, of course, you're making your mistakes along the way in public. So perhaps young conductors do understand somata form: they just don't (yet) understand how to transmit that to an orchestra. I still think there's something to the old adage about conductors not getting good until after their 60s, because only by then do they actually know how to use their instrument - the orchestra.

Thanks Dave for answering this question, much appreciated.

Wow, wow, wow. Thank you for this analysis of sonata form. I always learn so much from you. This one I need to listen to again. Wesley

I always assumed exposition repeats existed because, before the recording era, you heard most works for the first time and needed time to learn the material. Therefore, do we need them today, when we can hear a symphony or a quartet as many times as we want, and we know most works from memory when we attend a concert?

This is such a great video and the type of topic where you cannot find discussed literally anywhere else on the internet. A video comparing performances of a work by conductors who do and do not "get" the sonata form would be fascinating.

This makes me think about 'line guys vs. chord guys'. To me, if one is predisposed to be a line guy understanding sonata form will probably be easier than for chord guys. That's my theory, anyway.

I usually miss exposition repeats when they're not taken; also I want to hear repeats of both "limbs" of theme and variations pieces. But I can't stand development and recapitulation repeats. A particular problem with Mozart. For example, it simply ruins the last mvt of the Jupiter Symphony. Bruno Walter said of repeats, "I can't go back." When time (broadcast) wasn't an issue, Toscanini preferred to take exposition repeats. He did in all the Beethoven symphonies except the 3rd and 7th, where that tonal drama was paramount. Likewise, he and all other conductors of the time omitted repeats in Brahms except the 3rd. Brahms himself was once asked why he omitted the repeat in the 1st symphony in a performance and he said, "Oh, I think people know it well enough by now." In the case of a Haydn symphony, I always feel uneasy when a repeat (exposition) is omitted because it feels incomplete and lightweight. Ditto Mozart. But with Schubert, his expositions of themes and counterthemes can be so prolix, that a repeat becomes tedious. Exceptions are the Unfinished and, for me, the 2nd symphony because its so much fun, I want to hear it again. Its theme and variations movement is also most fulfilling with all of the repeats. I hear too many merely dutiful run-throughs nowadays. Or a Makela Dvorak 9th on KZfaq with maddening, endless futzing around with the music making it less expressive and meaningful, not more.

The same can be said for chamber music ensembles

Great, so right, thank you!

To what extent might this also be driven by the changing relationship between conductor and orchestra? If a chief conductor only works with their orchestra for a few weeks a year, the balance of power shifts more towards the orchestra, and my hunch would be that this results in more attention-grabbing playing by the orchestra at the expense of the overall architecture. Also the increasing use of extras by many orchestras might play a role?

And in the age of LP skipping repeats saved space for more music or just better sound using wider grooves. That must have been another reason?

I've always questioned the notion of exposition repeats, feeling that they tended to undermine the dramatic momentum which I thought was the whole point of the sonata-form movement. Your discussion suggested to me a possible different way of looking at this practice: suppose the "drama" involves the progress of a "subject" or protagonist if you will, struggling up a hill: suppose just as he gets within reach of the summit, he falls back and is obliged to begin his ascent all over again, but this time manages to make it through the "development" and finally make it all the way back to "home." This would suggest that should a conductor choose to take the repeat, he or she should make sure to give it an extra measure of intensity; not simply mechanically retrace the previous steps.

I don't think they don't get it, I think it's a matter of paradigm. As a young musician myself I honestly find more interesting to work on sound, rhythm, articulation, character and phrasing in the sense of tension that comes and resolves. I am aware of the great shape but deep inside I think that it will come out anyway because it's built inside the music and it can't be undermined that easily. Tbh I find that some conductors that are said to privilege form and flow are kinda dull, especially in some music. I love Blomstedt and his Bruckner and Sibelius, but his Dvorak and Mozart are a bit underplayed imho. Concerning repeats, to me it's just a matter of balancing the two parts. Often enough the repeated exposition balances the development and the recapitulation, which being two section are of course longer, but sometimes repeating the second half gives the piece a nice symmetry (notable example, finale of Mozart 39th). Taking every repeat in Schubert 9th, as you often say, is dreadful. Schubert was a genius but conciseness was not his thing 😅

Sonata form is rooted in Western (European) based arguement rhetoric - so thesis, antithesis (constrasting A&B thematic material ) then working out of synthesis (development). True?

I have always believed that repeats in 18th and 19th Century compositions were a function of the fact that without recordings, the initial exposure to the music might be the only time the listener would ever hear it. Thus, the repeat gave an opportunity to absorb the music to a greater degree than a strait through reading would allow. No longer needed.

I own Levine's Mozart 38 and he repeats also the second part. Although it's a very good rendition, it's very very LONG.

Not only that they don’t understand Sonata form, they don’t know how to phrase, don’t know the musical contour.

Dave, I'm curious, when it comes to sonata form and symphonic structure, where does Mahler 4th stand? I don't really think it is either a 1st movement or finale symphony, because it seems to me that all the weight and the structural progress of the music is centered on the adagio.

It's always amused me that some of the great conductors who saw the big picture and could make revelatory recordings, like Walter and Furtwangler, themselves couldn't write a coherent sonata movement to save their lives. Both of those guys wrote inscrutable symphonies. Add to the list Dorati, Kletzki, Mata, Weingartner...I guess those who can, do; those who can't conduct.

Lots of recent recorded music misses the chance to bring colour with character rather than rhythm. It seems, slavishness to a quickened beat is seen as some qualifying standard. Rather than, as you say here, an internal character fully realised by slight subversion or coloration of this conformist pride. Woodwind themes and second subjects are often played without referring back to us having experienced the contrasting first theme. Which is cruel because music is written to be immediate, and we all have heard the first subject so are all capable of understanding a different approach - which second subjects and wind themes are often built for. Repeats should be arbitrary and to the conductor's taste - some exposition says all it can in one go, but, some needs its surprise and drama reprised. I disagree slightly about the idea of forward momentum being the crucial factor in determining whether to repeat. I maintain it is an intuitive issue, but that there are cases where an interrupted momentum is acceptable.

Dave, you mentioned Bruckner. Did he really write in sonata form? I thought Brucker had a more modular style, where one idea starts and ends, then another one begins.

I wonder if modern people have simply been exposed to too many extended chords, strange modulations and dissonances just from listening to regular music. Sonata form, as I understand it, is a battle between two themes that are in keys that are a fifth apart. To modern ears, it might be difficult to construe the difference between C Major and G Major as anything exciting or worth chewing over. A conductor trying to do old sonata form properly might therefore be forced to ape a sense of excitement and drama that would have come more naturally in the old days.

The problem is that today's musician do not actually listen to classical music anymore. Go to a conservatory dorm and you will here pop music blasting all day. Younger musicians today just do not listen to classical music and just cannot be as familiar with those musical elements like large scale form which only exists in classical and not pop.