Klarinet Archive - Posting 000344.txt from 1997/06

From: Gary Young <gyoung@-----.com>
Subj: Repetition, novelty & boredom (fka: RE: Mozart, K. 622: Oh No!! Not again...)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 17:44:28 -0400

On June 20, Craig Countryman wrote:

<snip> "You must concede that when the same thing is repeated five times
[in what period of time? an hour? a year? a lifetime?] it begins to lose
its charm... Obiviously the people of the classical era realized that [but
post-classical people did not know this? we do not know it?], and that's
why the opportunity to improvise (and that's why everyone did it!). If you
don't the PERFORMANCE is boring, and I was using the example to illustrate
a wider problem (as I see it.)"<snip>

I certainly would never concede this, Craig, but maybe that's because I'm
much older than you (or so I guess) and so must rely more on repetition to
make life worthwhile (this is not a cause for sadness). And I think that
"charm" is the least of the attributes of Mozart's music.

But you raise a fascinating question about repetition and novelty in music
and in life generally.

My main reason to write is to tell you about a brilliant essay by Edward
Cone concerning one of Brahms' late piano works (I think opus 118, number 1
or 2 -- I don't have the music to check) in which the tonality (i.e. tonic)
remains a mystery until near the end. (The essay is in a book of Cone's
essays -- I don't have the title of the book or the essay, because I lent
the book to a friend who never returned it, and my memory is bad. Can
anyone name it and identify the Brahms piano piece?) The first time you
hear this piano piece, the revelation of the tonality is, well, a
revelation; the second time, you know what will happen beforehand.
(Obviously this phenomenon can be generalized to Mozart and other music,
and beyond music to cooking, or... use your imagination.) And yet we
continue to be enthralled by this piece, time after time.

Cone asks how this can be, and to answer this question he compares the
piece to a Sherlock Holmes mystery (I think it's The Speckled Band). We
love to reread this mystery, but why bother if we already know how it turns
out?

Compare the return at the end of Brahms' Quintet to the mvmt 1 opening
theme, which flows out of the preceding mvmt 4 material effortlessly but
yet surprisingly. This is an extraordinary move that is new for each
listener or performer but once. Once you've heard or played this return of
the mvmt 1 theme, you will thereafter hear the preceding mvmt 4 material
very differently, you hear in it the relationship to mvmt 1. But once
Brahms has revealed to us in this way the relation of mvmt 4 to mvmt 1, why
should we want to hear and play this piece, and this specific passage of
return, again and again? Why does this return continue to thrill us each
time we hear or play it (assuming an adequate performance, which in this
case does not include improvisation!). Why aren't we bored? (Or are we?)

I've been assuming that repetition is possible, that we can repeat, say,
the Brahms Quintet. Maybe that's wrong. As Heraclitus said, you can't
step in the same Brahms Quintet twice. But if that's true, then we don't
need improvisation to make each performance of the Mozart Concerto
different. Heraclitus was never bored, or at least not more than once.
Been there, done that.

Gary Young
Madison, Wisconsin

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