Yearned for this again, 1 minute in, couldn't help wondering what's the other famous symphony called that beared such a high resemblance with this. Found the answer half an hour later - turned out it's the SAME symphony but different rendition! Wolfgang Sawallisch & Staatskapelle Dresden, also available as score + music here.
I dunno if anyone else feels this way, but imo the first movement should have a repeat of the exposition. Just the way the exposition (EDIT: and the rest of the movement) is written really feels like it wants to be repeated, you know?
I strongly disagree. The exposition ends (double bar before F) in relative stasis, most of the orchestra is just holding a B flat and then an F sharp before jumping into the development with a subito forte G Major chord. Even if you wanted to put a repeat in, you would first have to get rid of the bar of F sharp to harmonically make sense, and then you would somehow have to get the orchestra both loud and moving again in a way that seamlessly brings you back to the beginning. It would require a ton of meddling to sound seamless, let alone effective. As such, the conductor would effectively have to take the role of composer/editor which could definitely lead to some very weird results; even if the conductor composed a transition that actually worked, all you would end up with is a token exposition repeat that many people think is silly even in music like the Brahms Symphonies (except 4) where the repeat is actually written in by the composer. I think Schumann’s original conception works fine, trying to get an exposition repeat in there creates huge complications in performing the work and the end result would be antithetical to what Schumann wrote.
@@themajor2072 I've thought about it, and all it would require would be adding a single extra bar - instead of the F-sharp, the first time, you'd have the strings play another B-flat (maybe change the octave), and crescendo through it. Since the orchestra's just holding a B-flat (the dominant of E-flat), it's almost trivial to just pivot back to the tonic of the symphony. It's simple, doesn't add much of anything (except a quick transition back to the repeat) and so doesn't get in the way, and in my view would work pretty effectively. Sadly the best mockup I could make would maybe be a MIDI file or a Sibelius file. In any case, my main point was just that the way Schumann writes this piece really just feels like it wants a repeat. In a lot of music with the exposition repeat, the repeat serves two functions: firstly, contrasting the first ending with the second ending (or contrasting going back to where we came from with going off somewhere remote); and, second, a sort of 'rule of three', where the end of the exposition shows up three times and completes itself differently each time. Further, in cases like this, where the development starts with a 'weird' version of the material at the beginning of the exposition, the 'rule of three' argument holds even more water (since we're setting up the opening theme, reinforcing it with a repeat, and then defying expectations with the development section - the return in the recap falls outside the scope of that analysis). The way Schumann wrote this piece is almost no different to the way pieces without a repeat are written, especially considering the contrast between the beginning of the development and the exposition - in other words, the start of the development almost implies a repeat - and to my mind, it doesn't feel like there was a good reason for him to break from the standard here. You mentioned Brahms' 4th - the reason that one could probably _not_ work with a repeat is because he explicitly wrote the development section to begin like the exposition. A repeat would make the music, well, repetitive. A little outside the scope of my original comment, but I do support playing the repeats in his other symphonies - for the 2nd symphony, since that one is, in terms of how the exposition, development, and recapitulation begin, an identical case to this piece, my arguments are also identical, and in the cases of the 1st and 3rd, it's a matter, again, of contrast. Even so, with Brahms, you can maybe argue that the vastness of his music means that repeating the exposition will resuly in an overly-long, boring performance (to which, without mincing words, my response is: if you're a performer, and you can't play a repeat without boring your audience, then that's your fault. But I digress); with this piece, I really don't think that argument holds water (well, it holds less water than before). Even accepting the premise of 'big music gets boring', this symphony is not 'big music'. It's of the scale of a mid-size Beethoven symphony, or late Mozart, or Mendelssohn - pieces where it's standard to play the exposition-repeat. (Although Mendelssohn's Italian symphony has a whole other thing going on, since it exposes material in the first time bar that's just completely skipped if you don't do the repeat.) tl;dr: the piece is written, structurally, almost identically to several other symphonic first movements, just without a repeat. In my view, the lack of a repeat sounds weird. Sorry this became so long lol
@@klop4228 I think that such a solution would also have to address the fuller sound of the opening and in some way propel the music back into motion or it will still sound disjointed. If we try your crescendo solution, I would throw in at least the timpani rolling on B flat, but probably also the brass and some of the winds, so the crescendo can reach the full sonority of the opening. Another option would be the rewrite the last 4 bars such that the strings don't slow down and instead maintain the opening rhythm all the way through (probably still alternating octaves on B flat) with a subito piano at the sforzando so the crescendo has room to grow through four bars, then have the winds and brass and timpani join in for the last two bars with the same rhythm on a V7 to give the crescendo more sound and a stronger harmonic pull into the exposition. Would I ever actually do this? No. But it's the most sensible solution I could think of. I think that Schumann was deliberately going for something that doesn't conform to the rule of 3. This symphony is, in many ways, Schumann's least conventional. Consequently, I think it only fair to question how necessary it is that the work conform to conventionality when assessing it. As for the start of the development, I think it works best as a sort of harmonic surprise. What Schumann is essentially doing is taking the material in G minor from the exposition and switching it to the major so he can open up his harmonic possibilities. Strictly speaking, this G minor section in the exposition is neither explicitly the first or the second subject, so I'm less convinced that he's just starting with a "weird version" of the exposition. The appearance of the material in G minor in the exposition is itself kind of a surprise (and arguably an unconventional choice in its own right), as it means that the music kind of wanders into the "wrong key" before getting into the second subject proper, and I think Schumann wants to use the harmonic jolt of the inherent surprise that material has to propel the development out of the stasis he leaves the exposition in. I think skipping the first repeat is supposed to add to the surprise of this direction, as if to not completely give away that he's about to make a radical change. If he repeated the exposition twice, a well trained audience would not only expect a radical departure to get away from the expositional material they have now heard twice, they would practically demand it. This way, he can push the audience out of its comfort zone with the explosion of the development and it comes off as more spontaneous. I think, in his own way, Schumann is defying expectations with this choice, that the subversion that you feel has taken place was the point. On a more structural level, I don't think the symphony really needs a longer first movement than it already has. Could you add a repeat? Well even if you did, either way the first movement is undoubtedly the weightiest of the five movements. The remaining movements are all relatively short for Schumann, none of the other four movements really even come close to cracking 10 minutes. Consequently, I think that the overall structure of the work is better proportioned if we keep the first movement longer than the others, but relatively short as far as Schumann's first movements go. It's definitely not a huge symphony, but I think that part of what makes the unconventional five movement structure work the way it does is that Schumann makes every movement shorter than he usually does, including the first. I think it would be counterproductive to add another 3 minutes to the opening movement (making it about as long as his other opening movements) while all of the other movements are still relatively scaled down. I didn't mean to open the can of worms about whether or not Brahms repeats are justified, only to point out that there are many listeners who think that exposition repeats are almost categorically an archaic convention and would rather they almost always be skipped. Am I one of those people? No, but I don't feel particularly strongly about their necessity either (and, at least in performance, neither did Brahms). My point is that exposition repeats are kind of controversial amongst listeners even at the best of times, and I think that there are many out there who wouldn't want the exposition repeat even if it was actually there, let alone what they would think of an interpreter "tampering" with "the master's" score. TL;DR I think the both the symphony and the first movement have a few more unconventional characteristics than you give credit for, and I think that the decision to omit the conventional exposition repeat is ultimately a complimentary creative decision to a work that is somewhat unorthodox in many other respects.
@@themajor2072 I think I understand most of your points, and I may be out of srguments lol. I think I may have misremembered the piece a little (and, being on mobile, couldn't listen through it again without deleting my whole comment), and so might have misrepresented the beginning of the development, and my 'rule of three' argument is kind of irrelevant here. Oops :P Even so, the development starts in a way that I honestly thought, before I saw the score, that every recording I listened to was just skipping a repeat. I suppose not having one is surprising, but to my mind that surprise comes across as more "oh I guess there really wasn't a repeat" than "wow, Schumann really got me there". Maybe that's a time period thing, too - us, here, 200 odd years later, might well perceive the music differently to the people back then. I'd have to do some research to see how people felt about repeats during Schumann's heyday (though, honestly, I wouldn't be much surprised if he just heard people complain about repeats, and maybe agreed himself, and so just took it out, without really changing the way the music was written). In any case, the exact details of how far you go, harmonically, after a repeat are pretty loose, too. People expect a change, but it can be as small as just repeating the opening in the subdominant. I think the surprise here would work just as well, if not better for having established a 'normal' to break away from. Maybe I'll put together a Sibelius file (if I can download a good version of the score) that exemplifies my intentions. I do think that my simple solution could absolutely work (in fact, what it does add is that it makes the 'second time' a development of a slotted-in first time), but maybe I'm wrong. The opening starts from literally nothing, and the development starts from quiet - I don't think we necessarily need a gradual build-up back to the beginning. In any case, if I put a Sibelius file together, I'll probably upload it on my channel. Which, I guess, will start becoming just "versions of famous music with small edits that in my opinion arguably improve it" lol
Maybe something else to consider - the sole statement of the exposition in the first movement is three minutes long. This is short for a typical first movement, and fits with the overall conception of the piece fitting an extra movement entirely within the classical model. However, Schumann's three other numbered symphonies all feature corresponding expositions well under 90 seconds each - less than half the length of that of the Rhenish. (Shorter than that of a tiny Haydn symphony, even.) All three also feature slow introductions, so repeating the exposition here would have been a convenient way to bring the Third's first movement up to the scale of the others' - but that would throw the work as a whole out of balance with its extra movement/split finale.
"Herr Schumann, when do you want the orchestra to play tutti?"
Schumann: "Yes."
What a great symphony. Wow, Schumann’s melodies are really touching.
Heheheha
this style of 1st movement created different feeling - not too loud but smooth
Pure joy, considering such a tragic life.
🎧Викторина по Шуману. Таймкоды:
0:05 - 55. I часть, Lebhaft (E-dur)
9:36 - 56. II часть, Скерцо (C-dur)
21:20 - 57. IV часть, Feierlich (E-dur)
The most magnificent symphony there is❤
I. Lebhaft. 00:04
II. Scherzo: Sehr mäßig. 09:36
III. Nicht schnell. 15:39
IV. Feierlich. 21:20
V. Lebhaft. 26:45
Yearned for this again, 1 minute in, couldn't help wondering what's the other famous symphony called that beared such a high resemblance with this. Found the answer half an hour later - turned out it's the SAME symphony but different rendition! Wolfgang Sawallisch & Staatskapelle Dresden, also available as score + music here.
Awesome! 🎶👏👏
The first movement makes me feel like I'm in a fantasy film
Funny you should say that: James Horner ripped it off for the film Willow.
I dunno if anyone else feels this way, but imo the first movement should have a repeat of the exposition. Just the way the exposition (EDIT: and the rest of the movement) is written really feels like it wants to be repeated, you know?
I strongly disagree. The exposition ends (double bar before F) in relative stasis, most of the orchestra is just holding a B flat and then an F sharp before jumping into the development with a subito forte G Major chord. Even if you wanted to put a repeat in, you would first have to get rid of the bar of F sharp to harmonically make sense, and then you would somehow have to get the orchestra both loud and moving again in a way that seamlessly brings you back to the beginning. It would require a ton of meddling to sound seamless, let alone effective. As such, the conductor would effectively have to take the role of composer/editor which could definitely lead to some very weird results; even if the conductor composed a transition that actually worked, all you would end up with is a token exposition repeat that many people think is silly even in music like the Brahms Symphonies (except 4) where the repeat is actually written in by the composer. I think Schumann’s original conception works fine, trying to get an exposition repeat in there creates huge complications in performing the work and the end result would be antithetical to what Schumann wrote.
@@themajor2072 I've thought about it, and all it would require would be adding a single extra bar - instead of the F-sharp, the first time, you'd have the strings play another B-flat (maybe change the octave), and crescendo through it. Since the orchestra's just holding a B-flat (the dominant of E-flat), it's almost trivial to just pivot back to the tonic of the symphony. It's simple, doesn't add much of anything (except a quick transition back to the repeat) and so doesn't get in the way, and in my view would work pretty effectively. Sadly the best mockup I could make would maybe be a MIDI file or a Sibelius file.
In any case, my main point was just that the way Schumann writes this piece really just feels like it wants a repeat. In a lot of music with the exposition repeat, the repeat serves two functions: firstly, contrasting the first ending with the second ending (or contrasting going back to where we came from with going off somewhere remote); and, second, a sort of 'rule of three', where the end of the exposition shows up three times and completes itself differently each time. Further, in cases like this, where the development starts with a 'weird' version of the material at the beginning of the exposition, the 'rule of three' argument holds even more water (since we're setting up the opening theme, reinforcing it with a repeat, and then defying expectations with the development section - the return in the recap falls outside the scope of that analysis). The way Schumann wrote this piece is almost no different to the way pieces without a repeat are written, especially considering the contrast between the beginning of the development and the exposition - in other words, the start of the development almost implies a repeat - and to my mind, it doesn't feel like there was a good reason for him to break from the standard here.
You mentioned Brahms' 4th - the reason that one could probably _not_ work with a repeat is because he explicitly wrote the development section to begin like the exposition. A repeat would make the music, well, repetitive.
A little outside the scope of my original comment, but I do support playing the repeats in his other symphonies - for the 2nd symphony, since that one is, in terms of how the exposition, development, and recapitulation begin, an identical case to this piece, my arguments are also identical, and in the cases of the 1st and 3rd, it's a matter, again, of contrast.
Even so, with Brahms, you can maybe argue that the vastness of his music means that repeating the exposition will resuly in an overly-long, boring performance (to which, without mincing words, my response is: if you're a performer, and you can't play a repeat without boring your audience, then that's your fault. But I digress); with this piece, I really don't think that argument holds water (well, it holds less water than before). Even accepting the premise of 'big music gets boring', this symphony is not 'big music'. It's of the scale of a mid-size Beethoven symphony, or late Mozart, or Mendelssohn - pieces where it's standard to play the exposition-repeat.
(Although Mendelssohn's Italian symphony has a whole other thing going on, since it exposes material in the first time bar that's just completely skipped if you don't do the repeat.)
tl;dr: the piece is written, structurally, almost identically to several other symphonic first movements, just without a repeat. In my view, the lack of a repeat sounds weird.
Sorry this became so long lol
@@klop4228 I think that such a solution would also have to address the fuller sound of the opening and in some way propel the music back into motion or it will still sound disjointed. If we try your crescendo solution, I would throw in at least the timpani rolling on B flat, but probably also the brass and some of the winds, so the crescendo can reach the full sonority of the opening. Another option would be the rewrite the last 4 bars such that the strings don't slow down and instead maintain the opening rhythm all the way through (probably still alternating octaves on B flat) with a subito piano at the sforzando so the crescendo has room to grow through four bars, then have the winds and brass and timpani join in for the last two bars with the same rhythm on a V7 to give the crescendo more sound and a stronger harmonic pull into the exposition. Would I ever actually do this? No. But it's the most sensible solution I could think of.
I think that Schumann was deliberately going for something that doesn't conform to the rule of 3. This symphony is, in many ways, Schumann's least conventional. Consequently, I think it only fair to question how necessary it is that the work conform to conventionality when assessing it. As for the start of the development, I think it works best as a sort of harmonic surprise. What Schumann is essentially doing is taking the material in G minor from the exposition and switching it to the major so he can open up his harmonic possibilities. Strictly speaking, this G minor section in the exposition is neither explicitly the first or the second subject, so I'm less convinced that he's just starting with a "weird version" of the exposition. The appearance of the material in G minor in the exposition is itself kind of a surprise (and arguably an unconventional choice in its own right), as it means that the music kind of wanders into the "wrong key" before getting into the second subject proper, and I think Schumann wants to use the harmonic jolt of the inherent surprise that material has to propel the development out of the stasis he leaves the exposition in. I think skipping the first repeat is supposed to add to the surprise of this direction, as if to not completely give away that he's about to make a radical change. If he repeated the exposition twice, a well trained audience would not only expect a radical departure to get away from the expositional material they have now heard twice, they would practically demand it. This way, he can push the audience out of its comfort zone with the explosion of the development and it comes off as more spontaneous. I think, in his own way, Schumann is defying expectations with this choice, that the subversion that you feel has taken place was the point.
On a more structural level, I don't think the symphony really needs a longer first movement than it already has. Could you add a repeat? Well even if you did, either way the first movement is undoubtedly the weightiest of the five movements. The remaining movements are all relatively short for Schumann, none of the other four movements really even come close to cracking 10 minutes. Consequently, I think that the overall structure of the work is better proportioned if we keep the first movement longer than the others, but relatively short as far as Schumann's first movements go. It's definitely not a huge symphony, but I think that part of what makes the unconventional five movement structure work the way it does is that Schumann makes every movement shorter than he usually does, including the first. I think it would be counterproductive to add another 3 minutes to the opening movement (making it about as long as his other opening movements) while all of the other movements are still relatively scaled down.
I didn't mean to open the can of worms about whether or not Brahms repeats are justified, only to point out that there are many listeners who think that exposition repeats are almost categorically an archaic convention and would rather they almost always be skipped. Am I one of those people? No, but I don't feel particularly strongly about their necessity either (and, at least in performance, neither did Brahms). My point is that exposition repeats are kind of controversial amongst listeners even at the best of times, and I think that there are many out there who wouldn't want the exposition repeat even if it was actually there, let alone what they would think of an interpreter "tampering" with "the master's" score.
TL;DR I think the both the symphony and the first movement have a few more unconventional characteristics than you give credit for, and I think that the decision to omit the conventional exposition repeat is ultimately a complimentary creative decision to a work that is somewhat unorthodox in many other respects.
@@themajor2072 I think I understand most of your points, and I may be out of srguments lol. I think I may have misremembered the piece a little (and, being on mobile, couldn't listen through it again without deleting my whole comment), and so might have misrepresented the beginning of the development, and my 'rule of three' argument is kind of irrelevant here. Oops :P
Even so, the development starts in a way that I honestly thought, before I saw the score, that every recording I listened to was just skipping a repeat. I suppose not having one is surprising, but to my mind that surprise comes across as more "oh I guess there really wasn't a repeat" than "wow, Schumann really got me there".
Maybe that's a time period thing, too - us, here, 200 odd years later, might well perceive the music differently to the people back then. I'd have to do some research to see how people felt about repeats during Schumann's heyday (though, honestly, I wouldn't be much surprised if he just heard people complain about repeats, and maybe agreed himself, and so just took it out, without really changing the way the music was written).
In any case, the exact details of how far you go, harmonically, after a repeat are pretty loose, too. People expect a change, but it can be as small as just repeating the opening in the subdominant. I think the surprise here would work just as well, if not better for having established a 'normal' to break away from.
Maybe I'll put together a Sibelius file (if I can download a good version of the score) that exemplifies my intentions. I do think that my simple solution could absolutely work (in fact, what it does add is that it makes the 'second time' a development of a slotted-in first time), but maybe I'm wrong. The opening starts from literally nothing, and the development starts from quiet - I don't think we necessarily need a gradual build-up back to the beginning.
In any case, if I put a Sibelius file together, I'll probably upload it on my channel. Which, I guess, will start becoming just "versions of famous music with small edits that in my opinion arguably improve it" lol
Maybe something else to consider - the sole statement of the exposition in the first movement is three minutes long. This is short for a typical first movement, and fits with the overall conception of the piece fitting an extra movement entirely within the classical model. However, Schumann's three other numbered symphonies all feature corresponding expositions well under 90 seconds each - less than half the length of that of the Rhenish. (Shorter than that of a tiny Haydn symphony, even.) All three also feature slow introductions, so repeating the exposition here would have been a convenient way to bring the Third's first movement up to the scale of the others' - but that would throw the work as a whole out of balance with its extra movement/split finale.