from “Why I used to dislike Beethoven,” by Tyler Fara

…with Beethoven, the exposition almost always ends with that big fat repeat sign. “Play this whole section again, note-for-note.” It’s like you get to the end of chapter 1 in a book, and the writer says, “OK great! Now go back and reread chapter 1 from the beginning, word for word. I’ll be waiting.”

To me, it wasn’t just that this repetition seems a little tedious. I was irritated by the fact that Beethoven is so married to this rigid three part sonata form. His music often follows the exact structure I’ve outlined above: exposition and repeat, development, recapitulation.

In contrast to Beethoven, my first loves in classical music were composers who came after Beethoven—Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Prokofiev [link regrettably no longer available], Chopin, Liszt. (If you’re only going follow one link, choose Prokofiev!) These guys sometimes do follow the sonata form. But never so rigidly as Beethoven. A close study of their music shows that they sometimes do repeat sections…but you’ll rarely find a repeat sign in their music. When these later composers repeat an idea, they always tweak it slightly, it’s never note-for-note the same. It’s like the exposition and the development are happening at the same time.

In this context, Beethoven’s music sounds rigid and repetitious. It’s a little like if you listen to modern heavy metal, and then you go back to metal from the 70s. It sounds puny by contrast! Or maybe if you love bebop jazz, and then you turn on Duke Ellington and it just don’t mean a thing ‘cuz it ain’t got that swing. Or maybe it’s like watching an action movie from the 90’s, and you’re like, “They called these special effects??” So I admit I was being a little dramatic when I said earlier that it’s the repeat sign I didn’t like about Beethoven’s music. It’s not literally the repeat sign. It’s the adherence to classical form and the rigid structure (at least relative to later music) that the repeat sign represents…

…The thing that changed for me is I went back and studied music even before Beethoven [link regrettably no longer available]. And that quickly caused me to appreciate what Beethoven was doing. He didn’t invent the sonata form, obviously. But he did perfect it. He perfected it to such a degree that later composers—Rachmaninoff, etc—just didn’t even bother to strictly adhere to the sonata form anymore. The only way they could expand past the genius of Beethoven was to break the sonata form.

And when you go the other way, to composers before Beethoven…talk about rigid and boring! Sheesh! (Unsarcastically: because I came around on Beethoven, I’m optimistic I will eventually start to love earlier composers. I just have to manage once to stay awake all the way through a Mozart piano sonata…)

So Beethoven is the sweet spot. I was wrong when I initially thought he was sticking rigidly to classical sonata structure. He wasn’t. He was testing its limits and pushing the sonata form to its absolute breaking point. And those extremely consistent repeat signs at the ends of the expositions? They serve an extremely important function. Beethoven was saying, “OK, that’s the end of the exposition. Now listen to it again, and listen closely. Because this thing is about to go off the chain.”

— Tyler Fara, from “Why I used to dislike Beethoven.”