David Fenton wrote:
"Well, why is it that sometime between 1770 and 1790, all composers
started becoming substantially more specific in notating dynamics and
articulations than they were before? Does the absence of the explicit
performance indications mean that they played the music straight,
with no dynamic changes and no contrasts of articulation? I don't
believe so, but if you argue that the composers who explicitly
specified no repeats were doing so because everybody before then
played the repeats, then logically you'd have to argue that the
missing dynamics and articulations were also not observed."
That's a non-sequitor.
And as it's been shown by some citations earlier in this thread, it was the custom to play the repeat (at least in the author's opinion. You disagreed that represented a normative custom). During the baroque, the notion of music as rhetoric made use of repetition as a tool. This is commented on in writings of theorists of the period.
No, the common sense understanding (really the Occam's razor reading) of why Boccherini and Beethoven marked some da capo's "senza repetitione" is simple: the norm was to play the repeats.
Kim Patrick Clow
"Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries."
~Mark Twain
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