Mit veränderten Reprisen: The Practice of Varying Repeats

In 1758–9, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote a remarkable opus of keyboard sonatas: Sechs Sonaten mit veränderten Reprisen Sonatas, Wq 50. They were published in 1760 by Georg Ludwig Winter in Berlin. In the preface, Bach acknowledges not without sarcasm a fashion for the keyboardist-performer to vary the internal repeats of a sonata: “Varying when repeating [das Verändern beym Wiederholen] is indispensable today. One expects as much from every performer.”

In 1774–5, W. A. Mozart wrote his six “Munich” Sonatas, K 279–284. Plans for publication never materialized, but if linked to a 1775 suggestion by Leopold Mozart, they might well have been printed “in the same manner as those of H: Philipp Carl Emanuel Bach mit veränderten Reprisen.”

These two opuses of keyboard sonatas—with C. P. E. Bach’s as absolute prototype—invite the following study:

What happens when we submit ourselves to an expectation of continuous variation? How far can we go, adding our variants to existing scores of (pre-)classical keyboard sonatas? As we plan our varied repeats, at what point do we feel like starting over and creating a new edition altogether? Where’s the line between practice and print—or between composing and performing?

This website presents the results of three related projects:

First, an experimental workshop at the Orpheus Institute in July 2023.

Second, a 2024 recording of C. P. E. Bach’s Sonaten mit veränderten Reprisen, Wq 50.

Third, a forthcoming recording of Mozart’s Six “Munich” Sonatas K. 279–284 (1774–75), reconstituted as “Sonatas with Varied Reprises.”

Tom Beghin
September 2024