![\""America](\"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/obama-state-of-the-union-4.jpg\")
<\/a>“America is changing, and I want my daughters to grow up in a world where it is okay to take the exposition repeat even in the first movement of Rachmaninoff 2”<\/p><\/div>\n
Wilfred Pennyschnauzer, deputy vice president of the West Poughkeepsie Campaign for Equality for Exposition Repeats said he wept when Obama uttered the fateful words on Tuesday evening. \u201cI gotta tell you,\u201d he said, his voice still choked with emotion, \u201cwe\u2019ve all known there were enlightened places where you could take an exposition repeat without too much fear of grumbling from tired violinists or impatient society ladies, but you shouldn\u2019t have to go to New York or San Francisco to hear the Eroica with the exposition repeat. Just to hear the President of the United States say to the nation, and the whole world, that all exposition repeats can and should be taken in every town and village- well that meant a whole lot. It\u2019s good to hear the President saying we should respect all <\/i>kinds of music notation- not just the pitches and the loud dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n
A number Beltway pundits, however, sounded a cynical note after the broadcast, noting that as recently as his first presidential campaign, Obama had described the exposition of a Sonata-Allegro movement as \u201ca sacred union between one set of musical ideas and one run-through by the performers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think this is real leadership,\u201d said Wagner von Hanslick from the left-leaning think tank, the American Musicological Institute, \u201cas much as it is Obama following a demographic shift in the US population. Exposition repeats are no longer considered a tedious necessity- they’re supported by over 64% of the American people. Obama is just recognizing that the national consensus has changed, and he has to change with it if he wants to stay popular.”<\/p>\n
Indeed, Obama\u2019s position on exposition repeats was reported by sources close to the president as \u201cevolving\u201d for much of his first term. Much to the dismay of exposition repeat rights activists who had hoped for early decisive action, presidential pollsters had floated a number of trial balloons in 2009 -10 exploring public reactions to more modest policies that would allow for performers to take exposition repeats on a case-by-case basis, as long as \u201cit doesn\u2019t make the concert too damn long,\u201d without specifically acknowledging the repeat sign as a form or music notation worthy of equal consideration as accidentals, accents and tempo markings.<\/p>\n
Even as recently as December, Obama was reported to be hedging on whether he would include plans for the official recognition of exposition repeats in his second term.\u00a0 Many Washington insiders attribute the final public shift in policy to Vice President Joseph Biden\u2019s December 21s appearance on the Sunday morning program, \u201cMusicology Today,\u201d in which the famously loquacious VP said bluntly \u201cFor Pete\u2019s sake, guys- can\u2019t we just accept that exposition repeats are an intrinsic part of a well balanced Sonata-Allegro structure? Just take the damned repeats for godsake!\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Vice President Joe Biden; “For godssake- it’s not freakin’ rocket science: Brahms writes a repeat, just take the damn repeat!”<\/p><\/div>\n
Republican leaders expressed dismay and scepticism at the President\u2019s embrace of a form of musical notation long scorned by the American musical establishment. \u201cJob creators are busy people, and making them sit through a repeat of the exposition of a Brahms symphony or a Schubert sonata is just going keep them from having the time they need to create jobs,\u201d said Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.<\/p>\n