It's an anacrusic life.(ad lib)

As an adolescent pianist, I understood sonata-allegro form in a vague way, but it wasn't until I played the Beethoven Waldstein Sonata as an undergraduate that I became fascinated with the workings of that form. Dozens of details about the Waldstein mesmerized me, but none as much as the lead-in to the recap in the first movement: the nervous muted dialogue between the hands at opposing ends of the keyboard, then the telescoping of the motifs creating a crescendo that culminates in a sweeping convergence and near-collision at the middle! I had never previously heard or played anything so raw and powerful, yet blatantly childlike. My teacher told me it was called a "retransition." The weirdness of that term has never left me--yes, it's certainly a transition but what's "re" about it? Perhaps it's short for "return" or "recap" but it still sounds odd.

I soon fell in love with the Beethoven 4th Symphony, probably because its first movement retransition is the orchestral cousin of the Waldstein's (they were composed within two years of one another). I listened to that section over and over so many times in my dorm room that my LP became scratched.

By then I was hooked on retransitions and have remained so. A favorite passage in the Eroica Symphony first movement is the celebrated retransition in which strings quietly tremolo on a dominant 7th in minor while the horn seems to enter prematurely on the tonic major--retransition as composer's playground!

The retransitions in the first movements of the two Brahms piano concertos could not be any more contrasting. In the D Minor concerto, the piano and orchestra bark at one another, an ongoing stalemate of great forces producing a blood-curdling hemiola as both descend into the tonic (but for only one brief moment). Conversely, the B-flat concerto's retransition may be the sound of heaven itself. The piano peacefully undulates up high while the orchestra gently guides it along back to the tonic, the horns and others recapping prematurely on a syncopation (Brahms tipping his hat to the Eroica?).

A unique retransition occurs in the ultra-popular slow movement of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra. Surprisingly, the retransition's buildup is articulated mainly by the solo guitar, a relatively quiet instrument. Strumming as loudly as it can, supported only ...