GG: GG in '81 on JB's D Min

[Mary Jo Watts <mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu>]

In an interview Tim Page did with GG just before the release of the
new Goldbergs, GG and TP discuss the Brahms D Minor furor in relation
to the tempo system GG devised for the Goldberg release.  Seems GG
used this tempo system on many celebrated occasions. (The system is
discussed at length in the interview.) 

I transcribe a piece of this interview from the Japan-only release CD
(thanks, Junichi!)  As far as I know this interview isn't published
anywhere though I don't know why considering it's one of the most
detailed and lengthist comments GG made about the Goldbergs and his
tempi. It's also one of his last interviews.  (Though I suspect, from
the sound of it, GG scripted the whole thing.) Maybe it will show up
in _GlennGould_ the magazine.  Anyone know?
 

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GG: You know Tim, I maintain to this day that what shocked everybody
	vis-a`-vis the [Brahms D Minor] interpretation [with Bernstein	
	conducting] (Of course there are some people who are
	just shocked by the on stage admission that a conductor and a soloist
	could have a profound disagreement which everybody knows
	perfectly well goes on off stage anyway.)  But what's shocked
	them about the interpretation, I think was NOT the basic tempo
	itself.  Certainly, you know the basic tempo was very slow. It
	was unusually slow but I've heard many other performances which didn't
	shock anybody with opening themes very nearly as slow. Sort of
	(sings opening). It was, to come back to our Goldberg
	discussion, the relationship between themes that
	shocked them. It was the fact for example that the second
	theme of the first movement of the Brahms (sings) which, you know
	after all is an inversion of the first theme, was not
	appreciably slower than the first theme. It was in fact played
	with something like um Haydenesque continuity instead of I
	guess what most people anticipate as Brahmsian contrast, you know.

TP: I'm going to anthropomorphize a bit here

GG: Good heavens!

TP: ...and wager a guess that what they objected to was the fact that it
	didn't present the well shall we say masculine/feminine contrast
	that one has come..

GG: Mmmm Hmmm.  Mmmm Hmmm. Yeah.

TP: ...to expect.

GG: Exactly. I'll stick with your terms. It presented an asexual or
	maybe a unisexual view...

TP: Mmmm. Hmmm.

GG: ...of the work you know. But you see in the case of the Goldberg,
	I felt there was an even greater necessity for this system than in a
	work like the Brahms D Minor because as you know the Goldberg is an
	extraordinary collection of moods and textures. I mean think of	
	Variation 15....It's the most severe and rigorous and beautiful
	canon...that I know, the canon in inversion at the 5th. It's a piece
	SO moving so anguished and so uplifting at the same time that it would
	not be in anyway out of place in the St. Matthew Passion.  Matter of
	fact, I've always thought of Variation 15 as the perfect Good Friday
	Spell, you know. Well, anyway a movement like that is preceded by
	Variation 14, logically enough, which is CERTAINLY one of the giddiest
	bits of neo-Scarlattism imaginable.

TP: Cross hand versions and all! (both laughing)

GG: Yeah and and and quite simply the trap in this work, in the
	Goldberg, is to avoid letting it come across as thirty independent
	pieces because if one gives each of those movements their head it can
	very easily do just that....


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Comments?


Also could someone with a background in music explain to me what GG
means when he talks about the gender qualities of music (usually when
he's trying to blur the contrast)?  I assume there is a tradition in
music criticism and composition of associating particular tempi,
registers, etc. with one gender or the other? 

-Mary Jo,
mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu