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[F_minor] music theory online paper on tempi in '85 goldberg



I haven't had time to read it in full, but this paper, from the open-access
Music Theory Online journal, looks quite interesting:

Peter A Martens.
**<http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.07.13.4/mto.07.13.4.martens.html>
*Glenn Gould's "Constant Rhythmic Reference Point": Communicating Pulse in
Bach's Goldberg Variations, 1955 and 1981 *
(
http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.07.13.4/mto.07.13.4.martens.html
)
*
*ABSTRACT: Glenn Gould's recording career is bookended by his 1955 and 1981
recordings of Bach's *Goldberg Variations*. Gould discussed these two
performances at some length during interviews around the time of the 1981
release, and in these comments he expounded a loose theory of a "constant
rhythmic reference point," the organizing principle behind the time
dimension of his 1981 recording. Gould maintained that this aspect of the
latter recording made it superior to his earlier effort by giving unity to
the set as a whole. Three excerpts from both recordings were included as
part of an empirical study on tactus choice. To discover whether Gould was
successful in communicating this unity to the average listener, these
excerpts were taken from transitions between adjacent variations. While
participants' tactus choices across these transitions were not uniform in
response to either recording, they were much less diverse in response to the
1981 performance. Further, participants' tactus connections in response to
the 1981 recording largely matched those that Gould explicitly sought to
make. The results suggest individual and combined effects of Bach's composed
metric structure and Gould's performance decisions relative to that
structure, and indicate that Gould was (and is) able to control listeners'
perception of musical time via their tactus to a greater extent with his
1981 *Goldberg Variations*.

Etha

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