Re: GG:Intros

[Robert Clements <clemensr@mailhost.world.net>]

At 19:00 24/5/1996 EDT, Mary Jo Watts wrote:

>So many people have come and gone on the list (which hovers in membership
>around 170 people from around 14 different countries) that I'd like to
>extend the request for new members to introduce themselves, maybe
>explain how you got interested in Gould, what your favorite recordings
>are, etc.  

I hate questions like this. I think i really prefer being a sequence of
contentious bytes than an identifiable member of the species dubiously
identified as _homo sapiens sapiens_. Anyway:

Logisitical analysis: angry white male with radically pragmatic politics & a
distinctly sinophilic streak - 35 years of age - resident of Sydney,
Australia (but despite everything, i think i'd rather be in Ghuangzhou) - my
computer system has been conveniently (if slobbishly) arranged so that i can
send e-mail from bed....

Conceptual development: no particular musical skills; but (to update a joke
a musical humorist Gerard Hoffnung), i play the compact disc brilliantly -
something of a collector of music... where someone else might collect 50
different "Eroica"s, i'll track down 50 different pieces; or better still,
50 different composers (the basic aesthetic has been misidentified as
"militant eclecticism") - 20th century music does predominate, though
(favorite composers would include Aaron Copland, Alan Hovhaness, Arnold
Schoenberg, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Giacinto Scelsi, George Lloyd, Lou
Harrison, Krysztof Penderecki & Morton Feldman - i also collect orchestral
music from China)....

Draft response: hard to be sure; but was probably familiar with "the idea of
Gould" before i really knew his playing (not uncommon with me)... to a
certain extent, this remains true - really became familiar with his
_playing_ through a CBS three record set with included piano works by Brahms
(are these available on CD? - i don't recall seeing them) & the (in)famous
Wagner transcriptions - "favorite" recording would either be the Wagner
reissue or the 2CD set of works with piano solo by Schoenberg - have heard a
number of his radio documentaries; but having spent a large part of the
eighties programming experimental film (& video) from the 1900s to the
present, they are, perhaps, rather less striking to me than to most people....

Interim report (subject to revision): despite a tendency towards relentless
intellectualising, am distinctly skeptical about the whole process - what
intrigues me about Gould is the fascinating fusion of rigorous theorising &
instinctive response which marks his work... much as it does a
near-contemporary - the French filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard....

Bureaucratically yours....

Robert Clements
clemensr@mailhost.world.net