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Re: GG : About Authenticity
I enjoyed this post. I like that particular recording too.
And I have also noticed how passages of that recording are
as rhythmically steady as rock-n-roll while others border on
rubato.
There are certainly a lot of different views on what baroque
performance practice best requires. There is an incredible
amount of interest in this right now and there are a lot of
advocates of "playing" with the tempo much as Mr. Gould does
in the recording you describe. But one thing we can say for
sure: playing Bach with the foot heavy on the sustain
pedal, and with 19th century style ornamentations, is
definitely not authentic. And what we have to remember in
1997 is that, before the work of Gould and others during the
period from 1930 to 1955, that is exactly how pianists were
playing the work of Bach. There are some transcriptions by
F. Liszt along these lines, and many of you probably also
have mixed feelings about the Busoni transcriptions
(although IMHO there are some very convincing modern
performances of those).
It's important not to fault people like Mr. Liszt who played
the work of Bach in the style of their own day. At least
they played it. We know how the classicists (and even more
so their listeners) neglected and even forgot the work of
the baroque period and other earlier periods, until the
1780s when the most brilliant classicists began to
rediscover that work. Indeed, this was true of most style
periods prior to the 19th century romanticists. Whatever
you think of the romanticists, you have to give them credit
for the respect they had for their predecessors and for
pioneering the notion that music shouldn't die just because
it isn't new or goes out of fashion with the general public.
Mark
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: GG : About Authenticity
Author: Michel Crucifix <michel.crucifix@scf.fundp.ac.be> at internet
Date: 6/5/97 9:36 PM
Hi minors,
Just a word about Mark's post (5/28 14.48), saying that Gould
was a pioneer in authenticity.
I have read in the Encyclopeadia Universalis that GG sometimes
corrected Bach's own faults in constructions of conter-point.
Always about authenticity : the Prelude n°2 C minor (W.T.K. vol I;
recordset 63/64/65) is particularly amazing. Gould takes there a lot of
liberties in tempo : slowing, accelerating,... but the most disturbing
(from an academical point of view) is that way of picking all the notes,
and playing the whole piece much slower than most pianists. But, as far
as I'm concerned, the genius of Gould appeares clearly when he puts a
light on the melody of the bassest notes, often away from other
performances.
___________________________________________________
Michel Crucifix , etudiant en physique, Courriere, Belgique
Eudora 1.5.2 (attached files ; quoted printable)
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Interests : Piano (Practice & listening Glenn Gould) ; Astronomy