Re: GG: Great Genius and the Personality Argument

[Andrew J Hrycyna <ajh@world.std.com>]

Since I'm the person who initiated--though inadvertently--the recent
flamey exchange about criticizing Gould when I posted my defense of GG's
performance of Art of Fugue XIV, I want to try to steer it in a different
direction.  (By the way, I'm responding mainly to Bradley Lehman, not to
the recent invention of BL as country hick. I'm not sure what to do with
Jencks.  I personally think we should keep to one character per email
address.) 

First, yes, by all means, thanks to BL for that long response to my triple
fugue post.  I for one didn't feel as if Bradley was out of line for
making his negative case.  In fact, I invited it.  I'd tried to ground my
defense in a (layperson's) analysis of the details of the actual playing. 
I hoped Bradley and others would give responses cast in the same terms. 
Bradley did (plus more!, on which, see below). All he'd written recently
before that was "creepy," and I thought that was too easy, to say the l
east.  I wanted to hear how someone who obviously knew the Art of Fugue
well would defend a response that seemed so opposed to mine. I'm not
convinced (yet), but I'm going to seek out some of those other
performances and judge for myself. I may change my mind.  I may not.  But
Bradley made an interesting, responsible case based on specific responses
to particular points I tried to make and to particular moments in the
music. 

In fact, I'll go farther: I thought the spirit of it was *great*.  I think
there should be more debate about the music itself--and about GG's ideas
themselves--as opposed to pyschologizing that simply tries to figure out
why Gould was the way he was (howe ver interesting that may be).  I think
BL and I agree on that.

What I *don't* think BL can get away with (a point also made by Gregory
Barton) is this repeated implicit idea that there's a sharp distinction
between playing the music "as it is" or "as Bach wrote it" as opposed to
"imposing your personality" on the mu sic. 

Maybe if we didn't know so much about GG's personality we wouldn't be
talking so much about the way his personality reveals itself in his
performance, any more than we do about Maurizio Pollini or Gustav
Leonhardt. Of course, their personalities *do* come through, too, in the
musical choices they make, in the musical gestures they make because they
are second nature to them now, part of their musical style, as well as in
the more self-conscious choices they make about how to present a piece
every time they perform.

To me, the "criticism" that "the performance is distorted; Gould imposes
too much of his personality" reduces completely to the claim that the
"performance is distorted" and is therefore still in need of argument. 
The appeal to the Personality Argument adds nothing.  It's just something
you say when you don't like the performance. 

A timid, imitative original instrument performance that conformed to all
the de rigeur "authentic" academic requirements of ornamentation and
articulation that also did what BL says GG does--dissipate energy when it
should build, etc.-- would also reveal a lot about the timid, conformist
personality of the performer.  But the fact that his personality came
through would not be what's wrong with the performance. What would be
wrong with the performance is that the music dissipates energy where it
should build, that the music is timid, and making that charge stick would
require arguments about the music itself and the details of the playing. 

Now, I actually don't think that BL disagrees with this at some deep level
(he can correct me).  He actually gives arguments based on the music and
based (importantly) on an alternative, competing musical vision of the
piece.  But after giving those arguments he tries to forestall further
debate by appealing to this idea of personality (or its mirror image: the
idea that the text, the "music itself", or "Bach's thought" transparently
announce how the music should be played).  I think he wants to set up this
principle--that playing which imposes personality is illicit in the first
place--to trump all other arguments and prevent response (after all, who
among us would deny that GG's personality comes through his
performances?).  I am arguing that not only does the Personality Argument
not trump other responses, it adds nothing substantive.  We're back to
arguing about the details of the music and what kinds of interpretations
are better than others.  As we should be. 

By the way, a related point about interpretation.  You might prefer a
performance that downplays the contrasts Gould makes, that plays the third
section of Cp.XIV fast and forcefully instead of "devotionally."  You
might even *argue* for it.  And BL does.  But that's just as much an
interpretive act, an "imposition" on the silent text as Gould's. 
Somebody, maybe Jencks, said:

"The music doesn't have a margin note from Bach like "Be all
devotional-like and quiet and pious at this here spot," nor is there a
sung text to indicate a theme or mood. the music of this fugue as Bach
left it is just plain neutral ("inherently!"), y'know, absolute music and
not some programmatic thing.  Anything assigning a mood to it is an
"imposed concept," just somebody's idea of a feeling they wanna project,
at their own risk, 'cause Bach didn 't say what he wanted us to feel at
that point, it's all imposed interpretation.. . . " 

And that's right.  The music doesn't say in the margin "Be all devotional
like."  It also *doesn't* say: 

"The piece is a valedictory culmination of contrapuntal techniques...it
gets *more* intense as more and more subjects are combined, and as there
is less free material.  The composition becomes increasingly compact, as
Bach has to fit his chosen subjects together; there are fewer combinations
available.  The energy builds *up* steadily from section to section." 

That's BL talking, not Bach.  As of course it has to be.  What BL sketches
is is an alternative picture of what's going on at a macro-level in the
piece, and every good musician has to have such a vision.  It's exactly
analogous in kind to Gould's devotio nal--stacatto contrast--devotional
vision of the piece.  How you go about defending one over the other is a
fascinating question, the fundamental question of what it is to interpret
music.  Part of it (not all of it) is appeal to historical traditions an d
facts.  A huge part of it is looking to the musical text itself, and
examining what gets lost with certain choices, and what gets illuminated,
and what the tradeoffs are. ("GG's distortion can be highly interesting
and illuminating in itself, sure."--Br adley Lehman.)  And depending what
kind of person you are, and what context you are playing in, you might aim
at an interesting and illuminating performance that defamiliarizes a piece
for an audience that's heard their 75th performance of some warhorse a nd
that's expecting to hear the version they heard two weeks ago on drive
time radio.  But even without a radical agenda like that, any performer in
any case is making choices that are--inescapably--interpretations, every
bit as much as GG's. 

Finally, BL and Jencks, too: Let's be honest about what caused the
flaminess recently.  You call the music creepy.  You say that the music
reveals too much the personality of the performer.  Lots of us are led to
the nautral conclusion that you're calling GG creepy too.  I think you can
see why that would not go over well: why it would be seen as insulting and
just plain wrong.  I say if you drop the Personality Argument for the
reasons I argue above, you won't make this slide to ad hominem argument. 
Stick to the music; you do it well.

Andy Hrycyna