Re: GG: Wagner transcription

[Richard Vallis <rvpiano@spec.net>]

To add to this explanation,  Aunt Sadie and her right hand tremelos
represents the Romantic cliche manner in which, as Bradley Lehman
indicates, amateurs (particularly 19th century matrons) tended to
embellish a melody on the most common instrument in the home: the parlor
upright
The term, fast and loose indicates a slipshod manner. It might
originally have had some sexual connotations, but I'll leave that to the
linguists.

Junichi Miyazawa wrote:

> Help me to translate the original linernotes of
> GG's Wagner Transcription (CBS 32351).
> I am now doing the job for Sony Tokyo.
> The text is reprented in *GlennGould* Vol2, no.2 (Fall 1996).
> It is a format of GG interviewed by Ken Haslam.
>
> Please read the following part:
>
> <GG>: Well, I came to feel that in the Liszt transcriptions,
> he was too faithful to the score for his own good.
> You know, in an orchestral work, you can put in all sorts of
> octave doublings, for example, and according to the diverse
> impulses of the instruments involved, you will have a
> rich and glamorous texture.  Do the sae thing on the piano,
> even within the options available to ten fingers and,
> although you may get marks for authenticity, what you end up
> with is mud, glorious mud.  Liszt, of course, is much more
> puritanical than I am in a funny sort of way.  He tends to solve
> these problems by left hand tremolandos--or even worse,
> right hand tremolandos--which, to me, always sound like the
> worst excesses of Aunt Sadie at the parlor upright--
> <KH>: --in a moment of rapture!
> <GG>: Exactly.
> <KH>: But you don't mean to say that you played
> fast and loose with Wagner's textures, Glenn?
> GG:  Not "fast and loose," no!  I simply decided that--
> well, for instance, that you can't hold a chord indefinitely
> on the piano without allowing for diminishing
> returns--pun intended--and you certainly can't expect
> that chord to build dynamically as, in the strong choir,
> it can be made to do. [. . .]
>
> ^^^^^
> Now, questions:
> Who is "Aunt Sadie"?
> What is the "parlor upright"?
> What does "fast and loose" mean?
>
> My non-native speaker's intuition tells me that the
> description sounds dirty, doesn't it?
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
> Regards, --Junichi
>
> ****************************************
>   Junichi Miyazawa, Tokyo
>   walkingtune@bigfoot.com
>   (alias for: farnorth@mbc.sphere.ne.jp)
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