RE: wrong notes

[Thayer A <A.Thayer@rhbnc.ac.uk>]

> Andrew wrote of wrong notes and rhythms in the GG the Composer disc.
> 
> This brings up an interesting philosophical point.  How much freedom does
> a
> performer have to willfully change what's in the score?  Personally, I
> would
> very rarely intentionally change a pitch in the score, and the one aspect
> of
> Gould's playing that I might criticize is that, for example, in his Bach
> Prelude and Fugues, he is fairly capricious, in my view, about playing the
> notes that Bach wrote.  
> 
Before I start talking generally about this subject I would like to make it
clear that my problem with 'wrong' notes the 2 pieces on the GG composer
album is not based on any authenticity issue. There are a number of (almost
certainly) 'wrong' notes adopted from mistakes in the manuscript. If I had
the impression that the pianist had carefully studied the score and
interpreted the serial 'mistakes' in the manuscript as expressive devices I
would welcome him to this interpretation. The impression I get, however, is
that the piece is a little unprepared and on the whole I don't find the
(musical) interpretation holds together. If the 'errors' sounded willful and
intended as part of a careful plan, they would not stand out so much and
spoil the perfromance for me.
 
On the general side of this argument I tend to think that the performer has
the right to change whatever they like, although there are certain ethical
considerations. If GG had, say, done improvised versions of a number of the
preludes from the 48, perhaps in the style of Jacques Loussier, then
included them in his complete recording, he would be morally obliged to make
it clear what he had done. If he had chosen to remove a few variations from
the Goldbergs or write a few extra of his own the same applies. This must
clearly be simple etiquette towards a composer, so the memory of the
composer can remain intact. 
	However if we are talking a few minor changes to passage work which
don't cause any damage to the harmonic idiom or contrapuntal structure,
surely there is no major problem. I'm no great scholar, but I know that Bach
tended to make many minor changes when writing different copies of the same
piece. Sometimes this was due to the gradual evolution of a work, but
occassionally one sees slight differences in areas of passage work, which
could feasibly be down to Bach having forgotten exactly what he wrote in his
previous version.

> For example, in a passage of running sixteenth notes, Bach might write
> C-D-E-C and Gould might play instead C-E-D-C or E-C-D-E.  Of course Gould
> wouldn't play a collection of notes that wasn't harmonious, but I still
> can't see how any of these little changes could be at all justified as
> improvements -- they're not like guessing that the composer forgot an
> accidental.
> 
Surely this is not a major issue? They may not be improvements, but
personally I wouldn't think could they do any real harm either (unless of
course this was part of a subject or other motif of structural importance).

> It would be interesting to compare
> various GG recordings and performances, but my impression is that he makes
> the same "wrong notes" in different performances in different years or
> media, so I don't think it's any sort of an effort to introduce an
> improvisational element.
> 
	I'd be interested to know some of his changes, and I'm sure that
some of them would bother me a little, but personally I trust Gould, as an
academic, not to make the kind of appalling mistakes which could ruin a
whole piece. If we were talking about somebody playing the 48 from the
Czerny edition, that would be a different matter...

	Andrew 

	I'll get back to you on the recording of the two pieces when I've
had another chance to listen to it.