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Re: gould's two chromatic fantasias
Sounds like this could be a new piece by Steve Reich: "Gould
Phase." Segregate each of the Gould performances of the chromatic fantasy
into a separate stereo channel, then overlay them on tape. Then listen on
headphones, or not.
In college I fooled around with our radio station's production studio
during my shifts. One day I made myself a tape where one channel was Gould
playing the Beethoven Bb concerto and the other channel was Toscanini
conducting the Mendelssohn A-major symphony. Both recordings are the same
length within a few seconds, and both were mono, so I cued two turntables
and let it all run to tape for its half hour. I think I listened to the
results once or twice, then lost the tape. Oh well. It was certainly an
interesting experiment in listening. It's fairly easy to keep the two
apart mentally since they're a half step apart in pitch. I didn't inflict
it on anybody over the air, but probably should have.
At 09:50 AM 4/16/01 -0700, Jim Morrison wrote:
hi list,
just got through listening to the gould video version of the chromatic
fantasia while the cd player was playing the other one. Certainly different
performances. Odd they way in the first minute of the performances they
would synchronize momentarily to create a kind of stereo affect, but after
that they went their separate ways. good experiment to demonstrate just how
difficult it is to play the same piece twice. Though the end results are
near identical interpretations, I think, it was difficult for me to hear a
passage over a few seconds long in which the two versions matched up
note-for-note. There were very minor fluctuations in articulation and tempo
that kept unlinking the two performances. Gave me a taste of how difficult
it must be sometimes to splice together a recorded performance.
Jim
Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
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