Re: Gould's heart in Baroque period?? oder ASCH?

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

On Tue, 8 May 2001, Juozas Rimas wrote:

(...)
> Schoenberg (or almost any other composer)
> couldn't offer the sheer quantity (could anyone compare the amount of solo
> keyboard works by Bach and Schoenberg that Gould recorded?).

I agree with you that Bach's keyboard output offers great depth and range.
And I agree with that GG chose Bach over Beethoven, Scarlatti, Chopin,
Liszt, Schubert, Haydn, Couperin, Byrd, and others who wrote a notably
large amount of keyboard music.  (The Bach/Beethoven is close.)  But I
think his affinity for Schoenberg biased that choice of Bach: Bach's music
can be analyzed as if it were Schoenberg, motivically.  (So can
Beethoven's...)

And as Bazzana points out, Gould was also attracted by a perception that
Bach's music is less specific to a particular instrument than the music of
most other composers...Gould was into music that could be realized
ideally.  Pure thought.  Bach's music translates fairly easily to an
instrument that Gould was able to play, even though it wasn't written for
that instrument.  I think that for Gould it was a virtue that Bach's music
wasn't originally for piano: since a translation was happening anyway,
Gould had more freedom to do whatever he wanted to with it during the
transformation into Gould's Bach.

Then recall that incident where Gould was playing/conducting a chamber
piece (was it Schoenberg or Webern?), and he had to use the score so he
could keep track of which parts he should play himself!  He had the whole
piece in his mind supposedly independently of the instrumentation.

> So notwithstanding the fact that we may be looking at Bach through
> Schoenberg's glasses, we see Bach. I'm sure Bach was the only composer
> who could offer enough material and variety for Gould to express
> himself.

I suspect that if Gould and Schoenberg had been interested in Scarlatti,
Chopin, or Liszt, they too would have provided sufficient material for
Gould to express himself.  That's important: Gould expressed HIMSELF.
May I recast your statement a bit?  "Looking at Bach through Schoenberg's
and Gould's glasses, we see Gould's ideas about ideal music."  Gould's
Bach is _sui generis_.  I think the only way it can be compared
meaningfully with anything is in how successfully it expresses Glenn
Gould.  About the only thing it has in common with regular Bach is the
sequence of most of the notes.


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
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"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot