Re: GG and scholarship

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

Bob wrote:
> > So many critical and scholarly fields long ago degenerated into
> > incestuous little communities of 850 people only talking to each
> > other, only recognizing the ideas (?) of their approved colleagues,
> > meeting each other every summer at the Convention ... but never really
> > doing or saying anything that informs anyone's thought or life beyond
> > their tight little Invitation-Only Subscription-Only village.
> <snip>
> >
> > The tendency is so often to devote their studies to the infinitessimal
> > minutiae of their fields. These scholarly communities so often are
> > institutionally hostile to Big Ideas or Brave or Surprising Ideas.
> >
> > Most of their energies are devoted to making sure The Wrong People are
> > never invited to speak or present papers; the emphasis is more on
> > keeping out The Wrong Sorts than on keeping out really bad or
> > worthless ideas.

Sounds like an easy thing to say without the burden of proof or any
examples.  Have you any documented examples of professional societies who
devote most of their energy to making sure The Wrong People stay out?

Frank Burns: You...you..GUYS!

Hawkeye Pierce: We are not!


Mary Jo wrote:
> The ideal (albeit hardly acheived) is that ideas circulate at these
> gatherings-- freely.  The worthless as well as the brilliant. Yes, they
> can be cliqueish but I find that's true everywhere.  sigh.
>

I agree!

In March I participated in the annual conclave of the Southeastern
Historical Keyboard Society, or SEHKS (pronounced however you wish).  I
played the Friday night concert on a nicely preserved 1802 organ, a
treasure that is still in regular use in its church.  Then I attended the
Saturday papers, lectures, and performances.  There were plenty of
interesting ideas bouncing around, and good presentations and exhibits of
instruments.  One member told me in the lobby: "Boy, that program last
night was worth this whole weekend's trip!  Wonderful!"  (And he said that
without knowing it was I who had been in the organ loft.)  I spent another
couple hours chatting with another player who was anything but a stuffy
academic...he had me laughing harder than I'd laughed in months.  It was a
delightful conclave.

And in the silent auction I snagged a hardbound facsimile copy of
Corrette's 1753 treatise on harpsichord accompaniment:  his method for
upper-class Parisian young ladies to learn how to tune their harpsichords
and play in chamber groups.  Music theory directly from that milieu.

That's what these professional society meetings are for: to keep in touch
with work in the field, get more resources, and make collegial contacts.
Get together to discuss findings and advance the field.  They're also a
chance to hear some music and instruments that aren't often heard.

It's of course about the toughest possible crowd to play a concert for,
since they too are specialists and enthusiasts.  So, it's particularly
rewarding when it goes well.

What's the problem with professionalism and specialist societies?  How
else is the field going to be advanced, unless we encourage one another to
do well?

> >
> > At some point in scholarship, for it to have worth and meaning,
> > attention must be paid to Vigor, or to broadening the base of
> > interest, and of -- dare I say it? -- touching the lives, hearts and
> > minds of people who are not Professionals and Certified Members.
>
> Again these professionals are the ones who are setting the curricula at
> universities and defining areas of research in the university and
> research institutions. "The Ivory Tower" is a myth.  The University has a
> great deal of influence on all aspects of culture (just think of
> scientific research-- yikes!).

Exactly.  And when I was playing the Friday concert, I didn't give a rip
that there were dozens of people sitting there who could also have played
the same program accurately...I simply focused on making it the most
exciting and expressive concert I could do.  There was a couple there who
had only an eighth-grade education each, never studied music, and they
told me afterward it was really beautiful.  That's where it counts, just
as you (Bob) said.  It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that je ne sais
quoi.

The bottom line for an audience, even an audience of specialists and a few
guests, is that they want to hear something that moves them and holds
their interest.  Hardly anybody is touched by a performance that is merely
accurate and scientifically correct: that's not art.

Bob, if you're categorically equating scholarly correctness with a lack of
Vigor, well, you're just not listening to examples where Vigor fits
perfectly into scholarship.  Treat yourself to a CD by Andrew Manze or
Olga Tverskaya or Pieter Wispelwey or Wilbert Hazelzet or Jordi
Savall/Montserrat Figueras.  Or get the Atlantis Ensemble (Jaap
Schroeder/Enid Sutherland/Penny Crawford) playing Schubert's piano trios.

Here's a challenge: get the Atlantis recording (Wildboar 9703) of the
B-flat trio and listen to the Notturno D897.  It's a fairly
straightforward nine-minute piece.  The three players are all top teachers
and scholars in their field of historically informed performance practice,
highly respected as specialists.  But they play this simply as good
musicians: all the scholarship is merely a tool for preparation.  They are
so far beyond mere correctness that nothing matters but direct beauty.
Play this CD for people who are not "Professionals and Certified Members."
Tell me who if anyone fails to weep at this performance.

I know I did (producing it), and it still gets me every time I listen to
it.  They had just finished recording a very nice take of it when Enid's
husband David showed up at the session.  I said to the engineer, "Tape
this!"  I asked the trio to play the piece one more time, just for David
and me, because David has to hear this.  I put away the score and pencil,
took off the headphones, and David and I sat up where the trio could see
each of us and play for us.  They could see our reactions to the music,
just as guys who like to listen to music.  The trio didn't care about
being exactly right for the CD, since a "proper" performance was already
covered in the earlier takes.  And so they just played for us and for
themselves.  And they played the socks off the piece, for real, "off the
record."  Same notes, fresh character.  David, a musicologist and
instrument builder, was reduced to tears.  So was I.  We had goosebumps
all over.  We all knew the trio was good, and the piece was good, but
nobody there knew it was *that* good until it happened.  That's what music
is about.  Things are already good enough and then they shoot ten levels
over the top.

It's that ecstasy that Gould wrote about: suddenly nothing matters but
being carried away.

Where was I going with this?  Oh, yeah: things can go over the top even
when the scholarly aspects are "wrong" (as with Gould, Stokowski, Casals,
...), because an ecstatic performance is an ecstatic performance.  But
they can go even more over the top for listeners at all levels when the
scholarship is also in place, as a place to *start* being expressive.
Academic credentials don't make the performance; musicianship does.  It's
harder to please an audience of connoisseurs than the general public.
When a performance does touch the connoisseurs as well, it's really
something.

Bob wrote:
> > If we think about it this way, it becomes very clear why there's a
> > hostility among scholars to the notion of Glenn Gould, the Scholar.

That way of thinking would indeed explain it if it were true.  If
scholarly societies were really just groups of sequestered borons, as you
assert, and if Gould were really a Scholar, as you assert, anything could
be true.  Somebody might as well assert that Lawrence Welk was a better
conductor than Otto Klemperer, since more people watched Welk on TV than
Klemperer.  Or Charlotte Church a better singer than Sylvia McNair.

Has anybody ever done a paper comparing Gould with the drunken Alcibiades
in Plato's "Symposium"?  I'll defer to those who have a greater
understanding of the work than I (who hardly know "Symposium" at all).
The obvious parallel is that both are the pretty boy who come barging in
and shake things up.

Mary Jo wrote:
> I have no hostility-- Gould wasn't a scholar but he was brilliant,
> interesting, creative, entertaining, etc. Frankly, I'm glad he spent his
> time in the recording studio and not in the library!

Agreed!

The meeting will now come to order--who's taking the infinitesimal
minutae?


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl

"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot