GG: What is Lifeless?

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@UMICH.EDU>]

Fred Stubbings wrote:
>I don't find GG later recordings lifeless.  I am not sure when he
>recorded the Haydn Piano Sonatas HOBXVI Nos. 42, 48-52 but I can tell you
>that since I purchased those CDs they have been on my CD player that plays 5
>CDs.  Each time I hear them it gives me such a boost.  I sit down to
>listen to every note and the rest of the day I am humming or whistling
>the tunes.  This CD is so much fun to listen to that I recommend it to anyone
>who needs some cheer in their day. Now, that is just my opinion.  Who
>else enjoys them as much as I do?


I'm curious about the way this word "lifeless" has crept into our
discussion, and afraid that some may be attributing it to me.  Let's set
that straight.  I never said I thought the late Gould recordings seemed
"lifeless."  That word evidently came up when James quoted his
*impression* of my posting, having admittedly lost the copy of it before
"quoting" it!, and then in Kate's response to James.

James and others, here's what I actually wrote on Friday 9/27, the one
that seems to have spawned this "lifeless" allegation:

-----

Bob "Elmer" wrote:


>(...) I think GG, more than any other musical artist, has marbled my
>life not just with great beauty, but with a standard of creative
excellence
>bordering almost on perfection. As close to perfection as performed music
>will ever get.
>
>Can anyone cite a GG release that he/she felt was artistically shoddy or
>slapdash or not up to his standards? Can anyone cite a GG release which
>was ordinary or commonplace, "background music," "elevator music," which
>didn't somehow add some richness to our love or our understanding of
>music or beauty?


Well...not up to Gould's usual standard?  Six of the seven Bach toccatas!
My reasons for that assessment are detailed in my review at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000028NM

In the big picture:

I'm not as impressed by Gould's "perfection" as you are, because I feel he
had a severe lack of spontaneity.  I think he put way, way, way too much
emphasis on squelching or belittling anything he couldn't control,
couldn't rationalize.  He had fantastic musical instincts, natural
abilities, as evidenced by his early recordings: a great sense of beauty
and structure and grace, a sensuous tone, a declamatory fire in the
spirit.  And then he walked away from that in favor of more rational
control, nothing left to happenstance.  It was an artistic choice, to be
respected: what would a man's life and art become if he chose an
artificial "hermetically sealed" environment and re-made himself?

On the other hand, "real life" (and a more "healthy" or "normal"
musicality) includes rolling with punches and surprises, reacting to
things that happen, dealing with less than ideal conditions.  That ability
is character, whether in music or life; things come up and we have to deal
with them using whatever resources we have.  Some of the most interesting
or meaningful things in art (or science, or a game, or a drama, or looking
at a brook, or whatever: life!) come up when something unanticipated or
irregular happens, and the flow adjusts around it.  Some things might
shatter, others might grow stronger, others might go in some new exciting
direction, others might go quickly back to "normal," but something
*happens* in response to the surprising stimulus.  There is some type of
growth and adaptation.

Gould's art shows us the opposite of that reality.  It shows us what
happens when spontaneity or accident are not allowed to intrude; a world
in which one does not need to cultivate flexibility.  Even though I
disagree with Gould's premise, I admire the way he took that commitment to
its logical conclusions.  It *can* be interesting and beautiful to hear
what an amazing level of control sounds like.  It can bring out formerly
unnoticed structural qualities in the music.  Artifice, taken to an
extreme.  Artifice, for its own sake, because artifice is interesting.

His writing, his "interviews," his recordings, his radio and television
productions...those all show what can happen when a sharp creative mind
carefully constructs a state of "perfection," a serenity, a deeply-ordered
structure.  Many of those works are brilliant.  Some are too
self-conscious: _sui generis_ and proud of it!  All are interesting, even
if one doesn't agree with some of the points.  Gould's art was his ability
to turn his resources into these thoughtfully ordered idea-objects (he
really *was* a composer, through and through, just not very often with
musical notes that he made up himself...he built his compositions of other
people's notes, and of his own words).  Gould's art was his vision of an
artificial world where chaos doesn't exist, where everything is ordered
(at least outwardly, in what one *does* officially).  And that's
interesting.

(Gould's letters, much more chaotic, are also interesting.)

Gould wrote about how he thought it might be stimulating for a while to be
a prisoner.  A completely ordered existence.  And (supposedly) no pesky
spontaneous surprises to deal with; just live out life completely within
the controllable environment of one's own mind, no distractions, no
disorder.  Maybe that's what he was trying to show us in his art?  (The
rhythmic straitjacketing, the reduction of conventional dynamic contrast,
the elimination of musical "party tricks" of projection to the balcony,
the structured un-spontaneous ornamentation, the choice of unpianistic
repertoire....)  He constructed that prison for himself and showed us what
life is like inside it.  His own life, as an ecstatic art.

Music, like any art, is a blend of rationality and irrationality.  Gould
showed us what can happen if that balance is tipped artificially toward
extreme rationality.  I don't think that such a rationality is
"perfection" because the beautiful and stimulating features of
irregularity/irrationality are missing...it's like a food without spice, a
relationship without arguments, a drama without a plot, an environment
where everything is one color (Gould's favorite "battleship grey").  But,
for its own sake, it's interesting to contemplate.


> (...) One interesting thing f_minor has taught me is that whatever GG
>was, what he left behind was strong enough to sustain and survive any
>criticism, any savage review, any nosey question, any misunderstanding,
>any ghoulish posthumous diagnosis of any outre condition. God knows this
>group has picked the poor man apart from his toenails to his tonsure,
>from his love life to his hypochondria. (...)

Agreed, and well said!  Gould and his art are strong enough to withstand
all this analysis....

-----

Now, back to the present:

I can see how some might take the impression of "lifeless" into memory of
that posting.  But I didn't say it.  And I don't think Gould's playing
sounded "lifeless" at all.  Rather, I think it sounds artificial.
Deliberately artificial, turning his back on the conventions of piano
playing, and on trying to discern a composer's "intentions," in favor of
presenting his own approach.  And that's why he's interesting; this
artifice brings a fresh perspective to the music.

He embraced the artifice of recordings as a distinct manner of presenting
music, completely apart from the "real life" interpretations of playing in
the presence of an audience (whether it's an audience of one or
thousands).  Instead of trying to make his performances connect with
anyone who was physically in the room, he geared his approach to connect
with people far away and in the future; distance doesn't matter.  He took
the artifice of recording as a virtue, not a liability.  To Gould's view,
a completely controlled studio recording could be better art (or, more
accurately, a better representation of Gould's own art) than a performance
before live listeners.

And even in this artificial approach, the "one-to-zero" relationship Gould
wrote about, it's obvious that there was a real human being playing those
notes.  Gould never completely sublimated his wonderful instincts or
intuition, even if he rationally tried to do so in his quest for the
artifice.  Anyone with reasonable computer skill nowadays can put together
a MIDI rendition of a score by simply entering the notes and never
actually playing them on a musical instrument.  That process would give an
even higher level of artifice, but not necessarily one that is as
satisfying as Gould's; his performances still sounded *played* (like play)
even when he was at his most rigid, rationally controlling every fraction
of time or dynamics.  It was still ultimately a guy playing the piano, for
real.  Not lifeless.

This weekend I finished reading Kevin Bazzana's book, and I especially
recommend his "Conclusions" chapter to anyone here.  He says (better than
I could) that Gould never entirely suppressed his intuitive approach to
music; rather, he spent most of his career trying to rationalize the
things that he (young Gould) had already decided.  And it's that blend
that shows a composer's mind at work.  As Bazzana wrote, "This
'composerly' mindset, though perhaps unusual in a professional performer,
was in fact what made Gould's work so provocative, for his principal
achievement was surely in the creative approach to performing the works of
others." (p264)

By the way, I agree with Fred that the Haydn set is fun to listen to.
Delightful!  It's clearly my own favorite among Gould's recordings from
1980 or later.  (That list is, in chronological order: those six Haydn
sonatas, the 1981 Goldbergs, the Beethoven 27#1, the Italian Concerto
remake, the Brahms Ballades, the Brahms Rhapsodies, the chamber version of
"Siegfried Idyll", and the Strauss Sonata.)  That Haydn set seems to have
so much _joie de vivre_ in it...not the same thing as spontaneity, but
it's certainly lively.


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