Re: [F_MINOR] GG: Ten Things I Learned from Glenn Gould

[Brad Lehman <bpl@UMICH.EDU>]

> 12) Everything that can be taught about X can be taught in 30 minutes.

Which is of course absurd, and basically a Gouldian juvenile auto-didactic
fantasy against academia.  (Gould being a superhero in that area, having
completed not even a high-school education.  He made his own interesting
way, outside the mainstream.)  Who wants to undergo, say, laparoscopic
gall-bladder surgery under a medical team that "learned" everything
important about it in 30 minutes?


> 10) Take risks. The critics may hate it now, but someday, people will
> realize you were right all along. ;-)

I'd amend that one to: "Take risks.  The critics may hate it now, but
someday, people who are inclined to buy provocative and anti-establishment
work will love it and consider it indispensable.  It is better to be
stimulating and strongly committed to exploring fresh ideas, than to be
merely correct or dull."

(Not that correctness is dull, in itself; it's the reliance on *only*
correctness that gets dull.  Correctness without flair is dull and
one-dimensional.  Flair without correctness is self-serving and
arbitrary.  Correctness WITH flair is responsible to both the letter and
spirit of music.  And a performance without either correctness OR flair is
just bad, unfocused, and probably also dull as a result....)

Gould was very good at the flair.  And he held anti-correctness up as some
sort of virtue.

=====


For whatever number we're up to by now:

X) Take One in a recording session is very often not the best one to use in
the published recording, as is revealed by decision-making in production
months or years after the session.  That time for leisurely evaluation in
multiple situations (and on multiple types of playback equipment) is
indispensable.

XX) Concerts and recordings really do call for a considerably different
type of musical interpretation, as to what will wear well over years of
later listening (in the case of a recording).  But neither approach is
"better" than the other; a complete musical artist must be able to do both,
suiting the interpretations to the circumstances.

XXX) There's no way to have a recording satisfy everybody at once.  So,
focus on doing something that is at least intensely focused and that is
engaging on many levels simultaneously (i.e. a musical texture where the
listener's ear may follow any of several levels of interest jumping around,
or simultaneously).  Multi-dimensionality.

XXXX) The clear presentation of one's own personality (and personal musical
approach) is a valid form of authenticity.  Whether it has anything to do
with verifiable facts elsewhere becomes almost a moot question, if the
presentation is strong enough and clear enough: the results are acceptable
_sui generis_, and worth hearing.

XXXXX) No Gould recording should ever be the only, or even the main,
exposure one has to any particular piece of music.  Their strength is in
the difference of perspective they present.  Gould accomplished his goal to
be different and stimulating, deliberately opposed to academic correctness,
to see where it would lead.  His arbitrary decisions are almost always
interesting and worth hearing...and not then taken as norms.

XXXXXX) Gould ran just about everything, especially Bach, through the lens
of Schoenberg in musical priorities.  That's at least interesting, as an
approach.  (It doesn't really work in Italianate and French-influenced
music, but at least it's consistent....)


Brad Lehman

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