GG: Swingle

[Mary Jo Watts <mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu>]

I've always sought out the recordings GG mentions in his writings and so far
have managed to convince myself that it's all in the name of research.  Well
I got a CD that's too weird and silly and fun to describe-- it was recorded
in 1994 by the Swingle Singers (Virgin CDC 5 45049 2) and it's called Bach
Hits Back.  It's entirely a cappella and includes the trademark
Swingle scat singing that GG mentions in the reader a couple of times
and in An Art of the Fugue on video (in which GG imagines what fuga IX
from Book II of the WTC might have sounded like as a choral piece.)

It was Katherine Lee, I think, who wondered what it was GG might have heard
in his head as he played and I can just see him singing along with some of
this stuff!  Some are whimsical like the first movement from Brandenburg #3
and then some are sublime-- their Three-part invention, for example,
hardly sounds human...  Their "Sheep May Safely Graze" is so bizarre--
like a really quiet organ. Maybe the best way for the musically
uninitiated to hear all the voices in Bach is to have human voices sing
them!  I won't even go into what their selections from the WTC are like. 

I guess it was the first Swingle Singers LP in the 60's that GG writes
about-- on it they scatted the IXth from The Art of the Fugue-- I'd
like to hear that...  

At any rate I imagine as far as novelty recordings go, it's probably
more interesting than all those Bach for Your Cat CD's I see around.

-Mary Jo