Re: GG: Ecstasy and obligation?

[Robert Kunath <kunath@hilltop.ic.edu>]

Dear F-Minors,

	Just a brief thought related to John's comment about the concert
experience and Gould's conception of it.  There's obviously no doubt that
Gould hated the public concert, but were his arguments against it
objectively true?  Is it really true that concerts are "blood sport" where
a large number of persons are listening as though they were watching
gladiators go at it?  And is it really the case that recordings are
superior to the live event?  That answer depends on individual taste, of
course, but I must say that I have found the few concerts I've managed to
attend recently electrifying experiences.  Both were Big 5 orchestra
concerts, and I recall thinking to myself that the CD experience was only
a very pallid recreation of the extraordinary sound a full orchestra makes
in a good hall.

	This isn't to say that Gould "owed" us public performances; if
they didn't work for him then he was absolutely right to do something
else.  But I'm pretty doubtful about his claims that technologically
mediated performance is really better than the real thing.  It was simply
he thing that worked best for him, and we're lucky to have that much.

	A good weekend to all--

Robert

On Fri, 30 May 1997, John P. Hill wrote:

>
> Hi, Kristen:
>
> I'm not sure that there's any direct connection between "ecstasy"
> and the "obligation" of the artist to perform in public.
>
> For GG, ecstacy or "repose" as he often called it, resulted when
> he was able to be completely comfortable/relaxed and realize his
> best vision of a particular musical work.  Clearly, this didn't happen
> very often when he performed in public and I would suggest that he
> had no particular interest in "pleasing his audience" during the
> years that he toured and concertized extensively.  I think it's
> pretty clear that he had *no* particular interest in the audience
> whatsoever and that he would really have prefered them *not* to be
> there.  On very rare occasion (Salzburg Goldberg set, for example),
> he felt that something good happened while he was on stage, but that
> the audience being there really had nothing to do with it happening.
>
> Artist who *like* live performance often refer to the positive
> feedback that they receive from their audience and feel that this
> helps them to perform on a higher level than they might otherwise,
> without the benefit of whatever adrenelin rush is involved.  For them,
> the audience is a type of support mechanism.  I'm sure that these people
> do feel some sense of "responsibility" to play well and please the
> folks paying for the tickets, but I'm not sure that "ecstacy" enters
> into that very much.
>
> Gould clearly felt that he was better able to share a stronger and
> more personal version of a piece of music by utilizing the potentials
> of recording technology and the isolation from public interference that
> this made possible.  Through analytical playback and subsequent editing,
> he was able to create a master tape that even *he* might not have been
> able to recreate in even the most comfortable live setting.  The parallel
> with the Beatles Sgt. Peppers album is quite direct:  the technology of
> the studio made possible recorded versions of compositions that could
> *never* be realized in live performance.  No matter;  GG had no interest
> in trying to make that happen.
>
> I very much agree with most of what Gould had to say about the concert
> experience;  I'd *much* prefer to listen to a well made recording, for
> any number of good reasons.  I *can* say that my listening experiences
> represent a kind of ecstatic condition on occasion, whereas live events
> rarely work on the same level. I think GG's experience with listening was
> similar.  He often listened to favorite albums *multiple times* start to
> finish (Strauss and Streisand come to mind) and could be literally taken
> to another plane of awareness in the process.  This has a lot more to do
> with "ecstacy" than getting out in front of an audience and worrying about
> how many finger slips will be noticeable in the execution of a difficult
> piece of concert repertoire.
>
> As far as Helfgott goes, I find the whole thing interesting on the level
> of pure commercialism.  What we have here is an audience that is largely
> musically illiterate but highly devoted to a personality that has been
> immortalized by a commercially successful film.  It's a bit like rappers
> becoming *hugely* commercially successful because they've been marketed
> to folks who want to hear a certain message that fits with their
> lifestyle (Frank Zappa wrote extensively about this phenomenon, although
> not rap in particular).  Music doesn't have too much to do with it
> because most rappers are musically illiterate and their fans really don't
> care because, in many cases, they are too.  Ditto for the Helfgott
> crowd.
>
> That's not to say that folks shouldn't be allowed to listen to Helfgott
> (or rap) or admire his struggle with adversity in his life, but let's not
> confuse this with great musical art.  Comparisons with Gould or other
> truly great pianists are really unfortunate (maybe fraudulent?), but the
> general public might not care much. INDEPENDENCE DAY made *tons* of money
> at the box office, but is probably not a great piece of film art.  People
> who even know who Glenn Gould *is* represent a niche market within a niche
> market.
>
> I'm not sure where this leaves the discussion of ecstacy vs.
> responsibility.  My gut sense is that Gould worked to achieve this
> reposeful state in his execution of the music as often as possible
> and I think it comes through very often on his audio and video recordings.
> Perhaps his sense of "responsibility" came in trying to provide these
> realizations to the widest public possible, through the usage of new
> technology and media.
>
> jh
>
>