Re: GG Mozart

[Pellikka <Pellikka@aol.com>]

Dear f-ellow-minors,

Having "lurked" for many months and through many threads, I drag my lazy
fingers to that other keyboard to wade into the ongoing discussion on GG and
the Mozart recordings. I think that the sort of comments recently added to
this page by "jerbidoc" [Jerry and Judy?] are among the best sort of
contributions this site can offer: friendly yet firm opinions, backed up by
intelligent information based on knowledge of music in general and of GG in
particular. We obviously all have an interesting in music and GG, but I have
been on many sites of mutual interest and yet this is the only one I have
stayed with more than a few weeks at most. I don't give a flip on being
complimentary in general, but a site is the product of all who contribute to
it, and I have for months wanted to tell everyone that this "lurker" has found
f-minor a great source of pleasure in this painful world. But as Hamlet says,
"something too much of that."

Having just recently done an entire relistening to GG's Mozart sonatas, I have
a few recurring thoughts on the subject, which subject always seems to be of
interest to this site. 

1. Most comments on GG's version of the sonatas, especially the negative ones,
seem to linger on the, shall we say, quirkiness of his interpretations,
especially in matters of tempo. But I don't recall anyone mentioning the pure
touch/sound that his sonatas have. Most of us have an extremely positive
appreciation of that unique and absolutely distinctive Gouldian "sound" in his
Bach playing, a type of non-legato minimally-pedaled [if at all] phrasing of
the musical lines, giving the lines that special clarity which, to me at
least, is the hallmark of GG's playing [coupled with his awesome--yes, that is
the right word there--ability to separate and sound as he wills the lines in
polyphonic settings]. He applies this same sound to the essentially homophonic
music of Mozart's sonatas. Now the basic keyboard touch in Mozart's time was a
non-legato phrasing, with staccato [of three different recognized sorts] or
legato ["slurred" lines] being used occasionally as a musical complement to
the basic non-legato line. This observation is verified in the writings of
C.P.E. Bach, Mozart himself, and especially by Clementi. GG certainly is not
concerned with any historical recreation of Mozart's sound, anymore than with
Bach's, but most of the "purists" who have derided GG's Mozart have missed the
important point [IMHO] that GG's touch/sound, regardless of any other
important considerations, is one of the purist Mozart piano sounds that have
been recorded.

2. In regard to tempo, there is no doubt that GG takes faster tempi overall
than most others [anyone else?] who have recorded the sonatas, or probably any
of us who play them for strictly our own pleasure. Mozart, through his
letters, says that he isn't too bothered at the tempi pianists use, since they
are only vaguely relative indicators, provided that the playing is clear and
clean. His constant gripe was of those pianists, usually "Italians" which
probably means his rival Clementi, who mark everything Presto but play it all
the same as Allegro, indicating that he meant a clear distinction between
Allegro and Presto tempi, the latter being used far more sparingly. Does GG
make clear if relative distinctions between Allegro and Presto movements in
the sonatas?  I leave the listener to decide.

Mozart's other gripe concerning tempi was if one couldn't handle a normal
speed with clarity. He writes of one of the Weber girls [his sisters-in-law],
if I recall, who played his sonatas quite slower than he would wish it, but
her playing was so rhythmically sound and clear and well phrased musically
that he preferred it to the playing of many a professional artist who would
leave out notes in a fast tempo or slur a musical idea at the "proper" tempo.
No matter how fast a tempo GG takes, I don't think even his worst detractor
would accuse him of either leaving out notes or ever being unclear. His
particular touch discussed above allows his faster tempi to sound clearly and
musically at all times.

Not exactly on the same point, it still is of interest that Mozart also writes
somewhere, in relation to playing his concerti, I think, that "I just play
whatever occurs to me at the moment." There is one documented performance, by
his page-turner for that performance, that he played with the orchestra using
for himself just the barest musical skeleton of sketch notes. Mozart's
improvisational ability is well known to everyone, of course, but it does
reinforce his sense of music making as just that, making music, as opposed to
just recreating it. It is hard for me to see, or hear, any tempo as being
"wrong," or more silly, "impure," as many of the [non-f-minors] critics have
written. What is a more musical result is, of course, what is all important
and open to endless argument. GG was, by the way, from the written accounts of
him by his musical friends, quite a formidable improvisor himself. [What could
he not do well at the keyboard?] To play the "I think if X had heard Y" game,
I think if Mozart had heard GG, Wolfie may not have agreed on certain issues,
including tempi, but he would not argue about the legitimacy of GG's music-
making.

3. IF GG's tempi still bother you, I suggest a tape machine [I do not know if
the same technology is available for CDs now--I would like to know] with which
you can adjust the actual speed of the sound recording, speech or music,
without any distortion of the sound. You could, thereby, take a Gouldian
Presto and play it Adagio--while it stays in the same key even!  GG writes of
a time when, adjusting the simple bass/treble controls on his record player,
he was launched into thinking [that familar line of thought of his] of how the
listener becomes a part of the performing process. We all know his beliefs on
such listener-control of recorded music. How "pure" Gouldian it would be to
adjust his Mozart sonatas to your own preferred tempi!

Please excuse the length of my comments here. Best wishes.
Paul Pellikka