GG: repeats

[Karl Berry <karl@cs.umb.edu>]

    [whole message repeated below]
    
    I'm stumbling in here because I was thinking about how to play those
    repeats 

I don't have any good suggestions, but I think they're excellent
questions :-).  I'm cc-ing this to f_minor, a mailing list for Glenn
Gould, and bach-list, for Bach folks.

GG tended to do the first repeat only (AAB instead of AABB).  All I've
read indicates he did this for `dramatic' purposes (the ending should be
the ending).  And in the repeats he does do, they're almost always a
different conception.  There was one English Suite where he did a true
repeat though -- reused the tape from the first time through :-).
Bazzanna talks about this a little in his book.

I mention GG only because he is the only performer I'm really familiar
with :-).  I hope others on the list(s) will have other input.  (Bradley?
Sounds like your kind of question :-).

Here's Sarah's whole message, from alt.music.j-s-bach.


Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 17:15:05 -0500
From: wiseman sarah ruth <srwisema@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: musical repeat

I'm stumbling in here because I was thinking about how to play those
repeats in any Bach suite or partita. I'm working on the B-flat partita on
piano. What people seem to do is play the section with one pattern of
articulations the first time through and then either keep the same
articulations and play softer or louder the second time, or reverse
something (or if they're really working hard, make a new pattern
entirely--but this almost never happens) in the articulation pattern and
keep the sound level fairly constant---and that's it, that's how
we repeat.

But I suspect that kind of treatment of repeat misses the point.
What kind of questions will turn the music, played half through (because
it has a repeat! instruction) and sounding quite complete, into only a
half? And how to avoid assuming that two "halves" are therefore
bilaterally symmetrical? What distinguishes repeat from recursion? And how
can one discover the dynamics at work (and I do NOT mean the relative
loudness) is a section of a dance suite that, upon repeat retroactively
present a whole that cannot be heard in two?

Actually, perhaps I should have addressed this to Ask Abby, I feel that
desperate. Only I don't think she would have appreciated it.

Sarah