GG: wrong notes

[Michael Arnowitt <arnowitt@sover.net>]

Andrew wrote of wrong notes and rhythms in the GG the Composer disc.

This brings up an interesting philosophical point.  How much freedom does a
performer have to willfully change what's in the score?  Personally, I would
very rarely intentionally change a pitch in the score, and the one aspect of
Gould's playing that I might criticize is that, for example, in his Bach
Prelude and Fugues, he is fairly capricious, in my view, about playing the
notes that Bach wrote.  

For example, in a passage of running sixteenth notes, Bach might write
C-D-E-C and Gould might play instead C-E-D-C or E-C-D-E.  Of course Gould
wouldn't play a collection of notes that wasn't harmonious, but I still
can't see how any of these little changes could be at all justified as
improvements -- they're not like guessing that the composer forgot an
accidental.

At the Glenn Gould Gathering last week there was an interesting talk by Jens
Hagestedt of Germany where he suggested that a performer does have 100%
freedom to interpret another's work -- that pitches, too, can be changed if
the individual artist finds that these are bona fide improvements.  Further,
he stated that philosophers have long realized this to be so, and that the
music world is way behind the times in asserting that Gould should be
criticized (as he was many times at the conference) for his liberties in
performance in terms of tempo, etc.

I don't totally disagree with Jens, but since for many of Gould's note
changes in Bach such as these sorts of interchanges of notes I can't
possibly imagine how anyone could justify them as improvements (at best
you're breaking even), I wonder if Gould rather had learned them incorrectly
at a young age, or had a poor edition.  It would be interesting to compare
various GG recordings and performances, but my impression is that he makes
the same "wrong notes" in different performances in different years or
media, so I don't think it's any sort of an effort to introduce an
improvisational element.

Michael