Re: J.S Bach Edition

[Bradley Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

At 09:59 PM 7/5/2000 +0100, Ronnie Singer wrote:
> Can anyone tell me what Edition of Bach's music Glenn Gould used?  I have
> two editions: 1) URTEXT  by G. Henle Verlag and 2) the
> Bach-Gesellschaft.  Neither of these editions show the full ornamentation
> as used by Glenn when he plays, e.g., some of the inventions.

According to a posting by G St-Laurent of the National Library of Canada
(Jan '99 here on f_minor,
http://www.tug.org/mail-archives/f_minor/msg03659.html), GG had at his
death the following editions of the WTC (and we of course don't know what
he owned by the time when he recorded it):

Book 1:
Peters (2 copies)
Edwin Ashdown
Associated Board Edition
Henle
Kalmus (4 copies)
Universal

Book 2:
Kalmus (3 copies)
Peters (2 copies)
Universal

Facsimile score:
Leipzig, Ven Deutscher Verlag fur Musik


And from the plates in Kevin Bazzana's book, we see that GG had Peters also
for the Handel keyboard suites, but wrote out his own realizations in
manuscript.

For years I wondered where GG got that wacky "A-F" ending to the unfinished
contrapunctus of the Art of Fugue, since that's not where Bach left
it.  Someone informed me recently that this reading is (once again) in Peters.

In the case of both these composers, however, I'm compelled to point out
that GG changed so many notes of Bach and Handel that the question of
"which edition?" is almost moot.  GG recomposed the pieces as he saw fit
(not just ornamenting, but changing motivic material), and the peculiar
text he recorded is not to be found in any published edition.  To pick an
egregious example: the Gavotte of the D-minor English Suite as GG played it
has no resemblance to anything.......  Another egregious example: the
violin sonatas with Laredo.........

It is also worth remembering that GG generally (always?) played from
memory.  He constructed his own mental interpretations of music, having
learned the pieces from who knows how many editions.  So, it's quite
possible that there was some mental conflation of details from different
editions, quite apart from his tendency to recompose the pieces.

Bradley Lehman
Dayton VA
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl