Re: '55 Goldberg + first listening experience

[Jörgen Lundmark <jorgen.lundmark@sundsvall.nu>]

Arne Klindt wrote:

> Yet to me this is what classical music should be about nowadays: take
> a composition and render it according to your own ideas, lifelines,
> subjectivity. Can little black specks on crunched and reglued trees
> really serve to create an objective recreation of a piece of music? Is
> that what the composer wishes for? (see also "The Glass-Bead-Game" by
> H. Hesse)
> Maybe GG was WAY ahead of his time in taking liberties with the texts
> he worked on...
>

These are definitely very interesting and important questions. Gould
isn't the first artist to "rethink" or expand on the written text.
Chopin is spoken of as playing his own music differently from what he
himself indicated in the score, and this would probably also be true
with master improvisers as J.S.Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. I
believe Bach's many re-arrangements of his own and other composers'
music does indicate his willingness to experiment with the text.

The question of absolute fidelity to what is written is, I would guess,
rather a modern concept; the romantics would probably have found the
idea strange. I don't think any musician strives for "objective
recreation", which in reality is impossible since the listener always
creates his own understanding of what is performed. Tradition is on the
other hand vital, since no-one creates in a vacuum.

Whether Gould went too far in relationship to either historically
informed concepts or what is regarded as "sound" keyboard practises is,
in my opinion, less interesting than the immense emotional impact of his
recordings.

Regards,
Jorgen