GG: celebrity death match + plumbing

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

Juozas wrote:

>But regarding tempos etc, Bradley once provided an allegoric story
>(probably in another mailing list) where he likened the way a performer
>determines the character of music (hence, the composer's intentions?)
>much like an experienced plumber knows how to fix a problem in a house
>where he has never been. So maybe Brendel is (claims to be) a better
>plumber.

True, Juozas, it was on another list.  I've reproduced the message below.
Enjoy!


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://i.am/bpl  or  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
CD's: http://listen.to/bpl or http://www.mp3.com/bpl

"Music must cause fire to flare up from the spirit - and not only sparks
from the clavier...." - Alfred Cortot


=====

> > included it more confidently in his organ edition. Tom, what does
> > the NBA say on this one?
>
> To Thomas: can a work not be doubtful if the manuscript didn't
survive?


Heinz Lohmann (organ edition) lists five manuscript sources for BWV
961:
- PKSB Mus. ms. Bach P313 (A. Werner)
- P 487 (1800)
- P 542 (2nd half of 18th century)
- P 804 (Kellner?)
- P 823 (2nd half of 18th century)

["PKSB" is Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Staatsbibliothek Berlin]

(...)
> Why the piece should be played faster? The tempo wasn't surely
marked in the
> authentic score so how can one guess correctly?


The same way a plumber knows how to work on _your_ faucets even
though he's never been to your house before. To get ideas on a basic
approach he studies the situation, examines all the available
evidence, draws on years of training and experience with similar
situations, knows what other experts have done in similar situations,
knows his own abilities with the tools available to him, might
consult with a colleague if he's not sure about something. And then,
with all that as background, he chooses a specific plan to solve the
problem to the best of his ability. For most jobs you want a plumber
who can do all this quickly, since he's charging by the hour. :)


>
> The slower tempos in Bach seem to do more often do more good than
bad, provided
> the structure of the piece is maintained.

I agree, in general. And I'd characterize myself as (in general)
choosing tempos that are slightly slower than the average among other
professional harpsichordists. That's my personal preference as a
listener, wanting the time to hear enough detail. And yet for this
piece I chose a tempo that was about 30% faster than Glenn Gould.



> Otherwise you may end up getting the
> Gavotte II from the G minor English suite played by a girl named
Kushkuley on
> MP3.com:
>
> http://artists.mp3s.com/artist_song/55/55155.html
>
> I couldn't recognize the piece. What's that? Bradley, is it a usual
tempo to
> play the Gavotte? It sounds like "slideshow" rather than "slow-mo"
:)


Bach marked it "Gavotte II, ou la Musette." That mp3 performance
sounds like the work of someone who has never studied what the word
"Gavotte" means, has no idea how it's danced, has never looked up the
word "musette," has no clue how a musette (the instrument) sounds or
is played, has never heard any other pieces with that description,
and doesn't care. (Did you notice that the mp3 file is internally
labeled "Blues" as genre?) Sure, it's possible to come up with a
musical performance from such blissful ignorance--we wouldn't want to
"limit the interpretation-space" with any performance doctrines,
would we?--this performance is (sort of) interesting.

Keeping up that plumber analogy, this performance is like what would
happen if a novice plumber shows up with one adjustable wrench and
two screwdrivers, having worked on plastic pipes once or twice
before, but never on metal yet, and doesn't ask an experienced
plumber's opinion or read any manuals available for this type of
faucet. This one glances at the situation, applies a few very
general principles ("clockwise is tighten, right?"), guesses at
something that might work, and puts plenty of enthusiasm and
imagination into the solution, just going on instinct and "let's try
this to see what happens."

And what happens here? This performer's Gavotte II is so slow that a
real musette's bag would surely run out of wind. And her Gavotte I
is so fast that she can't even physically play all the notes (bars
22-23). These things are (I suggest) important, let alone the
additional notion of dancing any of this.

The playing is reasonably competent as general music, yes. Is it
still Bach's music? Maybe. Does it sound as much like Bach as the
ways that, say, Edward Parmentier or Alan Curtis play it? I don't
think so.

-----

I used to be the organist at a church where a new pipe organ was
coming in; it had been ordered and designed before I arrived in town.
The organ was built by someone who had never built an organ before,
although he is a very experienced and well-respected builder of
harpsichords.

The organ he delivered turned out to have a clever new design where
he invented new solutions to all the existing mechanical questions:
putting in about 50% more moving parts than a pipe organ needs to
have, and taking up at least double the floor space, and sounding
reasonably good...when it was playing. Unfortunately, he failed to
use principles that organ builders of the past 400 years have already
developed, solving those problems before and much more elegantly. We
could barely keep this organ playing reliably two weeks in a row:
always some new mechanical problem or extraneous noise.

We brought in an expert two or three times to overhaul it, and he
shook his head in bewilderment, and after weeks of work he got it to
play more reliably, up to maybe 1/3 of the time, which is twice as
good as 1/6 of the time. The bad design just didn't allow any better
performance than that.

The original builder several times lent us some pretty good
harpsichords of his to use while the organ was down, and that was
cool...I got to play all the preludes and postludes and offertories
on harpsichord, and accompany hymns on piano. But it wasn't the
organ the congregation had expected.

My point is: some things that draw on tradition and expert experience
really *are* better (absolutely, qualitatively and quantitatively)
than "wing it" or "reinvent it" approaches.


Brad Lehman