Re: GG: Humming

["jv" <bardolph@home.com>]

> The humming complainers say things like
>> I'm certainly not interested in the sound of his
>> voice; I'm interested in his piano playing, and that's all I want to
hear.
> This is predicated on the assumption that Gould comes in discrete parts:
Gould
> the pianist, Gould the hummer, Gould the maker of radio
documentaries,Gould the
> composer, Gould the hypochondriac, Gould the lousy driver. And that later
we may
> at our convenience disassemble the parts of Gould we like and toss aside
the
> parts of him we don't.
    This is irrational.  So all along when I've heard CDs of Gould playing
Bach, I've been hearing Gould the composer, documentarist, hypochondriac,
and
lousy driver?  Funny, I didn't realize.  Or perhaps I've been unwittingly,
and unconscionably, blocking out those aspects of the man which had no
relevance to his piano playing.  Now I'm covered with post-modern guilt for
having deconstructed Gould's driving abilities straight out of his piano
recordings, without even realizing I was doing so!  Horrors!

        If Bach had written "make sound like dying cow starting here and
ending here" I might be willing to accept those sounds as part of the
interpretation; but as far as I know, when Bach wanted musicians to sing, he
wrote separate parts for them.  If we're going to accept extraneous
vocalizations as a legitimate and acceptable part of the interpretation -and
I trust we can all agree that Gould was attempting to perform and record
interpretations of individual composers' music - then logically we may start
to add notes and change others.  Either you play what the composer wrote,
and ONLY that, or you don't.  If we accept Gould's humming loudly during his
interpretations, that frees other musicians to fart, sneeze, etc.and then
use Gould's example to force us to silence.

        The existing recordings should be retitled:  "Glenn Gould plays
music inspired by J.S. Bach."

> I think most solo musicians of note and fame are taught or inculcated or
trained
> to dovetail with the public in this way: "Hello, all you want of me is my
piano
> playing, so here is a CD of my piano playing, and in November I will be
> appearing at the Fleet Center." They become very cooperative and
convenient. The
> public expects them to wear certain kinds of clothes; they wear these
kinds of
> clothes. The public expects a certain kind of style of "seriousness" from
them;
> they give the public this kind of seriousness.  Where Gould is
consistantly remarkable
>is in his lifelong refusal to read the predictable scripts. And most of
all, a refusal
> to make himself convenient to be disassembled into parts to make himself
fit
> more easily into the market place.
You sound like an English student (with their professors, today's chief
purveyors of nonsense.)  So Gould is a doughty and ideologically correct
fighter in the Culture Wars; well, people must construct their little
heroes.  Once again, I thought he was an interpreter of piano music.

    Constraint, principle, and any possible justification of traditions make
the typical postmodern mind very, very uncomfortable.  There are more and
more unconventionally-dressed classical soloists - more power to them, I
say, the composer didn't specify what they should be wearing, so it's a part
of the tradition that is up for free debate.  But other aspects of music and
performance are NOT debatable, such as the principle that the interpreter
must - if he is calling his performance nothing more or less than an
interpretation - play what the composer indicated, and furthermore make his
best attempt to bring out the composer's intentions.  No two interpretations
of classical pieces sound the same, because we know that opinions will
differ as to the composer's meaning; but all will agree that the artists are
united in the pursuit of a legitmate principle.
        Music is SOUND.  Gould's humming is SOUND.  Bach did not indicate
thisparticular SOUND in his scores, so it can be safely excised from
therecording; otherwise, the recordings must be retitled, as I have
suggested.


> What would you have done if you were the President of Columbia/CBS
recordswhile
> Gould was alive? Would you have used your muscle to demand that Gould stop
> humming, Or Else? Would you have hassled Gould by insisting that he wear a
> soundproof helmet? Would you have driven him to another label?
I would have forced the sound engineers to devise a studio setup that, while
not inconveniencing Gould in the slightest, would have captured only the
sounds of the piano and not his voice.  It is the technicians who would have
received the weight of my muscle, not Gould.

> Perhaps those of us who detest the humming and long for a technology that
can
> magically remove it -- as some seek a VCR that can record programs without
> commercials -- need to take some time to look not at Gould, but at
themselves --
>...How much smaller a challenge he would have left us.
In the first place, if you really believe that people who wish to view
television programs without the commercials need to "take a look at
themselves", it is YOU who have some sort of personal problem - or at the
very least, a philosophical difficulty.  Second, Gould isn't Tony Robbins
for me, he's a pianist.  Once again I suggest that separate series of
recordings be issued: Legitimate (devocalized)interpretations for serious
listeners, and the Therapeutic, Challenging,Self-Help series, with the
humming left intact, for English students and the psychologically needy.

Bardolph