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作曲 : Johann Sebastian Bach/Spoken Word
[MUSIC]
PAGE: Hello, I'm Tim Page
and the music in the background is the opening segment from one of the most celebrated keyboard discs of all time.
The theme from Bach's Goldberg Variations as recorded by Glenn Gould in 1955.
The man responsible for that recording and for approximately 85 other recordings since is my guest on today's program.
Glenn, thanks a lot for coming by.
GOULD: Tim, it's my pleasure.
P: Glenn Gould has recently rerecorded and CBS has just released a new version of the Goldberg Variations
and I'm sure we'll get around to comparing the two discs in the course of this program.
But first: Glenn, are you one of those artists
who avoids listening to their own early or earlier recordings
or are you the type who positively relishes, basking in the glow of sessions passed?
G: No, I don't think I do much basking, Tim,
but it doesn't really dampen my spirits at least not usually to be confronted with the sins of my youth.
I mean I've never understood --
I've never even believed this sort of interview that one hears again and again on talk shows,
you know, with actors profess never to see or to have never seen their own films --
you've heard that sort of thing, haven't you?
P: Oh sure, you mean the sort of thing where the interviewer will begin with something like
"Sir John, how do you feel now about your classic Oscar-winning performance in Bridge on the River Hudson?"
G: "*****, ***** on the River Hudson?
Oh, oh, yes, yes, I see, I see,
that was the film we did in America wasn't it?
Yes. Back in the fifties I think, yes.
Well deucedly awkward location,
you know, thoroughly contaminated streams.
Very, yes, marshy, is swampland indeed.
Mosquitos even, we all had black fly, don't you know?
No sense of landscape architecture, the Americans, badly ruined shoreline, I can tell you.
Nothing like upper Thames, you know.
Oh, Not at all, no."
P: "But did you see the picture, Sir John?"
G: "Oh, the picture.
No. No, I never saw the picture in its entirety, of course not.
Did drop in at the dailies once,
I rather fancied that spot, where Sir Arthur lost a bus load or two of commuters when the center span gave way.
Of course he was a stickler for detail, none of those bathtub mockups for him I can tell you.
No, not at all."
P: "Well thank you, Sir John, don't call us, we'll call you."
G: "Ah, yes, well, please do. Of course they never do."
P: So anyway Glenn, unlike Sir John, you do revisit the scenes of your discographic youth from time to time.
G: Oh, sure, of course I do. Though I will admit that,
specifically, in the case of the Goldberg Variations with a bit more reluctance than is usual for me,
a bit more from a sense of duty than enthusiasm perhaps.
P: This is in fact your very first recording.
G: Yeah, indeed, so I have a lot of revisiting to do, I suppose.
P: I'm surprised that you don't like it better because
I find it -- as I wrote in an article not too long ago, critics always love to quote themselves --
that it's a performance of originality, intelligence, and fire.
G: Well, I thank you for that comment, I was very touched by it when I read it and I don't quite share it.
P: Well, when did you last quite listen to this record?
G: Oh, let's see, I listened to it about 3 or 4 days before I went to New York to rerecord it and that would be in April 1981.
I just sort of wanted to remind myself of what it was like.
And to be honest -- and I don't mean to sound like our friend Sir John over there --
it had at that point been so many years since I had heard that I really was curious about what I would find.
P: What did you find?
G: I found that I was a rather spooky experience.
I listened to it with great pleasure in many respects.
I found for example that it had a real sense of humor, I think,
all sorts of crooky, spiky accents and so on,
that gave it a certain buoyancy.
And I found that I recognized at all points, really,
the fingerprints of the party responsible.
I mean, from a tactile standpoint, from purely mechanical standpoint,
my approach to playing the piano really hasn't changed all that much over the years.
It's remained quite stable, I think, static, some people might prefer to say.
So I recognized the fingerprints,
but -- and it is a very big but --
but I could not recognize or identify with the spirit of the person who made that recording.
It really seemed like some other spirit had been involved and,
as a consequence, I was just very glad to be doing it again.
P: Uh-huh. Now, that's unusual for you because you actually seldom record anything twice.
G: Yeah, that's quite true.
I've only rerecorded two or three things over the years.
I guess the most obvious recent example is the Haydn E-flat Major Sonata No. 59
which I, oh, originally did back in the mono-only days of the '50s,
but which was digitally updated just last year.
P: Well Glenn, when you look back at a record like that --
like the early version of that Haydn sonata --
do you have the same sense of discomfort, the same qualms,
as in the case of the early Goldbergs?
G: No, no, not at all.
I prefer the later version of the Haydn,
not just sonically, but interpretively,
but I understand the early version, you know.
I understand why I did what I did,
even if I wouldn't do it in quite the same way today.
But I'll give you a better example, Tim,
the Mozart Sonata in C Major, K... 330.
P: Which was originally paired with that Haydn sonata back in the '50s.
G: Yeah. That's right, and as you know I rerecorded the Mozart
in 1970, I think it was.
P: As part of your survey of the complete Mozart sonatas.
G: Mm-hm. And in that instance -- in the case of Mozart --
I really do prefer the early version.
P: That's interesting.
I like them both in their way;
I guess it depends on my mood.
G: Well, of course, as you know,
I harbor -- shall we say -- rather ambivalent feelings for Wolfgang Amadeus and his works.
We better not get into that here because we will never get back to Bach if we do,
but by 1970 -- when the later version was made -- I had already confessed my true feelings about Mozart, of course.
P: Well, you'd called him a lousy composer.
G: I think I used maybe more slightly gentile language, sir,
but words to that affect nonetheless.
Whereas maybe back in 1958 --
even though my doubts about Mozart were certainly present --
I nevertheless covered them up somehow.
I managed a leap of faith as the theologians like to say, which I guess I just couldn't manage twelve years later.
P: Well, the most obvious discrepancy between those performances is one of tempi.
And you've pointed this out in various articles actually --
P: -- the early version of Mozart is very, very slow.
G: Indeed.
P: And the later one -- if I may say so -- goes like the preverbal bat out of hell.
G: Yeah, that's absolutely true.
Well, I have a theory -- vis-à-vis my own work anyway.
Well, something less grand of a theory, really;
it's more like a speculative premise.
But anyway, it goes something like this:
I think that the great majority of the music that moves me very deeply, is music that I want to hear played -- or want to play myself, as the case may be --
in a very ruminative, very deliberate tempo.
P: That's fascinating.
In other words, you want to savor it, you want to --
G: I, no, I don't think so, not quite savor, no.
Because -- at least to me -- savor somehow suggests dawdling or lingering over, or something like that.
And I don't mean that.
No, firm beats, a sense of rhythmic continuity has always been terribly important to me.
But as I've grown older, I find many performances -- certainly the great majority of my own early performances -- just too fast for comfort.
I guess part of the explanation is that all the music that really interests me -- not just some of it, all of it -- is contrapuntal music.
Whether it's Wagner's counterpoint or Sch?nberg's or Bach's or Sphaling's (?) or Haydn's indeed,
the music that really interests me is inevitably music with an explosion of simultaneous ideas,
which counterpoint -- you know, when it's at its best -- is.
And it's music where one I think implicitly acknowledges the essential equality of those ideas.
And I think it follows from that with really complex contrapuntal textures, one does need a certain deliberation, a certain deliberateness, you know.
And I think -- to come full circle -- that it's the occasional or even the frequent lack of that deliberation
that bothers me most in the first version of the Goldberg.
P: Well, I think it's time that we offered a example.
Just to refresh your memory, let's hear a few bars of the theme from the original 1955 version of the Goldberg Variations
which we played at the top of the program.
G: Good idea.
[MUSIC]
P: Now, by way of contrast, let's hear the whole theme as you played it in the new version.
G: Okay.
[MUSIC]
P: Well, Glenn, I put a stopwatch on that.
Do you want to guess the relationship between the two tempi or do you know already?
G: I know approximately;
it's about 2:1, isn't it?
P: Just about.
The original version clocks in at 1 minute, 51 seconds,
and the new version at 3 minutes, 4 seconds.
Let's call it a ratio of -- a little quick math here --
G: Yes. Pocket calculator. P: 12:7.
G: Well, I think my guess was close enough for government work.
P: Sure? G: But the reprise of the theme, the aria de capo at the end, that's even slower, isn't it?
P: Yes, indeed.
P: Would you believe 3 minutes, 42 seconds, in the new version? G: You've got -- you've got them all there.
G: You did come prepared. Yes, I believe that.
P: Versus, uh -- let me get that. Versus 2 minutes, 7 seconds, in the de capo from the original version.
G: I'm dealing with a stopwatch freak.
P: Well, not really, but I did take a pulse of this recording -- if you don't mind a metaphor there.
As a matter of fact, I timed all the variations in both versions.
G: Good, thanks Tim.[DROPS VOICE]
P: Because when I first heard the new recording --
specifically when I first heard the tempo of the theme --
I thought to myself,
"Well, this has got to be a two-record set."
G: Yes.
P: Well, it's obviously not a two-record set.
And I discovered eventually that it's only about thirteen minutes longer than the original 1955 version.
G: That's right. It's about what? 51 minutes? Something like that?
P: 51 minutes, 14 seconds.
G: I stand corrected.
P: Versus 38 minutes, 17 seconds, in 1955.
G: Ahh, I was a speed demon in those days, I tell you.
P: Well, not really, because --
you know what really puzzled me Glenn, and in fact got me onto this whole timing kick, was that in the new version you observe --
well, by no means all, but certainly a good number --
I guess about a dozen of the first repeats.
G: Yeah, that's right.
I did them in all the canons, so that would be -- that'd be nine.
And then in the fuguetta, which is Variation 10, and the quadlivet, which is Variation 30,
and a couple of the other fuguetta- like variations.
I guess about -- I think thirteen in all have first repeats.
P: Yeah, but you see my point.
When you subtract the amount of time devoted to those repeats from the total 51 minutes or whatever,
the overall timing is really not that different from the original version which didn't have any repeats at all.
G: Son of a gun.
P: So you did in fact observe tempi that were not that much slower in many cases in the new version.
G: That's true.
P: And in one or two very notable variations,
you actually played more quickly
and yet the feeling, the mood, the architecture of this performance is just so totally different that,
frankly, I can't figure it out.
G: Well, as a matter of fact, you practically have figured it out Tim.
And I want to say right now,
I was kidding when I asked if you were a stopwatch fetishist,
because the way that this performance was constructed was worked out --
has in fact actually a great deal to do with something very like a stopwatch, you know.
P: Uh-huh.
G: Let me back up a little bit.
I've come to feel over the years that a musical work --
however long it may be -- ought to have basically -- I was going to say "one tempo,"
but that's the wrong word --
one pulse rate, one constant rhythmic reference point.
Now obviously there couldn't be any more deadly dull than to exploit one beat that goes on and on and on indefinitely.
I mean, that's what drives me up the wall about, about rock, you know,
and about --
I say this in the presence of his most committed advocate and art and propagandist -- about minimalism.
P: Oh, I think we should argue that one another time ...
G: Yeah, probably so.
Anyway I would never argue in favor of a inflexible musical pulse.
You know, that just destroys any music.
But you can take basic pulse and divide it and multiply it --
not necessarily on a scale of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 -- but often with far less obvious divisions, I think.
And make the result of those divisions or multiplications act as a subsidiary pulse
for a particular movement or section of a movement or whatever.
And I think this doesn't in any way preclude blubatti.
If you have an accelerando, for example, you simply use the accelerando as a transition between two aspects of the same basic pulse, you know.
P: Sure, sure.
G: So, in the case of the Goldberg,
there is in fact one pulse which -- with a few very minor modifications,
mostly modifications which I think take their cue from retards at the end of the preceding variation, something like that --
one pulse that runs all the way throughout.
P: Can you give us an example of that?
G: Sure. Well, maybe I shouldn't be so confident.
I'll try.
Let's see.
Let's take the beginning of side two of the record, okay?
P: Now that would be the French overture, Variation 16?
G: Yeah, yeah. As you know, the French overture is divided into two sections:
The dotted rhythm sequence,
which gave it its name,
which I guess from French opera tradition;
and a little fuguetta for the second half.
The first section is written with four quarter notes to the bar
（humming：puang delililiyang tatamtata diyang dididididididididi）
and the fuguetta,
on the other hand,
is in three-eight time.
In other words, each bar in the fuguetta contains 1 1/2 quarter notes or dotted quarters, as musicians like to call it.
（humming：down depapapapapingpangpang yapapapapabiyangpabidangden） so on.
Now, you'll find, I think,
that the quarter notes in the first half are almost identical to the dotted quarter notes in the second half.
In other words,
four bars of the second half of the fuguetta is approximately equal to one bar of the opening overture section.
So the relationship, then, is something like this:
（humming: puor rederededi tatamtatam dadadadadiyama yatatatata）
P: I see.
Now what happens in the next variation,
in Variation 17.
G: Well, now, that was a bit more complicated,
because it's written in three-quarter time, with three quarter notes to the bar.
There's nothing complicated about that,as Johann Strauss pretty conclusively proved.
But what was complicated was that
I wanted to relate it somehow to the fuguetta from Variation 16 with its three-eight time signature.
And in fact at first,
I considered just taking the beat from the full bar --
the dotted quarter note of the fuguetta --
and making that beat equivalent to the beat of the undotted quarter --
if I can coin a word -- of Variation 17.
Now that would have resulted in a tempo something like
（humming: yababababi babababababababababa ）.
You know, which sounds okay when you sing it, not bad at all.
But Variation 17 is one of those rather skittish, slightly beheaded collections of scales and arpeggios
which Bach indulged when he wasn't writing sober and proper things like fugues and canons.
And it just seemed to me that there wasn't enough substance to it to warrant such a methodical, deliberate, Germanic tempo.
P: In other words, you're basically saying that you didn't like it enough to play it slowly.
G: You got it.
So instead of using the dotted quarter from the fuguetta as my yardstick for Variation 17,
I took two-thirds of it, two-thirds of a bar from the fuguetta and used the actual quarter note,
which that two-thirds represents.
Now, instead of the beat I sang before --
which was roughly （humming: yababababiyababababa） --
the new beat gave you three for the price of two and that applied to Variation 17 allowed for a much more effervescent tempo,
something like （humming: bababababi bababababalabababi debaba）.
P: Uh-huh. And then of course, there's Variation 18, which is one of the canons.
G: Yeah, the canon at the Sixth.
I adore it, it's a gem.
Well, I adore all the canons, really.
But it's one of my favorite variations, certainly.
Anyway, it's written with four quarter notes in a bar, but actually only two beats, two half notes to a bar.
（ humming: yangdipangbi yapapang bababangbababangbababangbangbang）
P: So basically what you did is turn the quarter note of Variation 17 into the half note of Variation 18.
G: Exactly, yeah.
P: Oh, well, Glenn.
I don't think I can keep much more of this in my head at the moment.
G: I'm sure that I can't either actually;
it's been a struggle.
P: I think we should listen to those three variations --
Variation 16 through 18 of Bach's Goldberg Variations -- right now.
G: Good idea.
[MUSIC]
P: Those were Variations 16 through 18 from Bach's Goldberg Variations in a new recording by Glenn Gould.
You know something, Glenn?
I felt it.
I don't know if I would have actually been able to spot what you did just listening to it,
but there was a link between those variations.
I could -- oh, I could feel it in my bones.
G: Well, I'm really glad,
it's nice of you to say that,
because I've been sitting here squirming in my chair,
as you know,
wishing I'd never said a word on the subject.
P: Oh, don't be ridiculous.
G: Well, you know,
when one describes a process this way,
it sounds just so relentlessly clinical, so ruthlessly sterile and anti-musical, really.
And I --
it is at that level;
it's almost embarrassing.
I'm sorry, I apologize for ...
P: Whoa, whoa.
Don't -- please don't be embarrassed,
because I think you've given us a remarkable insight into your working method.
G: Well, thank you.
But you know what I mean.
On the face of it,
it's exactly like analyzing a particular tone row of Schnberg, for example, and saying,
"Well, this is a wonderfully symmetrical tone row,
therefore it must inevitably lead to a wonderfully symmetrical work."
P: I've heard that talk before.
G: Exactly.
And it ain't necessarily so.
I think it's a technique, the idea of rhythmic continuity that's really only useful if everybody does feel it in their bones,
you know,
to use your words --
experiences it subliminally,
in other words -- and absolutely nobody actually notices what's really going on.
P: Which was exactly the way Schnberg felt about his tone rows.
G: Precisely.
P: Well, now, you didn't just invent this system for the Goldberg Variations on this.
G: Oh, certainly not, no.
I've used it for years.
It's just that I've used it more and more rigorously as the years have gone by.
P: Well, Glenn, I think I'd be doing something less than my duty as an interviewer
if I failed to ask whether this rhythmic system of yours didn't perhaps have some small part to play in a rather celebrated brou-ha-ha --
G: Ah, I felt it coming. Yes.
P: -- which took place about twenty years ago
and involved you,
the Brahms D Minor Concerto,
Leonard Bernstein
and the New York Philharmonic.
G: It certainly did.
That was one of the first really clear, really thorough demonstrations of this system.
And, you know, Tim,
I maintain to this day that what shocked everybody, vis-à-vis the interpretation --
of course there was some people who were just shocked by the onstage admission
that a conductor and a soloist could have a profound disagreement,
which everybody knows perfectly well goes on offstage anyway.
But what shocked them about the interpretation, I think, was not the basic tempo itself.
Certainly, the basic tempo was very slow,
it was unusually slow,
but I've heard many other performances which didn't shock anybody with opening themes very nearly as slow,
sort of (humming: Viiiiiyoungpie jiuyangbing)
It was -- to come back to our Goldberg discussion,
the relationship between themes that shocked them.
It was the fact, for example, that the second theme of the first movement of the Brahms --
(humming: Duadidididongdi)
which, after all, is an inversion of the first theme --
was not appreciably slower than the first theme.
It was, in fact, played with something like Haydnesque continuity
instead of, I guess, what most people anticipate as Brahmsian contrast, you know.
P: I'm going to anthropomorphize a bit here.
G: Good heavens.
P: And wager a guess that
what they objected to was the fact that it didn't present the --
well, shall we say --
masculine-feminine contrast that one has come to expect.
G: Mm-hm, mm-hm.
Exactly.
I -- I'll stick with your terms --
presented an ****ual or maybe a ******ual view of the work, you know.
P: Mm-hm.
G: But you see,
in the case of the Goldberg,
I felt there was an ever greater necessity for this system than in a work like the Brahms D Minor.
Because as you know,
the Goldberg is an extraordinary collection of moods and textures.
I mean, think of Variation 15 --
we haven't heard it yet today,
but think of it anyway.
[PAGE BEGINS TO MIMIC PASSAGE OF MUSIC]
G: Exactly.
It's the most severe and rigorous and beautiful canon --
we didn't sing it all that severely and rigorously,
but it is.
The most severe and beautiful canon that I know.
The canon, an inversion of the Fifth.
To be so moving,
so anguished
and so uplifting at the same time,
that it would not be in any way out of place in the St. Matthew Passion.
Matter of fact,
I've always thought of Variation 15 as the perfect Good Friday spell, you know.
Well, anyway,
a movement like that is preceded by Variation 14,
logically enough,
which is certainly one of the giddiest bits of neo-Scarlattism imaginable.
P: Cross-hand versions and all.
G: Yeah.
And quite simply the trap in this work,
in the Goldberg,
is to avoid letting it come across as thirty independent pieces,
because if one gives each of those movements their head,
it can very easily do just that.
So I thought that here in the Goldberg Variations,
this system was a necessity.
And quite frankly,
in the version on this record,
I applied it more rigorously than I ever have to any work before.
P: Well, you mentioned Variation 15
and of course it's only one of three variations in the minor key, in G minor.
There is another of that trio, No. 25,
that I'd like to talk about for just a moment.
I guess in many ways it's the most famous --
well, certainly the longest of all the variations.
G: Absolutely.
It's also the most talked-about among musicians, I think.
P: Well, with good reason.
I mean, what an extraordinary chromatic texture.
G: Yeah, I don't think there's been a richer load of enharmonic relationships any place between Gezhwaldo and Wagner.
P: Well, I remember you used it in your soundtrack for the film Slaughterhouse Five.
G: That's right,
and to accompany -- of all things -- the burning of Dresden.
P: Indeed.
Well, I want to play just a few bars of this variation in both versions.
G: We really have to hear the early one, eh?
P: Oh, I think we must.
The contrast is, mmm, shall we say, striking?
G: That it is.
[MUSIC PLAYS UNDER THE FOLLOWING DIALOGUE]
P: Now, this is the 1955 version.
G: Which sounds remarkably like a Chopin nocturne, doesn't it?
P: No. I think on it's own terms though, Glenn, that this is really lovely playing.
G: Well, yeah, it's okay, I guess,
but there's a lot of piano-playing going on there.
And I mean that as the most disparaging comment possible.
You know, the line is being pulled every which way,
there are cute little dynamic dips and tempo shifts --
like that one --
things that pass for expressive fervor in your average conservatory, I guess.
P: Do you really despise this version?
G: No, I don't despise it.
I recognize -- you know, it's very well-done of its kind.
I guess I just don't happen to like its kind very much any more.
And I also recognize --
to be fair --
that many people will probably prefer this early version.
They might -- people may find the new one rather stark and spare emotionally.
But this variation -- number 25 --
represents everything that I mistrust in the early, in the early version of --
it wears its heart on its sleeve.
It seems to say,
"Please take note; this is tragedy."
You know, it doesn't have the dignity to bear its suffering with a hint of quiet resignation.
P: And the new version does.
G: Well, I'm prejudiced,
but I think it does, yeah.
P: Well, we're approaching a cadence,
so why don't we use that excuse to switch over to the new version?
G: It couldn't come to soon for me.
[MUSIC CONTINUES SANS DIALOGUE TO END]
P: Glenn, I do see your point.
The 1955 version of this variation is definitely more romantic or,
if you prefer,
more pianistic.
G: Yeah, exactly.
P: And I dare say that no discussion of Bach
would be complete without taking a crack at that old,
somewhat tired question of the choice of instrument.
G: Yeah.
P: The piano versus the harpsichord and so on.
G: Harpsichord and all that, yeah.
No, I dare say not.
You know, somebody said to me the other day that
now that the fortepiano has staged such a remarkable comeback for Mozart and Beethoven and so on --
nd now that people are playing Chopin on period playelles or whatever --
in no time at all,
there'll be nothing left for the contemporary piano to do,
except maybe the Rachmaninoff Third.
And even that --
if you take these archeological pursuits to their illogical extremes --
should really be played on a turn-of-the-century German Steinway or maybe a Bechstadt.
P: That's really true.
G: Yeah, well,
I think frankly that the whole issue of Bach on the piano is a red herring.
I love the harpsichord.
As you know,
I made a harpsichord record some years ago.
P: Oh, sure, the Handel suites.
G: Yeah. And I'm very fond of the fortepiano in such things as Mozart concertos and so forth.
So I'm certainly not going to sit here and argue that the modern piano has some intrinsic value,
just because of its modernness.
I'm not going to argue that new is better.
You know, new is simply new.
But having said that,
I must also say that the piano,
at its best,
offers a range of articulation that far surpasses any older instrument.
That it actually can be made to serve the contrapuntal qualities of Bach, for example,
the linear concepts of Bach in a way that the harpsichord --
for all its beauty and charm and authenticity --
you know, cannot.
P: Well, I feel a little bit like I'm needling you,
but it's been remarked by just about everybody at one time or another
that your piano has actually always seemed to end up sounding a bit like surrogate harpsichords.
And I don't know whether it's because of the way you play these instruments
or the way you have them adjusted or --
G: Well, I think it's a combination.
You know, I've always believed,
you see, Tim,
that one should start by worrying about the action of the instrument and not the sound.
If you regulate an action with enormous care,
make it so even and responsive and articulate that it just sort of sits there and looks at you and says,
"You want to play this in E-flat, right?" you know.
That it virtually plays itself,
in other words,
then the tone will just take care of itself.
Because the tone,the sound,
whatever you want to call it
that one produces really ought to be part of the interpretive concept of the piece.
And if you are dealing with an action that's totally responsive,
you know,
you are then free to really concentrate exclusively on the concept in all of its facets, which includes the tone.
P: Nevertheless,
the tone quality in all your records --
and certainly all your Bach records --
is remarkably similar.
It's consistently crisp,
a little dry perhaps,
astonishingly varied in its detacher (?) way.
As a matter of fact,
it's often been likened to an X-ray of the music.
G: Well, thank you,
I take that as a compliment.
P: Oh, it's actually meant to be.
G: Thank you again.
Well, you know,
there are certain personal taboos,
especially in playing Bach,
that I almost never violate.
P: Well, I know one of them for sure:
You never use the sustaining pedal.
G: That's right.
P: Because I saw that German television film
that was made when you actually recorded the new Goldbergs.
G: Oh, yeah, yeah.
P: And it was honestly rather astonishing
to see you sitting there,
thirteen inches off the floor,
in your stocking feet.
And when the camera pulled back,
they were nowhere near the sustaining pedal.
G: That's true.
P: But you do use the soft pedal a good deal.
G: Yes, I do,
because by playing on two strings instead of three,
you get a much more specific, much leaner quality of sound.
But I think really that the primary tonal concept that I maintain with regard to Bach is that of --
well, I think you used the word detacher (?),
but it's the idea anyway that a non-legato state,
a non-legato relationship
or a pointillistic relationship,
if you want,
between two consecutive notes is the norm,
not the exception.
That the legato link, indeed, is the exception.
P: You realize, of course,
that you're turning the basic premise of piano-playing inside out.
G: Well, trying to, anyway.
And as far as the question of whether it's appropriate to play this music on the piano is concerned,
I think one has to remember that here was a man,
Bach,
who was himself one of the great transcribers of all time.
You know, a man who took Marcello's oboe concerto, for example,
and made a solo harpsichord piece of it --
I recently recorded it, so it's on my mind.
Who rewrote his own violin concertos for the harpsichord or vice-versa.
Who rewrote his harpsichord concerto just for the organ.
You know, the list just goes on and on.
Who wrote --
as his masterpiece, I think --
The Art of the Fugue
and gave us music that works on a harpsichord,
on an organ,
with a string quartet,
with a string orchestra;
he didn't specify.
Certainly with a woodwind quartet or quintet, with a brass quartet.
It works astonishingly well with a saxophone quartet;
I heard it once that way.
P: No kidding? No kidding.
G: Yep. I just think that all the evidence suggests that
Bach didn't give a hoot about specific sonority or even volume.
But I think he did care--
to an almost fanatic degree --
about the integrity of his structures, you know.
I think he would have been delighted by any sound that was born out of a respect for the necessity,
the abstract necessity of those structures and appalled --
amused maybe, but appalled nonetheless --
by any sound that was born out of the notion that by glossing over those structures,
it could improve upon them in some way.
I don't think he cared whether the B minor mass was sung by sixteen or 160;
I think he cared how they sang it.
I certainly don't think that
he who transposed practically everything of his own up and down the octave
to suit himself
and the particular needs of the court
and the instruments he was writing for
would have cared whether it was sung in B minor --
according to our current frequency readings --
or in B flat plus or minus A did(?), minor as is now the habit in certain Puritan circles.
I think he would have to loved to hear his Brandenberg concertos as Wendy Carlos has realized them on the synthesizer.
I think even delighted with what the Swingle Singers did in the ninth fugue from The Art of Fugue some years ago.
But I think he would have been appalled by the way Arnold Schnberg orchestrally mangled his ... fugue, you know.
P: His Stakovsky (?) and the D minor toccata.
G: Yeah, or the way Busoni or Tosig (?) or some of those characters corrupted the keyboard, whereas --
I think it's a question of attitude, just that.
I think the question of instrument, per se,
you konw, is of no importance whatsoever.
P: Well, I think that Bach would have been delighted
with what you've done in this new recording of the Goldberg Variations on the piano.
So why don't we just hear a little more of it?
G: Okay.
Well, we've already heard the opening aria at the beginning of the program,
so how about beginning with Variation 1 and just playing on until we run out of time?
P: Sounds good to me.
[MUSIC PLAYS FOR ABOUT 15 MINUTES, GOING ON TO SECOND SIDE]
P: Those were excerpts from Glenn Gould's new digital recording on CBS of Bach's Goldberg Variations.
Glenn, thanks very much for coming by and talking with us today.
G: I had a great time, Tim,
really enjoyed it, thank you.
P: I'm Tim Page.
Our technician was Kevin Doyle.
I certainly hope you enjoyed this program.
[MUSIC]
[END]
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