Glenn Gould, prophet of the piano

Today is the birthday of the wonderful Canadian pianist and keyboardist, Glenn Gould. Oh Lord. I had heard that Gould was a genius, and that he sang along with his piano playing, but this is the first time I have actually heard it! (My hearing is not very acute.) I'm referring to the YouTube clip to which the title of this post links. I first heard Glenn Gould playing Mozart's sonata in C K545. It was played incredibly fast, but with such a crisp sound that it was fascinating to listen to, especially the first movement. I listened to a cassette that I made with that recording (borrowed from the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, which I must thank for getting me started with nearly half of my interests within classical music) on and off for a decade. I eventually began to collect digital recordings, and learned that not only did Glenn Gould not like to play Mozart, he loved playing Bach. I had come out of my teen years firmly convinced that Bach simply had to be played on the proper instrument, namely the harpsichord, or maybe an organ, and even then not just any organ. I was as doctrinaire as they came, and deplored the use of modern, large organs for Bach trio sonatas, for instance. At about the time I discovered Glenn Gould's Mozart, I also discovered a percussionist called Brian Slawson, whose album Bach on Wood had a couple of fabulous cuts that had been played on the radio, and taped by me. (It was during a trip to Yellowstone, and I was just barely able to tape the piece on a little boom-box we had along!) It never rains, but it pours. After Walter Carlos's Switched-On Bach in the sixties (which I did like very much, some cuts more than others), I was ripe for this new interest in unusual recordings of Bach, or at least recordings of Bach on "unauthorized" instruments. Many people will agree that Bach is especially fine played on odd instruments. Brian Slawson's album (which he has now followed up with Bach Beat, which features the incredibly slimy Das Roach, as well as the beautiful original composition Elegy) shows just how many alternatives there are, even within the class of percussion instruments, for instrumentation. Stefan Hussong plays Bach on the accordion, and has made some lovely recordings. I'm having to figure out, in real time, why Glenn Gould sings here. Watching the video clip, it is clear that it is the rhythm of the Bach piece that has caught his attention; the syncopation, the excitement of some figure that he wants to emphasize. It takes a while to realize that Bach was not only about the four-square sewing-machine rhythm that seems to define a lot of Bach's music. That's only on the surface. Inside, there's all sorts of mayhem going down, inner voices clicking and clacking against each other, especially in the keyboard works, one of which Gould was playing (or rehearsing) on film. I had been willing to concede that he was a genius --I'm willing to concede that practically anyone is a genius, as long as they leave me alone-- but now I'm seeing exactly what kind of genius he was: someone who thoroughly appreciated the beauty of complex rhythms. Mozart's allure for me was not one built on complex rhythms. If complex rhythms (and probably complex harmonies, too) were what drew Glenn Gould to them, it becomes more clear why he liked Mozart a lot less than he liked Bach. Mozart, it seems to me, put nearly all his eggs in the basket of chromatic melodies. There was a lot of harmonic support for his melodies, without a doubt. But because all his energy was focused on making that one melody be the princess of the piece (not all the time, but certainly most of the time), rhythmic complexity did not have a large role to play. (It is unbelievable how much Mozart was able to do with so little.) In contrast, Bach gave you your money's worth. Someone wrote that Handel, for example, would write just enough for the effect he wanted. He was writing for his audience. Bach, on the other hand, wanted to write until the potential of his musical material was exhausted. An interesting example is an aria from Cantata 68, a well-known soprano song learned all over the world, called (in translation) My heart ever faithful. The aria is a perfectly normal one, accompanied by a sort of mini-cello, which has a vigorous counter-melody, one that Glenn Gould is sure to have appreciated. Anyway, the aria full of pietistic joy and exhaltation, comes to an end. and then, totally out of the blue, the music continues, with the violin and the oboe and the cello going full tilt for a full minute or two! No one can explain why this goes on, because the aria is over! This is sheer exuberance. Bach has this neat rhythmic theme that he has not exploited, so he has to make it live it's musical life! He was as pro-life as it is possible to be, in a strictly musical sense. There are times, though, where Bach brings something to a close, and you wish he would keep on going. Glenn Gould became famous for his performance of the famous Goldberg Variations, and now they are talked about by practically everyone who craves insider status into Bach music. But the Goldberg Variations are justly well known, and worth listening to. Finally, Glenn Gould recorded the Art of Fugue, by J.S. Bach, long considered his last composition, using both piano and organ. It is a fascinating interpretation of the Art of Fugue, which does not have any instrumentation associated with it. Archimedes