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Concerning Glenn Gould's Die Kunst Der Fuge: Where is our soft spot? Which version is more enjoyable, the organ or the piano?

It's a baroque work. It should be performed on harpsichord.
The piano was not invented until the mid 18th century.

The sound of a harpsichord was once described by Thomas Beecham as "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof".

As far as I am concerned, the fewer pieces performed on it the better.

242sumner wrote:It's a baroque work. It should be performed on harpsichord.
The piano was not invented until the mid 18th century.

That's a particular quirk of Gould's: he does all that stuff on piano regardless of whether or not it's period-correct. I'm sure he'd do a 1970s serial piece for MiniMoog on piano, too.

I'm obviously not a fan of his. His kooky personality comes through in his interpretations, which irritates me because the bulk of the works he plays (Baroque through early Romantic) isn't meant to be interpreted that way. He'd be better suited to Expressionist and later works where quirky neuroses are part of the intended aesthetic.

Bach, in particular, composed his pieces based on then-contemporary dance forms such as the menuette, gavotte, etc. which is the rough equivalent of composing "R&B in D Minor," "Crunk in A," etc. Good Bach interpretations have a certain "galloping horse" strut to them the same way old Meters and JBs tunes have their own kind of strut-- just the right amount of buoyancy in the rhythm to make it come alive and be danceable.

Gould interpreting a Bach piece is like Joy Division butchering "Give It Up Or Turn It A-Loose."

CRAP.

His kooky personality comes through in his interpretations, which irritates me because the bulk of the works he plays (Baroque through early Romantic) isn't meant to be interpreted that way.

Yeah, he's perpetually all over it. I don't give a shit about proper instrumentation, or even the integrity of the score, and I like pretty much everything about Glenn Gould, but I have those discs where he plays Bach and I just can't listen to them.

Art of the Fugue? I like it when the clarinets play.

242sumner wrote:I'm obviously not a fan of his. His kooky personality comes through in his interpretations, which irritates me because the bulk of the works he plays (Baroque through early Romantic) isn't meant to be interpreted that way. He'd be better suited to Expressionist and later works where quirky neuroses are part of the intended aesthetic.

Bach, in particular, composed his pieces based on then-contemporary dance forms such as the menuette, gavotte, etc. which is the rough equivalent of composing "R&B in D Minor," "Crunk in A," etc. Good Bach interpretations have a certain "galloping horse" strut to them the same way old Meters and JBs tunes have their own kind of strut-- just the right amount of buoyancy in the rhythm to make it come alive and be danceable.

This strikes me as an odd criticism - it implies that there is a "right" and "wrong" way to play these. One one hand, you're correct - these were based on dance forms of the time. However, I'd welcome hearing them interpreted alternately. Who needs to hear the same-ish interpretation over and over?

double post.

ERawk wrote:That's true about the piano but the organ did exist in the baroque era. Most of those scores only made specifications as to a "keyboard" (of the Chordophone family) instrument, which meant that it could be organ, harpsicord, clavicord, virginal, etc.

The virginal is a kind of harpsichord. Clavichords are not. Clavichords do not pluck.

ERawk wrote:With your logic, there's a lot of issues that come into play. Would you consider me an inauthentic musician if I, say, played Brahms' Fourth Symphony on a modern valve horn as opposed to a natural horn with key-altering crooks and that any note I play is detriment to the "composers vision" or some shit?

The difference here is that the harpsichord is the emblematic instrument of that whole era. I could't say the same thing about a natural horn.

ERawk got it right. what's wrong with adapting classical music to modern instruments? if not for that we wouldn't have the great music wendy carlos made for a clockwork orange or her interpretations of bach on those moogs. that stuff is primo brudda, and it doesn't need an antiquarian sanction to be good art

[quote="Ladel Conrad"]ERawk got it right. what's wrong with adapting classical music to modern instruments? if not for that we wouldn't have the great music wendy carlos made for a clockwork orange or her interpretations of bach on those moogs. that stuff is primo brudda and doesn't need an antiquarian sanction to be good art[/quote]