Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier

[André]

So his playing abounds in expressive rubato?

An abundance of expressive rubato is of course an essential ingredient in WTC...

[milk]

I can't think of any other active musician with a similar influence.

I guess he's a towering figure. I don't know much about him outside of his music. I imagine that he had a monumental effect on the direction of baroque performance yet even many people who know a lot about classical music probably don't know who he is.
On the other hand, there's Gould who is inescapable in pop culture yet really could not have much effect on musicians I am guessing.

[prémont]

An abundance of expressive rubato is of course an essential ingredient in WTC...

Well, at least I prefer an expressive, rhetoric tempo rubato in Bach's keyboard works to Goulds inexpressive tempo "robotto".

[milk]

Well, at least I prefer an expressive, rhetoric tempo rubato in Bach's keyboard works to Goulds inexpressive tempo "robotto".

reminds me of the Coen Brothers' movie "The Man Who Wasn't There."

CARCANOGUES
                         Then you listen to me, for I am
                         expert. That girl, she give me a
                         headache. She cannot play. Nice girl.
                         Very clever hands. Nice girl. Someday,
                         I think, maybe, she make a very good
                         typist.

[prémont]

I guess he's a towering figure. I don't know much about him outside of his music. I imagine that he had a monumental effect on the direction of baroque performance yet even many people who know a lot about classical music probably don't know who he is.
On the other hand, there's Gould who is inescapable in pop culture yet really could not have much effect on musicians I am guessing.

Leonhardt was a very active teacher, and the fact that he had a lot of pupils was definitely instrumental for his cultural importance.

Whereas I don't know if Gould had pupils at all. Never-the-less there are pianists, who have adopted his style to some degree. Some time ago I listened to Craig Sheppard's AoF, and it is even more Gouldian than Gould's own recording of the work, so far one can compare organ playing with piano playing.

[George]

I adore Gould's Bach. If asked why, I would say it's because Gould adored Bach. His Bach is infused with such palpable joy that I find it impossible to listen to it and not feel this joy myself.

I know that others have a very different experience with Gould's Bach and I am entirely OK with that.

[vers la flamme]

I adore Gould's Bach. If asked why, I would say it's because Gould adored Bach. His Bach is infused with such palpable joy that I find it impossible to listen to it and not feel this joy myself.

I know that others have a very different experience with Gould's Bach and I am entirely OK with that.

Couldn't have said it better myself. That being said he is not the only Bachian pianist I want in my life...

[André]

« Tempo robotto » is certainly a description many feel appropriate regarding Gould's detached-notes, almost pedal-less playing. To others it elicits a sense of exhilaration (or joy, as George says). But to call it inexpressive or mechanical is wrong IMO. As the last few posts attest, different people react in different ways. For the record, Gould sometimes annoys me no end. But that's my reaction to some of his interpretive choices, not an objective comment on what he actually does.

Gould's Bach is not always to my taste (the toccatas, partitas) but he is revelatory in other works (the WTC - in small doses -, the concertos, the Inventions and Sinfonias). Revelatory because he reveals layers of meaning no one else does. In that sense his Bach is an essential part of the big picture.

[milk]

« Tempo robotto » is certainly a description many feel appropriate regarding Gould's detached-notes, almost pedal-less playing. To others it elicits a sense of exhilaration (or joy, as George says). But to call it inexpressive or mechanical is wrong IMO. As the last few posts attest, different people react in different ways. For the record, Gould sometimes annoys me no end. But that's my reaction to some of his interpretive choices, not an objective comment on what he actually does.

Gould's Bach is not always to my taste (the toccatas, partitas) but he is revelatory in other works (the WTC - in small doses -, the concertos, the Inventions and Sinfonias). Revelatory because he reveals layers of meaning no one else does. In that sense his Bach is an essential part of the big picture.

I think I'd be less annoyed by Gould if he weren't so synonymous with Bach in popular culture.

[George]

Couldn't have said it better myself. That being said he is not the only Bachian pianist I want in my life...

Agreed! At minimum, I also need Richter, Tipo, Tureck and Feinberg.

[prémont]

I adore Gould's Bach. If asked why, I would say it's because Gould adored Bach. His Bach is infused with such palpable joy that I find it impossible to listen to it and not feel this joy myself.

This is the most charming defence of Gould I ever have seen.

[prémont]

Revelatory because he reveals layers of meaning no one else does. In that sense his Bach is an essential part of the big picture.

Maybe this needs some elaboration. In my opinion many others reveals the layers of meaning (whatever that is) much better, for instance the newest recording of WTC book I by Trevor Pinnock.

[milk]

Maybe this needs some elaboration. In my opinion many others reveals the layers of meaning (whatever that is) much better, for instance the newest recording of WTC book I by Trevor Pinnock.

my personal feeling is that Gould closes up Bach, like a dead end. Someone like Leonhardt, seemed to have opened up many new possibilities for exploring Bach's keyboard works in new ways. Again, this may be prejudiced by where I encounter Gould. Some of it is not his fault - like the movies that use Gould whenever they want to portray a "deep" character. It's as if the last word was said thirty years ago. But I think it's musically too. Gould doesn't point the way anywhere. Sometimes when I hear Gould I think it's kind of quaint in the sense of someone with a clinical obsession producing some kind of art that is very particular to itself.

[Mandryka]

All music is boring when played mechanically. This is one of the reasons why Gould bores me.

Gould is anything but mechanical.

I wonder if either of you two gentlemen have the liner notes to Gould's WTC. Apparently he shows his contemptuous attitude to the music in an interview there, saying that the fugues are muzak

There is a real Muzak-like significance to the nature of the fugue itself... I would like to think that one could dip in and dip out of and experience of music just as easily as you get into an elevator (with a bit of Mantovani for 35 seconds) to get to the 19th floor

and calling the preludes

prosaically prefatory

But I haven't got the booklet so I can't check.

[milk]

I wonder if either of you two gentlemen have the liner notes to Gould's WTC. Apparently he shows his contemptuous attitude to the music in an interview there, saying that the fugues are muzak

and calling the preludes

But I haven't got the booklet so I can't check.

I googled and found the same quote in a bunch of different places. I'm not a big fan of Scott Ross either but he had a very negative opinion of Gould. There's a famous quote but I  don't know if he ever explained it in detail. Maybe it's the ego in Gould and his playing.

[aukhawk]

In the booklet for Book II the main essay by Michael Stegemann (quoting Gould extensively) is entitled On the "Musak" character of the fugue - or - Instructions for "Well-tempered listeners". 
One interesting quote - from a letter after finishing recording Book I -

I have just this week finished Volume I of the W.T.C., thank goodness, and now I have little choice but to proceed onward into Book II.

(it was actually another year before he started recording Book II)

The essay does not imply 'contemptuous' but describes the intimate study of the Fugues that Gould undertook.  I think his point was, as in fact in the quote you chose, that you could dip into a fugue and out again, and still get a valid musical experience - the beginning-middle-end structure is not essential to the music.

[Mandryka]

The essay does not imply 'contemptuous' but describes the intimate study of the Fugues that Gould undertook.  I think his point was, as in fact in the quote you chose, that you could dip into a fugue and out again, and still get a valid musical experience - the beginning-middle-end structure is not essential to the music.

Ah. Like in late Feldman.

[prémont]

The essay does not imply 'contemptuous' but describes the intimate study of the Fugues that Gould undertook.  I think his point was, as in fact in the quote you chose, that you could dip into a fugue and out again, and still get a valid musical experience - the beginning-middle-end structure is not essential to the music.

Gould's lack of musical insight reveals itself once more. Every Bach fugue is a musical process, which develops logically from the beginning to the end.

[milk]

Gould's lack of musical insight reveals itself once more. Every Bach fugue is a musical process, which develops logically from the beginning to the end.

One can't "dip into" the fugues without losing the meaning of them. Gould was very focused on the studio it seems and he wanted people to be able to cut up the fugues with scissors and splice them together in their own way. He said something like this. It makes no sense to me.

[aukhawk]

They don't have a meaning.
A fugue is an elastic set of rules for developing a musical motif.  Bach dreams up a motif, and then he fugues it.  While he's doing the latter his mind is probably elsewhere, reminiscing about that girl in the organ-loft, perhaps.