RE: Why people care about GG?

["Baldwin, Daniel" <baldwin@baermarks.com>]

	If I recall correctly from his writings, Gould cared deeply (if in
an idiosyncratic way) about communicating with his audience. In fact, I
think he retired from giving concerts in part because he felt that the
circumstances of live performance militated against the achievement of his
artistic objectives, and that studio recording was a more effective means of
getting his intentions across. He wasn't doing this only for himself, but
rather with his audience in mind. In commenting on his live performances
(given in the '50s) of Bach's Partita #5 (or was it 6? -- help me here,
Brad), he said that the necessity of communicating with the  people in the
balcony made him engage in overly theatrical musical gestures which were at
odds with his interpretation of the music; he gives this as an example of a
factor which contributed to his decision to stop doing concerts. (These
comments appear in Gould's liner notes to the LP recording of the Partitas,
which were reprinted in a recent issue of the Gould Foundation's semi-annual
journal).

In any event, regardless of his intentions, Gould obviously was a master
communicator. The very existence of this chat group speaks loudly for that
fact.

-----Original Message-----
From: BONG [mailto:bong@iti.lt]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2000 8:19 AM
To: f_minor-og@email.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: Why people care about GG?


>Bach and
> Mozart and Gibbons had yet-unexpressed things to say to many people, and
>Gould  saw himself as their best, perhaps their only true messenger, the
>decoder of  their musical and emotional messages.

What would Gould have to message if there were no Bach, the main, biggest
and deepest reservoir of expressed or unexpressed thoughts? Gould didn't
like Mozart, it's a fact (and his arguments are not at all relevant to state
the fact), so how could Gould be a mediator between the public and the
composer he hated? Isn't such a role completely irrational? It's obvious
Gould hasn't find enough depth in the other composers he played too, one
just can't deny that the world of feelings Bach inspired in Gould was
immense compared to that of other composers. The importance of Bach in
Gould's repertoire, life, whatever, is so big that a logical question
arises: what would have remained of that repertoire or anything if the main
component were absent? A soup without salt, a hollow nut or a miniature
model of a skyscraper...

Juozas Rimas
Lithuania