Re: Glenn Gould in Space

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

I wrote:

> >I'd be
> >the first to run three miles to the store if there were a GG "My Ladye
> >Nevells Booke" for sale.

Jerry responded:

> I guess I don't understand the reference, a GG "My Ladye Nevells Booke"?
> The keyboard volume was prepared for Rachel, wife of Sir Edward Nevill, in
> 1591 by one of Byrd's colleagues at the Royal chapel, overseen by Byrd?,
> and then presented to Elizabeth the first.  We can be quite sure we have
> his true intentions.
> Oh! I just got it!?!  Did you mean an edition with GG's ornaments written
> out?  That's what I would run three miles for! in the rain!

Nope.  I meant I'd like to hear a GG recording of the whole thing.  Of
"Parthenia," too.  Well heck, the whole Fitzwilliam Virginal Book,
especially the wacky stuff by John "wild man" Bull and Peter Philips'
sparkly geodes.  Lacking that, I'd settle for a GG album that has at least
a coupla Walsinghams and Passamezzo P-&-G's, and the Picchi toccata. 

Last night I put in the evening working on Byrd's Fantasia that is #52 in
the Fitzwilliam.  One of our cats comes to listen whenever I play the
virginal, and this one had him commenting aloud about something.  What a
great piece, with the alternations of contrapuntal and free sections
(sorta typical fantasia stuff at the beginning, but then it really gets
going), and especially those passages where one hand is playing in 3/8
while the other is in 4/4 (those crazy cross-rhythms, like hearing two
radio stations at once!) and those measures where the beat is 2+2+2+3,
2+2+2+3 ("Bela Bartok, This Is Your Life!")...  And there's a seriously
bizarre harmonic surprise *and* meter change at one startling point: 
after I'd practiced enough I brought my wife in to listen to the whole
piece, and when I got to that spot she laughed out loud thinking I had had
a spectacular train wreck, but no, the piece really is that way.  It's a
Dionysian feast.  It would be interesting to hear how GG's different
approach would have intersected with this one. 

Say, did you realize that GG's recording of the Beethoven 2nd concerto (Bb
major) and Toscanini's recording of Mendelssohn's 4th symphony (A major)
have almost exactly the same timings, and are both mono, and if you mix
them to a tape where each is restricted to one channel, and then listen on
headphones, it's totally a trip?  (That's what I did in college instead of
substances.  But I never got up the nerve to actually broadcast this tape
on my show.  A pity.  And I wish I'd kept a copy of it.)

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.44N+78.87W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/
...driving rhetoric home with poetic learner's permit
...oh, great, my name anagrams to "Happily label him 'nerd'!"