Goldberg, was Re: Bulls Back On Defense As Stocks Point To Early Weakness

Lawrence Bryan lebryan at speakeasy.net
Fri Mar 20 15:27:29 CDT 2009


If you have never heard it performed on the instrument it was written  
for, you might want to try a performance on a harpsichord. Gould's was  
the first performance I ever heard many years ago on an old LP. I  
don't think I really appreciated the intricacies of many of the  
variations until I heard it on harpsichord. Now to my ears the piano  
versions seem muddled, although Gould's is not as bad as many.

I invited some friends to a free harpsichord concert  at Stanford a  
few years ago. They were not familiar with this type of music but  
being adventurous and the concert being free, agreed to give it a  
shot. There was an usher at the door passing out a program. I joked  
and said the tickets were behind me. Each one of the group continued  
the joke pointing to the one behind. The last guy said the one in  
front, me, had the tickets and we all went in and found some good  
seats. A moment later a rather disturbed usher accompanied by a very  
serious looking older woman wanted to know what we were trying to  
pull. It seemed the concert was not free. It wasn't terribly expensive  
so we all went out and bought tickets. The concert was just one piece,  
the Goldberg Variations. There was a woman sitting at the harpsichord  
tweaking the tuning. We sat there chatting quietly and she just put  
down the tuning hammer and started playing the base line, the theme.  
The audience slowly realized the concert had begun and quieted down  
before the first part. It was a lovely performance in a small intimate  
hall. Alas, several of my friends were somewhat less than enthralled.  
For years I suffered rolling eyes and references to having to buy  
tickets to the most godawful boring music.

Harpsichords are marvelous instruments but one must be able to take  
care of them oneself. Tuning is an ongoing job, like tweaking the  
carburetors on an expensive Italian roadster.

http://www.hpschd.nu/index.html?nav/nav-4.html&t/welcome.html&http://www.hpschd.nu/tech/tun/tears.html

Lawrence


On Mar 20, 2009, at 8:58 AM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> That would be the Goldberg Variations [earthshaking stuff, btw]  
> unless you're contracting Glenn Gould & Poe even more than Richard  
> Powers did.
>
> In Bach's  variations all that remains of the original aria is the  
> bass line.  The work is big, structurally as about as perfect as it  
> gets. Beethoven obviously used it as a model for his Diabelli  
> Variations—now on Broadway and featuring Hanoi Jane ! ! !
>
> http://theater2.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/theater/reviews/10thir.html?scp=1&sq=33%20variations&st=cse
>
> It is also music, as Glenn Gould would have said, like Orlando  
> Gibbons or Late Beethoven, music that sounds better in the  
> imagination, in one's memory than in performance—there is no ideal  
> instrument for this music. Considering Gould's Puritan mindset and  
> tendencies towards spiritualism I found Richard Powers failure to  
> mention the Canadian Pianist's name even once particularly  
> interesting, though it's obvious that the "author" of the record of  
> the Goldbergs in the "Goldbug Variations" is Glenn Gould. Powers  
> seems as keen on ghosts & signifiers [in his own way] as Pynchon.
>
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6984208089899995423
>
>
> On Mar 20, 2009, at 7:48 AM, Henry Musikar wrote:
>
>> I enjoyed Power's Gold Bug Variations: http://tinyurl.com/goldbug-variations
>> .  Not earthshaking, but it did get me listening to the Gouldbug  
>> Variations,
>> http://tinyurl.com/gouldbug-variations , over and over in my  
>> cubicle, until
>> I easily discerned the aria in each.
>
>
>





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