Music Culture & Society; Part 2

(The following is an essay originally submitted as an assignment on 22nd of February, 2013)

Bach: The Goldberg Variations. 

Glenn Gould; a born eccentric, Gould used to slouch awkwardly over his piano and hum whilst playing

The recording I have chosen to study in depth for this essay is Glenn Gould’s 1955 performance of the Goldberg Variations, Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (1741).

Recorded in Columbia Records 30^th street studios in New York  just after Gould had signed a recording contract with Columbia Masterworks, It was the Canadian pianist’s first breakthrough success as an artist, and is the work with which Gould is most frequently associated. Its immediate selling success, becoming a best seller worldwide, and its renowned critical acclaim listed Gould, although just 22 at this time, as a mature international artist and secured him an enthusiastic audience for years to come.

Born in Canada, in the year 1932, Glenn Gould was one of the most well known, influential and most widely celebrated classical pianists of his time. Although known widely for his natural ability and technical proficiency, Gould was often known for his many quirks and eccentricities, which often bewildered his audiences, outline his uniqueness as more than just an average interpreter of keyboard music. Some of the eccentricities Gould displayed during performances include his preferred use of an unusual and remarkably low folding chair which accompanied him in every performance instead of a common piano stool, his unbreakable and notorious habit of humming along to the music he was playing, swaying with quite peculiar body movements whilst playing and sitting quite awkwardly and restricting with his legs crossed. In various interviews, Gould has often displayed a somewhat annoyance towards his audience’s bewilderment of such eccentricities. To many listeners, these eccentricities are important aspects of his work, as they bring the performer’s own personality into the performance.

As well as these obvious eccentricities in the artist’s performances, Gould often chose unusual pieces to perform, often to the dismay of the record producers. In 1955, when Gould chose to record Bach’s Goldberg Variations the record producers often queried his decision, unsure of how well the final product would sell, since works of Bach had declined significantly in popularity previous to this time. Gould also rejected a lot of Romantic era compositions such as the works of Chopin, Brahms and Strauss, being more interested in a diverse repertoire containing works of Baroque and pre-baroque era composers. Through decisions like these, Gould comes across as an artist who values the road less travelled by. This unusual viewpoint of Gould’s is doubtlessly what influenced him to favour studio recordings over that of a live performance, thus his decision to retire from live performances in 1963, at the age of 31.

In contrast to the beliefs of other live performers of his time, Gould disagreed largely and strongly with audience interaction during live performances. Gould often found having a live audience distracting from the music itself, which he discussed in depth in his Article entitled Let’s ban Applause which he wrote the year previous to his retirement as a live performer.

“The purpose of art is not the release of momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, life-long construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” (Gould, 1962)

This shows that Gould was more inclined to create music in isolation, free from the distractions of a live audience. In the same Article, Gould praises the new developments in technology which allow the artist to focus on and perfect the performance as a whole. Gould understood the advantages of recording and often predicted that through advancements of technology, public performances would ultimately cease to exist and be ultimately replaced by the recorded electronic media. 

“the habit of concertgoing and concert giving both as a social institution and a chief institution of musical mercantilism, will be as dormant  in the 21^st century as, with luck, will Tristan de Cunha’s volcano.” (Gould, 1966)

In this article, The Prospects of Recording, Gould outlined his views and explained how “because of its [public performance] extinction, music will be able to provide a more cogent experience than is now possible.”

It was because of Gould’s awareness of the advantages of recording that he was motivated into re-recording Bach’s Goldberg Variations a work he had become very closely identified, 26 years after the first recording, in the same studio in New York. The technological advancements that had happened in the recording industry within the 25 years prior to 1981, such as Dolby Stereo, were not all that motivated Gould into making this decision. Since the recording of 1955, Gould had developed a different interpretation of the variations, not as separate exercises but instead as the one whole unit, with one rhythmic pulse throughout. Gould also disagreed with the faster paced playing of his younger counterpart, and slowed the pace of his performance in the 1981 recording. Gould saw the advances in recording as a way of understanding further the original purpose and message of the Goldberg Variations, the origin of which has since become shrouded in myths and legends.

Although it can neither be proven nor disproven, Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s Biography of Bach explains the well known story of the origin of Bach’s Composition of the work in 1741.

The tale documents Count Kaiserling, the Russian amabassador to the electoral court of Saxony, who became ill on a visit to Leipzig and suffered sleepless nights. A student of Bach’s named Goldberg often accompanied the Count in an antechamber, and would play for him during his sleepless nights. The Count mentioned in Bach's presence that he would like to have a certain piece composed for Goldberg, which he specified should be of such a smooth and yet lively character that he might feel comforted by them in his sleepless nights. Bach then fulfilled the Count’s wish by means of Variations, the writing of which he had until then considered a tedious and somewhat ungrateful task on account of the repeatedly similar harmonic foundation. But since at this time all his works were already models of art, such also these variations became under his hand. Yet he produced only a single work of this kind. (Forkel, 1802)

Although Bach only produced a single work of Variations, it has long since remained one of the most influential pieces of keyboard music of the Baroque period, and has earned Bach universal attention as a master of keyboard music. It seems, bearing this fact in mind, that it is no wonder Gould chose to study the work quite deeply and record it twice in his sadly short lifetime.

In conclusion, it can be said that both Gould’s input and interpretation is almost as influential as Bach’s composition. Gould brings his personality into the performance which labels him as more of an artist than a mere interpreter. His eccentricities, which have more than often intrigued his audiences greatly, somehow reflect the eccentricities of the work itself. It is unusual in the fact that Bach considered the composition of Variations to be a tedious task, and even more so unusual and bewildering is the story of its origin. Audiences have long since discussed the reason behind the composition of the Goldberg Variations, which strikes me as an intriguingly unusual subject, just as much as Glenn Gould’s preferred use of an unusual and remarkably low folding chair, which is so closely identified with the artist, it now resides in the National Library of Canada in his honour.

Bibliography

Bach, Johann Sebastian. The Goldberg Variations, Glenn Gould. CBS. 1955
Forkel, Johann. Johann Sebastian Bach, trans. C.Sanford Terry (Harcourt, Brace and Howe, New York, 1920)
Gould, Glenn. ‘Let’s Ban Applause’. Musical America (1962)
Gould, Glenn. ‘The Prospects of Recording’. High Fidelity Magazine. Vol. 16 (1966)
Williams, Peter. Bach, The Goldberg Variations, (Cambridge University Press, 2001)