BY GRACE JOHNSON
We would like to welcome Grace in her first blog as a CutCommon contributor.
“No, no!” my teacher exclaimed. She coaxed my arm away from the keyboard and lightly squeezed the underside of my forearm. “Walking bass line in Bach uses this muscle. You must feel that muscle as you play, and move your arm in this way also.”
This was several years ago now. I was learning the Sinfonia of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita in C minor. On the Steinway grand in her studio, I was taught to play the dramatic opening with harpsichord-sounding touch — “not too much pedal, that’s the American way” — and to imbue the chords with organ-style grandiosity. I was learning to pedal where my fingers could not keep the legato — “this fingering would have been doable on Bach’s harpsichord, but alas” — and to make a clear, “Baroque” sound, always.
With other works, such as impromptus by Schubert and sonatas by Beethoven, I was learning to move my hands, wrists, and arms in ways that would yield different sounds from the piano. I had to play and think beyond personal taste: I needed to consider historical context and composers’ intentions before my own. The differences between Schubert and Beethoven, say, were not just in the scores but how you treated them and the choices you made.
But, at that time, I began listening to Glenn Gould. As I learnt about his progressive approach, naturally I began to question our traditional practices.
I was reminded of Gould just a few days ago when I read that, last month, Toronto pianist Andrew Barushko gave a concert with his Art of Time ensemble as homage to Gould, also from Toronto. Titled Hosted by Glenn Gould: Beethoven and Shostakovich, the concert was inspired by the several tributes in 2017, which had marked the 85th anniversary of Gould’s birth. All of a sudden, I was reminded of the philosophies I had absorbed years ago.
At the centre of his work is authenticity.
In the classical music world, Gould is usually seen as an eccentric figure in music. Apart from playing in a hunched position on a chair almost to the ground, with his chin on his hands, he delved into oftentimes strange intellectual musings and polarising musical interpretations — genius and progressive or offensive and ludicrous. Yet, at the centre of his work is authenticity.
While Gould did record and perform many virtuosic and romantic works, his most radical playing is typically thought to be his interpretations of Bach’s compositions. In his letters, he wrote that in Bach, he saw “universality” unrestricted by notation and instrumentation, so open scores like The Art of Fugue were ideal to him. It was in Bach’s works that he truly demonstrated his virtuosity; that is, the pre-19th-Century virtuosity of the intellect. The way he saw it, as performer, he was responsible for constructing patterns, conveying architecture, and forming clear counterpoint, almost just as much as the composer. Listeners, also, had an active role and participated in the music; as we know from Gould’s 24 April 1967 letter to Ilse Thompson (published in Selected Letters).
To our 19th-Century conditioned minds, this is somewhat blasphemous. The performer is merely the messenger of the great composer. But in my studies, I came to realise that in Baroque times, the performer’s role in the music was even greater than that of the composer’s, and improvisation was an expected part of performance. In other words, deviating from the score was the practice.
But now, the practice is to be as faithful to the score as possible, or to the sound that we believe to be historically accurate. This is the new idea of authenticity.
I soon became very bored and frustrated with this kind of musical study. To me, it seemed the authenticity and truth of the music lay only in physical movements and considering the composer in every decision.
In order for a performance to be authentic, it must first be truthful to the performer.
While I benefitted in ways from this rigour, and it is necessary to an extent in learning to play and perform the composers’ works, I felt opposed to disregarding my own ideas about the music in favour of accuracy. While it is necessary to have a certain degree of historical understanding and technical quality, surely, in order for a performance to be authentic, it must first be truthful to the performer.
The idea of authenticity tends to spark different opinions of what it actually means. Some see authenticity as performing the music as close as possible to the composer’s intentions. Performance practice is choices, but too often do we lose the sense of exploration and spirit of feeling that is essential to the music. Often, finding what was significant to the composer means finding what is significant for you, as listener or performer.
Gould, in both his writings and his recordings, insisted on making interpretative decisions based on observations within the music itself. This was apart from considerations of physical technique, historical background, and programmatic associations. As Bazzana observes in The Performer in the Work, Gould notoriously disregarded all authorial intent and contextual implications — he frequently deviated from tempo and dynamic markings and in his letters insisted on his autonomy in musical-decision making.
It is important to sometimes push aside our growing knowledge of historical context and abundance of different recordings.
Leonard Bernstein famously commented on Gould’s digression from the score in his introduction to their performance of the Brahms D minor concerto at Carnegie Hall, April 6, 1962: “This is a performance distinctly different from any I’ve ever heard…in its remarkably broad tempi and its frequent departures from Brahms’ dynamic indications. What am I doing conducting it? […] because Mr. Gould is so valid and serious an artist that I must take seriously anything he conceives in good faith, and his conception is interesting enough so that I feel you should hear it too […] because we can all learn something from this extraordinary artist who is a thinking performer”.
Without losing respect for the composer, it is important to sometimes push aside our growing knowledge of historical context and abundance of different recordings, and look at the music in the way it exists on the page, to look for the truth that it ultimately holds within itself. Perpetuating the performance of classical music as it has been done for centuries does not benefit classical music or its longevity — as Gustav Mahler said, “tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”.
What does this story mean to you?
If you like, you can say thanks to Grace for volunteering her time for Australian arts journalism. No amount too much or little 🙂
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Images supplied. Credit: Luke Kearns.
