Glenn Gould’s Bach
I recently listened to Glenn Gould’s recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II. For the most part, I found the performances annoying and lacking in insight. Thus, I was set to have a jolly time debunking Gould. But alas, it is never so simple with Glenn Gould. He forces you into a relationship. You are ready to call him up and pronounce with great vehemence, “I am never going to talk to you again.” You then spend thirty minutes explaining why you are never going to talk to him again and then you call him an hour later and tell him you are never going to talk to him again. Apparently, Glenn Gould conducted many of his relationships by long distance phone. According to Robert Craft, he would even call you from the hotel room next door. He preferred to have a technical interface between himself and his interlocutor.
Glenn Gould wrote that he wrote no criticism, only appreciations. This is laudable. It’s ten to fifteen times as hard to write why something is good. It is relatively easy to say what is wrong with a performance but to say what is right is infinitely more difficulty.
I owe a great debt to Glenn Gould. My father had his recording of the E-minor Partita, which I first heard when I was 17. The toccata with its fugue went right into the marrow of my bones. How can you be ungrateful to the guide who led you to the holy of holies?
Well, I am not ungrateful, but I am going to argue with him.
Let’s examine the Prelude in F-sharp minor from Gould’s recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Book II. I have four recordings of the WTC II in my collections (Gould, Edward Aldwell, Christiane Jaccottet, and Bob van Asperen). Gould’s performance is the most compelling. In the other recordings the first few measures suffice to tell you exactly what is going to happen during the remainder of the piece. No surprises, mam, just the facts. You have no business recording this work if you don’t have a few surprises up your sleeve. Gould keeps you interested and involved until the end. He definitely has some surprises for the listener.
Like almost every piece in the collection, there are no dynamic, tempo, articulation or other markings to provide guidelines to the performer. Gould takes a moderate tempo but makes many small changes of pace. This helps to hold the listener’s attention. Gould has an extreme ability to hear and communicate multiple parts. This prelude is a three-part fantasia, in which the lower two parts can be played entirely by the left hand until the last few measures. The upper part can thus be played and treated as a solo part. It would make an intensely expressive violin solo, for example. The other performers do not consistently make the left hand parts clear. The two parts tend to merge and loose their identities. Gould maintains the discretion of all the parts and gives each a contour that is logical and convincing.
Gould’s performance creates a clear attitude and affect in the listener. We feel the effect of his clear intentions, eccentric as they may be, and are led along. A performance simply must have this clarity of intention; otherwise, there is no reason to listen. We, the listeners, must know where the performer stands.
Gould has two ideas for the articulation: connected for the longer notes (the eighths) and highly separated for the quicker notes (the sixteenths and the sixteenth-note triplets). Sometimes he connects pairs of sixteenths, which gives these note pairs a shape that distinguishes them from their staccato neighbors. The constant staccato has the effect of making each quick note stick out like a thumbtack. One of Gould’s virtues is clarity and transparency, but this pointillism is like an actor who pops all the consonants and breaks the connections between words. This prelude, particularly the soprano part, is one of the most lyrical and vocal in the second book, but Gould plays it in a way that no singer could sing except by adding consonants at the beginning and ending of each note. Bach does not set words this way, however. Quick notes are normally sung on one vowel. You will not find a setting of flowing sixteenths in which each note has a separate syllable.
Bach wrote multi-voiced pieces, and he clearly wanted to hear each voice performed as if sung by a fine singer. Griepenkerl writes that “Bach performed the masterpieces with such a profound declamation that they sounded like polyphonic songs sung by individual great artists; all means of good singing were thereby brought into use. No cercare, no portamento was missing. There was even breathing at the right places.” This was the singing, cantabile Bach desired.
After listening to and comparing the performances, I played and sang the individual parts of the prelude. None of the performances reveals the richness of the solo line. It is loaded with expressive information, which the performer must discover and then communicate. It is clear that none of the performers take this part seriously. Gould creates a schema and then presses the line into that mould. He sheds some light on the part, but leaves most of the mysteries unexamined. Gould’s performance is considerably better than the other three, but he has barely scratched the surface of this prelude. As a listener, I want to hear each of the three parts as if sung by three master singers. Gould does not do this. Thus, I must conclude, what’s the big deal about Glenn Gould
