Posts tagged gould
A Brief(er) History: Gould’s Hologram
This post is part of my attempt to port my master’s thesis into blog form. Over the next [arbitrary and probably long amount of time], I’ll be posting longer-form pieces that track the various themes of the thesis, from the dominance of the speaker/microphone paradigm to the use of scientific rhetoric by 1920s player piano laboratories. I’m hoping they’ll be intelligible on their own, but as they go up, you can see them all together in chronological order here. You could also skip ahead and download the real deal PDF. This first installment is more or less directly copied from my introduction—a description of an unusual Glenn Gould concert.
Zenph Studios: Making Pianistic History
“I was totally wowed,” a woman in the audience told CBC News. “The only thing missing was a hologram of Gould actually playing.” [1]
In 2006, on what would have been Glenn Gould’s 74th birthday, in the studio named after him at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto, Zenph Studios produced a concert featuring his performance of the work that launched his career when he recorded it for Columbia Masterworks 50 years previous: Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The Variations, published in 1741, had been considered esoteric harpsichord music until Gould’s interpretation on the piano revived them for a modern audience—an aria and 30 short contrapuntal variations on its bass theme. Zenph’s concert was unusual in many respects, but two facts suggested that it should not have happened at all: Gould famously abandoned live performance at the age of 31, and he died at 51.
A lovely little infographic from Neven Mrgan, comparing the durations of Gould two major recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations:
Here’s a little chart I made. Glenn Gould recorded two remarkably different versions of Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’. The 1955 version is fast, virtuosic, and energetic (even frenetic). The 1981 version is deliberately paced and elegant. They are both dizzying masterpieces.
Most people prefer one over the other. On an average day, I will favor the 1981, but only by about 5%. I am very glad that both of them exist.
100 plays
John Oswald - ‘Aria’ from Plunderphonics 69/96
From the liner notes:
We had a computer listen to Mr Gould playing the aria to the Goldberg Variations through a device which converts analogue pitches into digital notes. We fine-tuned or perhaps I should say finely untuned this ability so that the computer would hear approximately the right notes; it would add extra notes and spurious activity when it wasn’t sure what he had played. But it was good at getting most of the notes and the precise timing of the original. Once this info was collected into the computer it could be played back on any MIDI instrument or sampler. The sound could be electronic, or a toy piano or one of our klangprobes. But we had the opportunity to record a couple of the pianos Gould actually used, including the flagship CD318. This piano naturally has all the characteristics one associates with Glenn Gould’s style; including its quick, close action, and its lightness. So we then create a composite sampled keyboard using these recordings. There were some tuning anomalies with one of the pianos; we did some tuning of the samples intended to complement the harmonic structure of the ‘aria.’ Then the computer gave us a real time performance of its interpretation and we recorded it.
It’s always nice to watch Glenn Gould play the piano. (Click the via link below to see all the other Goldberg Variations.)
(via Perverse Egalitarianism)
