Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is an imaginative and engaging work of art which pioneers a new form of screen biography.
Co-writer and director Francois Girard circles around the life and artistry of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. Through 32 vignettes, we gain access to the idiosyncratic essence of this reclusive man who loved short piano pieces, the vast spaces of Canada, pills, telephones, humming, radio, recording studios, books, and fingerless gloves. Colm Feore does a masterful job portraying Gould, who died of a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 50. The best thing about this innovative film is that it proves that some people can thrive on solitude.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould and the Vacuum cleaner
"....... the inner ear of the imagination is very much more powerful a stimulant than is any amount of outward observation."
The second consequence was that it became more difficult for him to feel satisfied with the actual sound of music, his own performances as well as those of other musicians. It forced him to become a perfectionist. From now on, whenever a work had to be prepared for a concert, he had to struggle mightily in trying to match his playing as closely as possible to the inner model of what it should ideally sound like.
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In fact, it was in Russia that he first noticed what he called "accruing bad habits" in his interpretation of Bach: "all sorts of dynamic hang-ups, crescendi and diminuendi that have no part in the structure, in the skeleton of that music, and defy one to portray the skeleton adequately. The reason... was that I had to play in very large halls which weren't set up with Bach in mind certainly, and try to project it to that man up there in the top balcony.... And I added this hairpin and that hairpin to a phrase that didn't demand it, didn't need it, and that ultimately destroyed the fabric of the music.
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Although Glenn rarely re-recorded anything that he had made earlier, he reconsidered in the case of the Goldbergs , which were still selling well in their 1955 version and were widely considered one of his greatest triumphs. He felt compelled to do this for several reasons. The technology of recording had improved enormously over the intervening years. "Someone had the nerve to invent something called Stereo. Then a few years later someone else had the audacity to invent a process called Dolby which invalidated the quality of sound in which [the earlier Goldberg recording] was done."
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The new Goldberg recording, and the tape made of the recording, were greatly successful, and the debate still goes onas to which is the "better" performance, that of 1955 or the one of 1981. It's a fruitless debate because both recordings are superb. If you want youthful abandon, spontaneity, and a miraculous technique, listen to the first. If you prefer stateliness, mathematical precision, the reflective wisdom of middle age, and the clarity of digital sound, listen to the second. In the opening and closing "Aria" of the 1981 recording, Glenn takes much more time, about twice as much as in the 1955 version, and some variations are also played at a more leisurely tempo.
Julian Lloyd Webber
What Julian did not realise was that this 'experience' was the best possible preparation for the concert platform as he was forced to find ways of controlling his nerves. He discovered that 'you have to lose yourself totally in the music so that the body becomes a channel through which it can flow. if the mind is given over completely to something outside the physical body, the nerves disappear. Although part of the mind has to be aware of its physical surroundings, the technical side of a performance should have been prepared before, so leaving music to take control.'
This condition can only be practised by performance itself, which in turn increases confidence. There were days when his nervousness seemed to be uncontrollable and, in time, Julian learnt one or two specific ways to deal with the problem: 'When my right hand began shaking and the bow bounced all over the strings I would immediately focus attention on my left-hand fingerings - I'd forget about the bow and it would start to behave properly again.' As for nerves before a concert he believes that they can be made to work for, rather than against you because the extra flow of adrenalin sharpens the reflexes and gives each performance a special edge.
'It was the experience of a lifetime... it is perhaps the one thing I have done which i would never have dreamed of being able to accomplish when I was a student. I do remember that I was at my lowest point emotionally. I had gone through all the heartache of my marriage breaking up only to fall out with Zohra. THings had never felt so bad but I could not allow my petty problems to interfere with recording God's beautiful music.
It is a strange truth that people's greatest professional achievements can be at the moment of their greatest personal unhappiness.
This condition can only be practised by performance itself, which in turn increases confidence. There were days when his nervousness seemed to be uncontrollable and, in time, Julian learnt one or two specific ways to deal with the problem: 'When my right hand began shaking and the bow bounced all over the strings I would immediately focus attention on my left-hand fingerings - I'd forget about the bow and it would start to behave properly again.' As for nerves before a concert he believes that they can be made to work for, rather than against you because the extra flow of adrenalin sharpens the reflexes and gives each performance a special edge.
'It was the experience of a lifetime... it is perhaps the one thing I have done which i would never have dreamed of being able to accomplish when I was a student. I do remember that I was at my lowest point emotionally. I had gone through all the heartache of my marriage breaking up only to fall out with Zohra. THings had never felt so bad but I could not allow my petty problems to interfere with recording God's beautiful music.
It is a strange truth that people's greatest professional achievements can be at the moment of their greatest personal unhappiness.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Alfred Brendel
"Chaos must shimmer through the veil of order" ~Novalis
"Everything should be done as simply as possible but not more simply" ~ Einstein
When doing things, do them with relish.
... I tried to give freer rein to my feelings. That is sometimes dangerous for young performers, because when you simply lean back and give vent to your feelings, you don't always achieve the hoped for results; only after many years of practice is it possible to filter one's feelings properly. Which brings me to a phrase of Novalis that I am always quoting
"Chaos, in a work of art, should shimmer through the veil of order."
I am very much for chaos, that is to say feeling. But it's only the veil of order that makes the work of art possible.
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For me personally it was hugely important in teaching me to listen to myself. I can recommend it to everyone, if need be at home with at microphone and tape recorder. To see how the inner vision corresponds with what is played, and to see what doesn't correspond, and whether it corresponds at all. To see whether one can perceive the sound, even in forte, properly; or whether one gets so emotionally excited that it's simply impossible to hear what's going on. And perhaps it will gradually become clear what repays hearing several times over, and which nuances become embarassing and wearisome when heard more than three times. It's a matter of striking the right balance between too much and too little. It was only much later that I learned to record, as if I were playing in the concert hall.
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What fascinates me in singers is the connection between singing and speaking, which also seems to me particularly important in piano playing. And with Mozart it is literally vital. Mozart, after all, was the great opera composer, but there is also a pronounced singing quality in his instrumental works; and not just a singing quality, but a rhetorical and characteristic quality as well. There are characters, they are visible on stage and all differ from each other. Each has his or her own kind of music. And each of these characters goes through a variety of emotions, which are portrayed in connection with the character.
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It became clear to me fairly early on that a performer is a truly split personality.
One must give oneself certain instructions, such as , 'My arms are heavy.' But one must not desire such a thing in a fanatical way and with one's whole consciousness. On the one hand you have the instructions. on the other, a free flow of associations. It is perhaps something similar that makes a good performance possible.
========================================================
When I am on stage, I must do several things at once. I must control myself and free myself; I must look ahead to what I am about to play - see the piece, as it were, spread out like a panorama before me - but at the same time take in what I have just played. I have to play for the audience, and must reach the ears as far back as the thirtieth row. I am accountable to the listener. I am not delivering a soliloquy, but am somewhere in the middle. 'The medium is the message' is a quotation that you have used.
========================================================
I was never the most immaculate of artists. There were evenings when I was technically flawless, but I am not basically a perfectionist. I played sufficient wrong notes early on in my career not to be shocked by that as I grew older; and I got the impression from pianists I particularly admired that one could make an impact despite some little lapses. Flawlessness is not the first indication of a great performance.
=======================================================
I have never believed in the myth of the piano as a percussion instrument. Bach's Inventions were created specifically to encourage cantabile playing- Bach wrote a foreword in which he said as much. He therefore reckoned with the possibility that on old instruments one could play cantabile or less cantabile. If the piano were just a percussion instrument, the great composers would not have written so much for it. I have always tried in my playing to draw sound out of the keys and not strike it in. Hammering and stabbing is not my thing. And neither is it true, by the way, that a single note can only be played louder or softer, but not with different expression, different character and different colour. Nor should the role of pedal be forgotten. I could demonstrate to you on the piano how even single notes can have a distinctive character. Then there is of course the connection between notes which can achieve even more, evoking a mixture of singing and speaking. Singing is for me the basis of music - at least music before the modern age. ... In matters of singing and speaking one should learn from singers, and opera. I have noticed that, despite my admiration for certain great pianists, I seem to have learnt more from singers and conductors. And from actors.
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He was extremely busy at Esterhaza and had to see to many things: performing new works that were not his own, training the orchestra and the singers, looking after the puppet theatre and learning to play the baryton, because that is what one of the princes required.
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I wrote that Haydn and Mozart represented for me the antithesis between the instrumental and the vocal. (Beethoven too I consider to be instrumental, while Schubert for me is vocal - which does not rule out the fact that the underlying character of all three is a cantabile. There is an instrumental and a vocal cantabile.) Then: motif and melody. Of course we also find wonderful melodies in Haydn, but he is primarily a composer of motifs, similar in this to Beethoven
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Most people believe that Glenn Gould was a strong personality who therefore had his own idea of a piece, and so much imagination that he was able to turn every piece into something new. On the other hand, people believe that someone who tries to understand and follow the text must of necessity lack imagination and be boring. To which I can only reply that to read the text accurately is an extremely difficult business - much more difficult than even most musicians realize. To understand the markings and give them life requires a great deal of imagination. One should not act as a computer, or as the composer's slave; one must, rather, try to assist the composer as a voluntary helper. I once discussed this with Pierre Boulez, who said that he was satisfied if eighty or ninety percent of the markings were followed.
========================================================
A pianissimo with Beethoven is almost always a 'pianissimo misterioso', and more rarely a 'pianissimo dolce'. With Schubert the pianissimo has a much wider domain and is, as Rudolf Kolisch said, a 'pianissimo espressivo'. There are composers who use dynamic markings in a very consistent way to render high and low, near and far. With Beethoven one must be able to distinguish with 'geographical' clarity that the fortissimo is outermost and that a single forte is located somwhere further down; one must never confuse the two.
=========================================================
I like using the 4 elements to describe music. Busoni tells of how his composition teacher in Graz, Mayer-Remy, explained Bach's preludes and fugues to his pupils in this way. He remarked that in the first volume of The Well-Tempered Clavier the sequence of the first four fugues represented water, fire, air and earth. Such things can, I think, help the student to get a clearer picture of the pieces, and of musical variety.
==========================================================
On a personal note (PC): In a way I think Alfred Brendel is pretty interesting because (he himself admits this) he's not really a prodigy, he doesn't have photographic memory, not really faster or louder than others, not really a good sight reader and he does things other than music (such as writing)..... so I guess this makes him quite an all-rounded individual not just a "slave" to music.....
"Everything should be done as simply as possible but not more simply" ~ Einstein
When doing things, do them with relish.
... I tried to give freer rein to my feelings. That is sometimes dangerous for young performers, because when you simply lean back and give vent to your feelings, you don't always achieve the hoped for results; only after many years of practice is it possible to filter one's feelings properly. Which brings me to a phrase of Novalis that I am always quoting
"Chaos, in a work of art, should shimmer through the veil of order."
I am very much for chaos, that is to say feeling. But it's only the veil of order that makes the work of art possible.
=========================================================
For me personally it was hugely important in teaching me to listen to myself. I can recommend it to everyone, if need be at home with at microphone and tape recorder. To see how the inner vision corresponds with what is played, and to see what doesn't correspond, and whether it corresponds at all. To see whether one can perceive the sound, even in forte, properly; or whether one gets so emotionally excited that it's simply impossible to hear what's going on. And perhaps it will gradually become clear what repays hearing several times over, and which nuances become embarassing and wearisome when heard more than three times. It's a matter of striking the right balance between too much and too little. It was only much later that I learned to record, as if I were playing in the concert hall.
=========================================================
What fascinates me in singers is the connection between singing and speaking, which also seems to me particularly important in piano playing. And with Mozart it is literally vital. Mozart, after all, was the great opera composer, but there is also a pronounced singing quality in his instrumental works; and not just a singing quality, but a rhetorical and characteristic quality as well. There are characters, they are visible on stage and all differ from each other. Each has his or her own kind of music. And each of these characters goes through a variety of emotions, which are portrayed in connection with the character.
=========================================================
It became clear to me fairly early on that a performer is a truly split personality.
One must give oneself certain instructions, such as , 'My arms are heavy.' But one must not desire such a thing in a fanatical way and with one's whole consciousness. On the one hand you have the instructions. on the other, a free flow of associations. It is perhaps something similar that makes a good performance possible.
========================================================
When I am on stage, I must do several things at once. I must control myself and free myself; I must look ahead to what I am about to play - see the piece, as it were, spread out like a panorama before me - but at the same time take in what I have just played. I have to play for the audience, and must reach the ears as far back as the thirtieth row. I am accountable to the listener. I am not delivering a soliloquy, but am somewhere in the middle. 'The medium is the message' is a quotation that you have used.
========================================================
I was never the most immaculate of artists. There were evenings when I was technically flawless, but I am not basically a perfectionist. I played sufficient wrong notes early on in my career not to be shocked by that as I grew older; and I got the impression from pianists I particularly admired that one could make an impact despite some little lapses. Flawlessness is not the first indication of a great performance.
=======================================================
I have never believed in the myth of the piano as a percussion instrument. Bach's Inventions were created specifically to encourage cantabile playing- Bach wrote a foreword in which he said as much. He therefore reckoned with the possibility that on old instruments one could play cantabile or less cantabile. If the piano were just a percussion instrument, the great composers would not have written so much for it. I have always tried in my playing to draw sound out of the keys and not strike it in. Hammering and stabbing is not my thing. And neither is it true, by the way, that a single note can only be played louder or softer, but not with different expression, different character and different colour. Nor should the role of pedal be forgotten. I could demonstrate to you on the piano how even single notes can have a distinctive character. Then there is of course the connection between notes which can achieve even more, evoking a mixture of singing and speaking. Singing is for me the basis of music - at least music before the modern age. ... In matters of singing and speaking one should learn from singers, and opera. I have noticed that, despite my admiration for certain great pianists, I seem to have learnt more from singers and conductors. And from actors.
=================================================
==================================================
I wrote that Haydn and Mozart represented for me the antithesis between the instrumental and the vocal. (Beethoven too I consider to be instrumental, while Schubert for me is vocal - which does not rule out the fact that the underlying character of all three is a cantabile. There is an instrumental and a vocal cantabile.) Then: motif and melody. Of course we also find wonderful melodies in Haydn, but he is primarily a composer of motifs, similar in this to Beethoven
=================================================
Most people believe that Glenn Gould was a strong personality who therefore had his own idea of a piece, and so much imagination that he was able to turn every piece into something new. On the other hand, people believe that someone who tries to understand and follow the text must of necessity lack imagination and be boring. To which I can only reply that to read the text accurately is an extremely difficult business - much more difficult than even most musicians realize. To understand the markings and give them life requires a great deal of imagination. One should not act as a computer, or as the composer's slave; one must, rather, try to assist the composer as a voluntary helper. I once discussed this with Pierre Boulez, who said that he was satisfied if eighty or ninety percent of the markings were followed.
========================================================
A pianissimo with Beethoven is almost always a 'pianissimo misterioso', and more rarely a 'pianissimo dolce'. With Schubert the pianissimo has a much wider domain and is, as Rudolf Kolisch said, a 'pianissimo espressivo'. There are composers who use dynamic markings in a very consistent way to render high and low, near and far. With Beethoven one must be able to distinguish with 'geographical' clarity that the fortissimo is outermost and that a single forte is located somwhere further down; one must never confuse the two.
=========================================================
I like using the 4 elements to describe music. Busoni tells of how his composition teacher in Graz, Mayer-Remy, explained Bach's preludes and fugues to his pupils in this way. He remarked that in the first volume of The Well-Tempered Clavier the sequence of the first four fugues represented water, fire, air and earth. Such things can, I think, help the student to get a clearer picture of the pieces, and of musical variety.
==========================================================
On a personal note (PC): In a way I think Alfred Brendel is pretty interesting because (he himself admits this) he's not really a prodigy, he doesn't have photographic memory, not really faster or louder than others, not really a good sight reader and he does things other than music (such as writing)..... so I guess this makes him quite an all-rounded individual not just a "slave" to music.....
Monday, March 13, 2006
Lorin Maazel
Quotes by Lorin Maazel, Music Director of New York Philharmonic Orchestra,
"Stage fright is borne of an excess of ego. Nervousness is a sign of egotism and should be overcome. You must approach the stage humbly and in the spirit of service. So if you're nervous, and thinking about yourself, you cannot do the best job really required."
"Stage fright is borne of an excess of ego. Nervousness is a sign of egotism and should be overcome. You must approach the stage humbly and in the spirit of service. So if you're nervous, and thinking about yourself, you cannot do the best job really required."
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