What a unique performance. So charming and emotional. As a recording engineer I found the mic'ing interesting. It appears to be a Neumann (ultra sensitive) in a distant position. Consequently you can hear the foot pedals and Mr. Gould's vocal accompaniment.

Thanks for sharing.

While this site is constantly on the lookout for proselytizing; I admit to thoroughly indoctrinating my little one in Glen Gould as the premier interpreter of Bach. Of course, I think it's a little funny that all of Bach's music was written to glorify God.

"So charming and emo(tional)"...

Okay, but one has to ask, what the bleep is he sitting on? Wow!

As for Mr. Gould's fast tempi/"interpretations," they come off sounding a bit... sarcastic, on occasion (not here), and I cannot abide the Goldbergs on either a Fortepiano, or viceversa. If it were to be done right, a special double keyboard chimera, with different "stops"/timbres might do it, but there not being such thing, all these hands getting in the way of each other, crossing, colliding, stick to the Cembalo. I wonder if it's been done on the Organ.

Atheists need to build more buildings with pipe organs in them. Clever Clawer-Ubungs? Eb St. Anne's. Universities?

The Bach "all glory goes to God alone" stuff was just a conventional way of stating/thinking that the narrow, unfluid, frozen, ego is inept when it comes time to put the pieces of the puzzle together, grasp the whole, they called it "God", there/then (actually he was a BIT* behind the times in every way). "Muse," elsewhere/when.Muse: mus-ic. One can have a "Genius", but one cannot BE a Genius, that's what it means. Obviously one can't do it alone. But one never is alone. One never is "one", paradoxically. Even Gould is two-handed, and Mr. Bach had ten fingers (14, counting heel-toes), while most people only had eight*.

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*byte?

Gould's posture and interpretations are famously unorthodox. I love the Preludes and Fugues and had the same thought that he was being sarcastic by emphasizing the lower voices, without completely ignoring the melody, of course (this is part of his genius).
As for the eschatology, I would think that part of the glorifying God business had a little to do with Bach keeping his job.

I keep a functional turntable just for this sort of thing.Mostly for DG and Sheffield Labs recordings. For some music digital just doesn't seem to cut it.

Consequently you can hear the foot pedals and Mr. Gould's vocal accompaniment.

I recall hearing about an interview with GG where he was played one of his recordings, and the interviewer pointed out how one could hear his humming along. GG reportedly replied something like "How awful! I wouldn't buy that recording!" :)

I am actually surprised to see that GG agreed to such a video-taped performance. He hated performing live for many reasons, one of which was that he preferred to be able to re-record passages over and over until he got them perfect, and then splice together the elements (even within a variation, for example). The final released recordings were, thus, hodgepodges spliced together from multiple takes!

This earned him substantial derision from critics, who claimed that all of this splicing would ruin the flow of the piece.

So GG decided to do an experiment. He put together a recording, spliced as described above, and then brought a bunch of people into a studio to listen to the recording on headphones. They were to push a button when they thought they heard a splice.

The test subjects included, I think, musicians, critics, lay people. The critics fared the worst - they correctly identified almost none of the splices. The lay people did the best, but no-one did very well.

This study was published in Stereo Review, I guess in the 80s sometime; I read about it in the excellent Friedrich 1990 GG biography "A Life & Variations." Then, I went up into the attic of my parents place and dug through all my dad's old back issues of stereo review, and found that Gould article! It was fun to read...I'd recommend checking it out as being well worth a trip to the public library for sure.

peace

Love Bach -- I mean, everything he wrote.

First time I heard the early, super-fast ones with the humming, I thought someone had made a mistake -- somehow left a microphone on while making a copy from a vinyl or CD album... When I was told it was the artist doing it, I thought they were pulling my leg... I mean, that's fucking weird. If I was in charge of recording that stuff, I think I'd be pulling my hair out.

I've got both versions, but I can't make my mind up about which version I like the most. I'd hate to listen to it too often -- Goldberg, and the French and English suites are so beautiful, they are easy to enjoy. I sort of live in fear of growing tired of 'em...

Now, the well-tempered clavier, and the art of the fugue, that stuff seems far less "pretty," but they seem to occupy my mind a lot more -- strain it; demand more while listening. You can't carry on a conversation with those things playing, like you could with the French suites.

My mind is always racing -- especially when I try to go to sleep. Pleasant music or sounds does nothing. But if I put Die Kunst der Fuge on, boom -- my mind just goes blank. It's very odd, and interesting. I don't understand the music as such, but I think my mind just gets mesmerized by the patterns, and the complexities sorta takes up all the cycles, so there's no resources left over for wandering thoughts.

And yeah, he wrote it for the greater glory of God, but he didn't hurt anyone while doing it. And hell, I've got no problem admiring cathedrals -- even though a lot of people DID suffer from the church's oppression for those.