Thursday, September 13, 2018

Stupid Mail - From Now On Nothin' But Nihil Nisi

I don't know why Stupy would try to pull out that dumb "So You Want To Write A Fugue" on me.  I don't recall ever writing about it before.  It's not Glenn Gould's best exercise in composition, it's not important as a piece of music and it's no better than one that a good, advanced student in academic counterpoint might write.  I'd guess many universities have students who have written better.  Considering how Stupy inevitably pulls out the ultimate middle-brow insult against music, that it's "academic" so often, it's ironic that Gould obviously wrote it to represent an academic counterpoint exercise.  That's why it's considered "satirical," though its satire is of the entirely predictable and rather tedious kind.  A pinned specimen of that, as well.

It's not an especially complex fugue (see, or, rather, hear and read The Art of Fugue)  it's the kind of fugue that would impress the kind of person who hadn't listened to or played Bach's famous 48 or his other fugues or had played and listened to fugues by his successors, notably Beethoven,  Max Reger, Bartok . . . if I go on that list will fill the page.  It can't possibly hold a candle to any of the vocal fugues from any of Bach's cantatas and other great vocal works (hear and see Youtubes and IMSLP scores).

I am certain of one thing, Glenn Gould would never make the claim that it was anything like a rival of those. He was a nut case, he wasn't a pathological, self-aggrandizing, egomaniac.  It's what Nicolas Nabokov called "tissue paper music".  One of the comments I read claimed that Gould had summed up the entirety of baroque musical practice in the piece which would have to stand as about the stupidest things I've ever read about music if I hadn't gotten responses from Stupy that are in the same stationary race to nowhere.

I have got no problem with people listening to it if they want to, I'd note that this performance, for a CBC radio show - NOT for distribution as a disposable disc by that ad-flyer Simps used to hack for - is the only one I've ever heard of.   It hasn't entered into the repertoire.  I don't think it's at all as interesting as Gould's  musique concrète work, such as The Idea of North.  I've written that his career is a tragedy of a composer who was trapped by his easy, too early virtuosity which led to him being a musical spoiled brat and his deep emotional disturbances.  I think that effective treatment of that might have freed him to be more than someone who churned out discs that distorted other composers' music to be used as musical wallpaper by the middle to mid-high brow at cocktail parties.



Glenn Gould had some really attractive and even admirable personal traits and even some musical ones, those always were at risk from his tragic mental illness and terrible immaturity which the pampering he received by his public exacerbated.   I'd rather concentrate on those whenever I mention him from now on rather than the many unfortunate ones.  Maybe I'll just resist the temptation to point out what an idiot Simps is when he brings up Gould the next time.  I'd rather not participate in that use of him anymore.

Update:  Testing my resolve Simps produces a Youtube of  Gould playing the Grieg Sonata in e minor, Op.7 which demonstrates everything I said.  The boob posted a Youtube with the score so Gould's distortions are there with the evidence.  Just one example, early on there is a ff passage that he plays p which destroys a contrast the ff was obviously meant to be setting up, something  I don't think could have been anything but an intentional flouting of the composer's intentions. Then there are the slooooowww tempos, he adds about eight minutes to the time that most of the performers do. And they don't match the written tempos.  Believe me, I'm cutting the critique short.

Simps claims to know the piece "backwards and forwards" claiming to have played it.  If he understood what it would mean to know it "backwards and forwards" - I doubt he means in the manner of a canon cancrizans, only because I doubt he knows what one is -  he'd know that was an absurd claim to make. I doubt he could play the first 3 Hanon exercises backwards and forwards.

I won't post the one he sent but here's Alicia de Larrocha to give you an idea.


It's hardly my favorite piece, though as is often the case with Grieg it's generally better music than it's performances would lead you to believe.  De Larrocha plays it as well as I've heard it played. She was a very great artist.  It might be the best performance of a piece by Grieg I've heard, though his music isn't one of my enthusiasms. I've never performed him, not even when I played what my teacher told me to.  I've never taught him, either. That doesn't mean it's not good music, it just means you can only do so much in one lifetime.  If you like it, you're right to go right on liking it.

Score

12 comments:

  1. "I don't know why Stupy would try to pull out that dumb "So You Want To Write A Fugue" on me"

    It's very simple, schmucko. I wanted to annoy you. If you weren't such an idiot, you could have figured that out by yourself. :-)

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    1. You wanted to annoy me so you gave me an opportunity to show what an ignorant dolt you are.

      I'm sure you can get the members of your online seniors day care at Eschaton to tell you you're a genius for that.

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  2. No, I gave you the opportunity to dance like a monkey. Just like I knew you would.
    :-)

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    1. You just keep telling yourself that, Simps. I'm sure BG and the rest of the Eschatots won't tell you any different.

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  3. Gould's version of the Grieg piano sonata.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz1ti410940

    I played this piece back in the day, and I know it backwards and forwards, and yes -- Gould's version is, shall we say, idiosyncratic. But because I'm not a philistine purist snob, unlike you, I appreciate it precisely because of its divergence from the norm. Gould was a creative artist. You, on the other hand, are a typist.

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    1. If I were with you I'd challenge you to play a Hanon exercise backwards and forwards confident that you couldn't.

      I listened to a bit the younger Percy Grainger - pre-Nazi-pre-SMBD - who Grieg said played his music as he intended, at least his short dances, and he plays them a lot closer to the written score. I guess ol' Percy was a "philstine purist snob". What's funny is that there is no greater snobbery in musical performance than a performer to think they know better than the composer.

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    2. Here's a clue, schmuck. If somebody plays a piece in a manner the composer didn't intend, the score still exists.

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    3. That doesn't have anything to do with someone playing a piece badly. It's rather funny that you, a guy who made his living scribbling as a "critic" would make that claim. Hey, if a performer just phones in a performance during an appearance, what diff does it make because the recording still exists. Hey, why not just say it's valid if they play the recording and pretend to be playing and singing. I'm sure if I wanted to go wading through the muck (in hip boots) I'd find plenty of times when La Simels whined about bad performances of songs that were on record.

      You are a moron.

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    4. And you’re the artistic equivalent of a stenographer.

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    5. I'm happy to be able to tell you that you outdo me. You're the artistic, intellectual and moral equivalent of scatology.

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  4. I must admit, my first attraction to Gould, and my continuing one, was that he played pieces the way I did. No, I don't play at the caliber of Gould, but he was idiosyncratic about his performance, as I am. I don't do it as part of a personality issue or a desire to be difficult; I'm just a rather lazy musician and tend to play as it pleases me. This is not a good thing, as my teachers always tried to impress on me (usually to no avail).

    And in the end, it hardly says anything good about Gould's performances. But there we are.

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    1. There are aspects of his playing that are individual but are within a reasonable interpretation of the piece. I have problems with him when he ignores or willfully violates the stated intentions of composers whose music he's alleging to play. As the composers' instructions in the score are more detailed the scope for those violations being intentional misrepresentation increase. There's the infamous example of his distorting the notated rhythm of one of the most well known themes in a Mozart Sonata which not only distorts the stated intentions of Mozart but it also leads to further distortions in the piece. Sometimes he's inverted the orders of notes as the composer wrote them in the scores. As noted in the example I brought up from the Grieg Sonata, his distortion of dynamics destroys an obvious effect that Grieg set up in the music. One or two of those might not seriously effect the integrity of the piece and the intention of the composer but they build up in effect, some, the distortion of rhythm in the Mozart, do that faster than others. Violating the general tempo of a movement or piece can do that rather drastically.

      I don't have any problem with people listening to what they want to, though I would like them to know when they're getting an imitation instead of something genuine, I wonder why some people object when other people point such distortions out.

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