Glenn Gould and pedaling
Ingo Meyer
I always had it in my head since I was a kid that Glenn Gould didn't use
pedal with Bach. My perception of Gould was later influenced by his videos:
He didn't even keep his feet near the pedals!
I have heard that Angela Hewitt uses absolutely no pedal with Bach, and I
can hear the absence of pedal. But this made me realize that (I think) Gould
did use pedal -- never to blend notes together, but sometimes to eliminate
gaps between (repeated) notes. It's very subtle. In particular, I'm
listening to Goldberg Variation #25 (I have only the newer recording). I
simply can't tell if it's pedal, acoustics, or something else, but at least
the first repeated notes have no gap. Hewitt clearly has a gap.
On the other hand, Variation #15 sounds distinctly pedaled.
Can anyone shed some light on this? I know a lot has been written about
Glenn Gould.
Ingo
fish...@nerve.com
Ingo Meyer <ingo....@nix-this-mindspring.com> wrote:
>I always had it in my head since I was a kid that Glenn Gould didn't use
>pedal with Bach.
Why would he? Why would anyone? It was a major sin as far as my (early)
teacher was concerned.
>On the other hand, Variation #15 sounds distinctly pedaled.
Finger legato?
Ingo Meyer
> In article <92aran$2bu$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net>,
> Ingo Meyer <ingo....@nix-this-mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >I always had it in my head since I was a kid that Glenn Gould didn't use
> >pedal with Bach.
>
> Why would he? Why would anyone? It was a major sin as far as my (early)
> teacher was concerned.
Why? To eliminate gaps between slow, ponderous, repeated notes, which are
part of a longer line of connected notes.
> >On the other hand, Variation #15 sounds distinctly pedaled.
>
> Finger legato?
I am specifically referring to slow, ponderous, repeated notes, which he
plays without the slightest gap between them. Certainly, in a "dry" room,
it's not possible to achieve that without pedal. I'm open to there having
being enough acoustical reverb in Gould's recording environment to give the
impression of pedaling, but I am a little skeptical. Like I said, Hewitt has
distinct gaps between repeated notes (yet I'd have to say her recording has
more reverb than Gould's).
I was wondering if someone recalls an interview or other mention of Gould
making a statement about his pedaling philosophy.
Ingo
Max Kuenkel
"Ingo Meyer" <ingo....@nix-this-mindspring.com> wrote in message news:92ccvp$ekk$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net...
Ingo Meyer
> I read somewhere that he was "loath to discuss
> pianistic technique" (including pedaling). But you
> can see that he uses the pedal in the Goldberg Video,
> in some of the variations, starting with the aria,
> though never longer than half a second at a time.
> He was more likely to use pedal in the slower
> variations. It looked overall like a very much
> subconscious-spontaneous manner of pedaling.
I will be darned. Not so much that he used pedal (whew; I'm back to trusting
my ears again) but that there is a Goldberg video! I'd swear I searched
before and never came across it. I just ordered a copy (it's on DVD, to
boot)...
Ingo
James Boyk
> Why [pedal]? To eliminate gaps between slow, ponderous, repeated notes, which are part of a longer line of connected notes.
Without getting into the larger question of pedal in Bach (which to me
is a non-issue; when you play the piano, you play the piano), let me
just point out that there's no need to use pedal to avoid gaps between
repeated notes. When a key comes back up enough to repeat, it's not yet
at the point where the damper will engage; so it's easy to repeat
without pedal and yet with literally no gap.
James Boyk
Ingo Meyer
I would agree with this for quickly repeated notes, for example in Chopin
Waltz #1. Certainly, the action of the grand piano was designed to be able
repeat in the manner you describe.
But the focus of my attention was on Goldberg Variation #15, which has
repeated sixteenth notes played at about 20 bpm (per quarter note). At that
slow tempo, I can't execute the repetition reliably. Even as I sit at my
piano and do this with maybe a 33% success rate, I'd say most of the
repeated notes have a very unpleasant fizzle to them that I can't avoid.
You said it's easy to do this, but I have to ask anyway: Can you really
execute this repetition in a slow, gentle manner, reliably? Do you think
anyone would do this in performance, or on a recording?
Ingo
Michael Haslam
> <snip>
>
> I had a teacher growing up in Dallas that flat out insisted I never use the
> pedal in classical music. She was a crazy old coot.
>
> Greg
At my parents' over Christmas I played through some Haydn sonatas on my dad's
single manual harpsichord. Although this was in no way a historically accurate
thing to do, the instrument being from the wrong period and country with the
wrong range, I was enchanted by the experience. I didn't miss the pedal at
all. There is a big ding-dong argument in the hallowed pages of Early Music
magazine between Eva Badura-Skoda and another musicologist/organologist over
whether Mozart's own piano had a knee-operated damper pedal when Mozart was
alive. I think this is a really interesting area of discussion.
MJHaslam
James Boyk
> ...the focus of my attention was on Goldberg Variation #15, which has repeated sixteenth notes played at about 20 bpm (per quarter note). At that slow tempo, I can't execute the repetition reliably....Can you really execute this repetition in a slow, gentle manner, reliably?
I'm not clear about what you're saying is the rate of notes being
repeated. I think you mean 80 repeated notes per minute (20 quarters,
each divided into 16th's)? I tried this on three different notes on my
piano, and it was not at all difficult to repeat without gaps between
notes, without using pedal. The piano hasn't had serious regulation for
over five years, by the way, though it had a cursory hour recently.
James Boyk
("Caltech" in email address does not imply endorsement of message
contents by Caltech.)
James Boyk
LstPuritan
questions of articulation and registration which are inextricably bound up with
Bach's composing method. It demands, at the very least, the realization that
an overindulgence of pedal will almost inevitably bring the good ship
CONTRAPUNTAL AMBITION to grief upon the rhetorical rocks of romantic rubato.
It also necessitates, I think, some attempt to simulate the registrational
conventions of the harpsichord, if only because the technique which informs all
of Bach's attitudes toward theme and phrase design is based upon an
appreciation of dynamic dialogue... There are, to be sure, occasions when the
linear continuity of his works is of such tenacity that clearly articulated
cadence points are simply not to be found, which consequently allows no
convincing opportunity for that alternation of tactile effect which is the
piano's answer to the harpsichord's lute-stop or coupler-shift maneuvers, and
pedal is used sparingly to outline a sonority, when other phrasing methods are
not available, from the surrounding notes without ever indulging in blurred
impressionistic or deliberately modified (Busoni) 'modern' pianistic virtuoso
cliches."
-GG
The Glenn Gould Reader
Ingo Meyer
> I read somewhere that he was "loath to discuss pianistic
> technique" (including pedaling). But you can see that he
> uses the pedal in the Goldberg Video, in some of the
> variations, starting with the aria, though never longer
> than half a second at a time. He was more likely to use
> pedal in the slower variations. It looked overall like a
> very much subconscious-spontaneous manner of pedaling.
I've now seen the video, and I have to say it's the most riveting piano
performance I've ever seen. I can easily understand how someone might
dislike him for his eccentricities, but I am in awe. His singing, conducting
one hand with the other, posture, seat height, watching his own fingers,
sliding his fingers off the keys, pecking at the notes like he's testing a
hot iron, making tai chi-like moves between variations -- it was all
absolutely mesmerizing. And the video is a different take from the CD, so
you get variations in pedaling, ornaments, and so on.
Ingo
Max Kuenkel
If you liked the Goldberg Variations video, it's the first part of a 3-part series called "Glenn Gould Plays Bach". The first part (The Goldberg Variations) is volume 13 of "The Glenn Gould Collection" (one volume = one video tape). The second part (The Question of Instrument) is volume 14 of "The Glenn Gould Collection". The third part (An Art of the Fugue) is volume 15 of "The Glenn Gould Collection". All three parts of "Glenn Gould Plays Bach" feature conversations with Bruno Monsaingeon and are very interesting to watch and highly recommended. "The Glenn Gould Collecton" consists of a total of 16 volumes. Apparently at Towerrecords, they are currently out of volumes 13 through 16. Maybe amazon.com has them in stock.
"Ingo Meyer" <ingo....@nix-this-mindspring.com> wrote in message news:93r0r2$27s$1...@slb2.atl.mindspring.net...
marjaanv...@gmail.com
> Does he or doesn't he use pedal with Bach?
>
> I always had it in my head since I was a kid that Glenn Gould didn't use
> pedal with Bach. My perception of Gould was later influenced by his videos:
> He didn't even keep his feet near the pedals!
>
> I have heard that Angela Hewitt uses absolutely no pedal with Bach, and I
> can hear the absence of pedal. But this made me realize that (I think) Gould
> did use pedal -- never to blend notes together, but sometimes to eliminate
> gaps between (repeated) notes. It's very subtle. In particular, I'm
> listening to Goldberg Variation #25 (I have only the newer recording). I
> simply can't tell if it's pedal, acoustics, or something else, but at least
> the first repeated notes have no gap. Hewitt clearly has a gap.
>
> Can anyone shed some light on this? I know a lot has been written about
> Glenn Gould.
>
> Ingo
