Choice Cuts: Blog Prompt #3

Glenn Gould made two very different recordings of the Goldberg Variations—between the years 1955 and 1981, his approach to the works changed—but how? This is a closer look at what three different artists have to say about approaching Bach, and more importantly, their evolving relationship with his music.

In October, I wrote that Glenn Gould’s 1981 recording feels more stretched than the 1955 version, and that it sounds as though he is articulating the space between the notes rather that moving relentlessly from one to the next. I think this development goes deeper than having more time to record or just taking a slower tempo to mix things up, because Gould is clearly an intelligent musician and also because of something I came across recently: an episode of my favourite podcast which made me wonder what exactly happens when an artist re-interprets something. Rather than only comparing the differences between the two recordings, I thought it would be interesting to consider what kind of evolution went on between them.

Song Exploder is a podcast in which musicians break down their process for creating a song. It usually focusses on the writing and producing of music, with one exception: Yo-Yo Ma has an episode where he discusses his lifelong relationship with the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite no.1 in G major. I was struck by the episode’s similarity to this blog prompt: Ma compares two of his recordings of the piece, from 1983 and 2018. Of his earlier recording, Ma says, “everything is very measured, very competent. It’s good playing but […] this music starts your imagination going: where’s he taking us? There’s this stop in the middle. Has [the person playing] thought about that great interruption?  I’d say, maybe subliminally [but] it’s basically, let’s get this over with, no silence, let’s go.” The execution of the piece is perfect, but I think Ma is explaining that he is not as present in the music as he could be. He says that in his later recording, “There’s more attention to changing landscape, there’s less emphasis on [making] a beautiful sound.” He then speaks to the transformation that took place between one recording and the next. Calling it “an evolutionary process,” he says that “as you experience love and loss and tragedy, you are slightly changed. And as a musician, you make your living from being sensitized to these changes. […] Any experience that you’ve had has to be somehow revealed in the process of making music.” Though at first I thought Ma was saying life experience is the key to playing expressively, I think there is more to it than that; there is a willingness to situate himself within the music.

This year, Veda Hille released her album ‘Little Volcano’ which revisits songs from her career as a songwriter as well as several Bach preludes for piano. During the “Prelude in D,” she simultaneously plays and describes the feeling of knowing a piece so well that she can play it “without concentrating so hard”. As her fingers remember the piece, she says, “I think it’s astounding that a person actually wrote these. They seem more like something you would see under a microscope or dig up from a bed of lava.” She talks about losing herself in the music, experiencing it rather than focusing on executing it. “Bach has become part of the natural world for me,” she says. “It’s a part I can participate in.” Whereas Ma is expressing his life through the music, Hille lets Bach bring “the complexity of the world” to her as she plays. Despite these different approaches, they both reference the value of noticing, of being present in the musical landscape as it surrounds them.

I used to think that expressing myself through someone else’s music was a matter of adding something to it, my own unique sound or perhaps an as-yet-unheard inflection at a key moment. But this is inevitable; already there are as many interpretations of Bach as there are musicians playing him. Taking a slower tempo is not enough. I now think of playing Bach (or any music that isn’t my own) as carrying a kind of dialogue with the composer rather than superimposing my own sound onto the music, or worse, trying to flawlessly execute what he wrote. It is the difference between knowing what comes next and feeling something coming toward me. This sounds pedantic, and seems quite obvious, but it has really made a difference in the way I practice and listen to music. Yo-yo Ma says that “you get someone’s priorities when you listen.” If my priority is just to make a perfect sound, what does that say to the listener about who I am? Finding a place within this amazing music requires us to listen to it; and it is a hazard of being open that if we are truly paying attention, we can’t help but let out something of ourselves in the process. Having heard two very different musicians describe their own evolution through Bach, I think what I heard back in October was really the sound of Gould listening differently, noticing and reacting to some new variation in the landscape as he played it.