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I'm considering Gould's mode of conceptualising as expressionism




PAINTING: "Design for a Satie Museum"

Travis,

There is certainly much in Gould's recording that is highly expressive, but I think of that mode as a personal kind of expressionism rather than romanticism. I've sometimes linked Gould's musical conceptualising to Francis Bacon's in painting - that modern notion of immediacy- directness- of sensation by a kind of aesthetic selection process of a vocabulary of studied gestures. Pollock's famous studied gesture was his unique way of controlled dripping.

And, I find counterpoint, such a driving force in Gould's playing, to be essentially anti-romantic in form. A musical parallel might be Erik Satie, who was deconstructing and reinventing from basic expressive modes, like Gould gestural, though the harmony in Satie is vertical rather than the long horizontal lines Gould sought. An interesting aside, Satie, like Beethoven at the end of his compositional career had a strong interest in counterpoint- Satie was taking lessons and writing studies for fugues. And, Gould's most famous composition is probably, "So, you want to write a Fugue?"

Trying to achieve "nature" by expression through a vocabulary/structure of gestures is to me, definitely not romantic. Gould's approach is too highly studied and constantly revised intellectually by the vocabulary of gestures- rather than spontaneously passionate- to consider it romantic. That, combined with Gold's iconoclastic statements about the role of artist in society as invisible monk/craftsman- rather than the Beethovenesque concept of artistic hero/nobility or the Wagnerian/Nietschian superman operating out of a rightful egocentrism, lead me to believe Gould had fundamentally anti-romantic views.

It's interesting to speculate whether Gould would have gone through a post-modern phase had he lived into the 80's and into the 90's, he would've gone deconstructivist- and perhaps composed the perfect music for Gehry's Dismal, sorry,.. Disney Hall. For that I imagine a serious child of Schoenberg, Webern, but made fun by Prokofiev.

Gosh, staying up late and talking, "-isms", "-ials", and even some "-esques"- good to stretch the -ism neurons from university days!


Cheers,

Bambi B


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