[f_minor] Orlando Gibbons

Tue Feb 28 14:06:14 PST 2012

There is an interesting (and funny) story of Gould consulting Greta Kraus about ornamentation in Byrd and Gibbons music: 

"I visited a well-known musician last year in Toronto, Greta Kraus, who is a harpsichordist and expert on Baroque ornamentation. Glenn knew Ms. Kraus for many years (his teacher Alberto Guerrero had invited her to his home to hear Glenn play while he was still a student) and the two of them often got together at her home to play the piano and harpsichord. She told me that on one particular occasion, prior to making his beautiful recording of the early seventeenth century English composers, William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, Glenn came to consult her on ornamentation.
"Well they sat down together at the harpsichord and he said to her, 'How would you do this?' Then she would play the proper ornamentation for him, giving him example after example of the way to play the repertoire, all of the things that she would do. She said he thanked her very nicely and left. When she had occasion to hear the recording, after it was released much later, in every instance Glenn had done the opposite of what she had told him to do! She said it was as though he had deliberately done it differently!" 

You can find it in here: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/glenngould/028010-4020.13-e.html

Richard

Op 28 feb. 2012 om 18:04 heeft Anita Monroe <rubatoatm at gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:

> Mary,  Those trills are beautiful, but devilishly hard to accomplish.  There are "Eight Building Blocks" of piano technique, and trills (for me at least) are the hardest.  Tremelos such as the ones at the beginning of the Waldstein Sonata are not as difficult and great fun to do.  The problem with trills is equal strength of the fingers, and if you look closely at your hands you can easily see how that might be difficult.  There are places in Beethoven where one must play a melody line AND do trills with the same hand.  Claudio Arrau does it better than anyone else I know.
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> Anita
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> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 11:00 PM, maryellen jensen <maryellenjensen28 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Salut Stephanie, 
> 
> I'm afraid that there are no real depths to plunge on the subject of Gould/Gibbons - other than the interpretations that Gould recorded... The best you can do is listen to the album "A Consorte Of Musicke" and watch the performance and short commentary included in Monsaingeon's quartet of documentaries now known as "The Alchemist" in which Gould does his 'fin de siecle' spiel for the 10th time. Why Gould didn't record more of Gibbons is a question only Gould can answer, Gibbons having written much more for the keyboard and the 'Early Music' movement having already begun (as if that would matter?)...    
> 
> If you go back into the F Minor Archives I do believe that Bradley Lehman has written some interesting posts on the subject but that he was also somewhat critical of Gould's trills : professional criticism - which is invariably also an appreciation  (right Bradley?) - being always much more interesting than full-blown adulatory genuflection wherein one must subscribe to "total awesomeness" and "if just once to touch the garment" (right Kate?) and such ilk. 
> 
> What you seem to be implying as "uncanny" would be Gibbons' death from "apoplexy" vis a vis Gould's death from a cerebral aneurysm.  ???   That's not "uncanny": It's not a coincidence, it's not preturnatural, it's not even spooky. 
> The two men died - as have millions of other people, male and female - from a similar cause. Let us please be reasonable. 
> 
> To stop calling the man "Glenn", as if he had been a personal friend of yours, would be a good start and if you really just can't help referring to someone you never met by their first name then at least spell it "Glen", the way he did most of the time.
> 
> I personally love those trills, each and every one of them,   
> Mary
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> 
> Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:10:38 -0500
> From: slynnwright83 at gmail.com
> To: f_minor at glenngould.org
> Subject: [f_minor] Orlando Gibbons
> 
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> I am very interested in Glenn's favorite composer, Orlando Gibbons. He claimed he was his favorite, but I cannot find much about his relationship with the composer and his music. I know there is an essay in the Glenn Gould Reader compilation, but it is quite short. Glenn only mentions him here and there in interviews, but does not elaborate upon his interest. Are there any other sources or explanations about Glenn and his fascination with Gibbons's music? Or any other essays? I do of course, have the Byrd and Gibbons album, which is absolutely charming...but there must be more than this somewhere! Also, if you have not read about Orland Gibbons's life, it is quite interesting, especially the manner in which he died. The writeup on Wikipedia is really uncanny. 
> 
> Thanks,
> Stephanie
> 
> -- 
> Please visit my music studio website! 
> Stephanie Wright's Cape Cod Piano Studio
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