Glenn Gould, Spliced: Investigating the Filmmaking Analogy

Part 1. The filmmaking analogy[1.1] In "The Prospects of Recording," his 1966 essay for High Fidelity magazine, pianist Glenn Gould discusses his 1956 recording of the A-minor Fugue from Book I of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (Gould 1992a). For the recording, he set down two complete takes--Takes 6 and 8--that were deemed technically acceptable. However, Gould later discovered that, as he wrote, "both had a defect [of] which [I] had been quite unaware in the studio: both were monotonous" (Gould 1966, 52). Gould concluded thatThe somewhat overbearing posture of Take 6 was entirely suitable for the opening exposition as well as the concluding statement of the fugue, while the more effervescent character of Take 8 was a welcome relief in the. . . center portion. (1966, 52)Example 1. Mm. 13-15 of Bach's A-minor Fugue, showing the location of the first tape splice in Glenn Gould 1956 recording of the workTwo splices were made: Take 6 opened the recording, was swapped out for Take 8 at m. 14, and cut back in towards the end of the piece. It is difficult to hear the second splice and Gould's only clue (given in "The Prospects of Recording") is that it occurred "at the return of A minor" (53). He claims to have forgotten exactly where but invites the listener/reader to search for it. Taking up his challenge, Paul Sanden believes he has located the second splice just before the downbeat of m. 55 (2003, 78). Gould writes "what [was] achieved was a performance . . . far superior to anything we could . . . have done [live] in the studio" (1966, 53). The result is a montage of interpretations: a performance that never occurred was constructed after careful evaluation of the rough material. At the edge of a razor blade, two acceptable but monotonous performances are transformed into one superior recording. Example 1 presents mm. 13-15 of this fugue; the vertical line locates the first splice (the splice occurs thirty seconds into the recording).Audio Example 1[1.2] Listening to Gould's recording of the A-minor Fugue in light of his explanation, the first edit becomes audible. It is not easy to hear the splice exactly--that remains silent--and only a very attentive listener would register the shift in interpretation without having been alerted to it.(1) The character of the playing, however, does change palpably at the moment indicated in Example 1, above. The upright, mechanical regularity of Gould's playing is replaced by a more free and flowing style; it is almost as if a second character taps the first on the shoulder and abruptly takes over the telling of a narrative. This portion of music is presented as Audio Example 1, which provides roughly the first forty-five seconds of the recording.[1.3] Gould quit the concert stage in 1964 in order to devote himself entirely to recording and other media. This decision, of course, was radical in its time. Gould argued that he was able to speak to his audience more intimately, that he had found "a much more direct means of communication" through recording (Monsaigneon 2002). Further, Gould dismisses the positive aspects listeners enjoy about the concert-going experience: "there is simply no scientific-acoustical-human way in which [live events], no matter how glamorous, no matter how dramatic, can equal what one [can achieve] in the privacy, in the hermetically-sealed privacy, of this studio" (Monsaigneon 2002).[1.4] Gould's rationale--that the recording studio allows for greater intimacy than the concert hall--was just as radical as his decision to retire from the stage. In order to defend himself from both real and imagined attacks, Gould--and his intellectual allies--frequently drew an analogy between filmmaking and studio recording.(2) Just as a filmmaker need not be confined by the conditions of live theater, Gould argued that a recording musician need not follow the conventions of the concert hall.[1.5] As Jonathan Sterne writes, it is often thought that live music maintains a special element, a "fullness and self-presence in the. …