The thing about capitalism and the arts is that when you commercialize music you turn it into a commodity. This was something I always wrestled with as a classical performer and likely an important reason why I ultimately left the business. Today we have a particularly noisome example of the problem. Let's let the Globe and Mail tell the story: A new Glenn Gould remix album hips, hops and isn’t altogether welcome.
A new Canadian album in Glenn Gould’s name is occasioning a furor among fans of the revered pianist. It’s called Uninvited Guests, an adventurous compilation of nine tracks using Gould samples in pop, electronic and hip-hop settings. The composition Gettin' That, for example, takes a loop from Gould’s recording of Bach’s English Suite No. 4 and sets it to a sick beat and well-spit rhymes.
Here is that track (Blogger won't embed):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3PXUmJ-d_U
At least when they did disco versions of Mozart, Mozart's melodies were still prominent. Here little fragments of Gould recordings are used as accompaniments. Legally permitted as we find out from this part of the article:
Until 2017, Posen was the sole executor of the Gould estate. The rights to the pianist’s name, likeness and publishing royalties now belong to Primary Wave Music, the New York-based publishing company and management firm that is home to the likes of Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, Burt Bacharach, Prince and Alice Cooper.
So, a publishing company and management firm bought the rights to Glenn Gould, the public figure and commercial music resource whose music they can now use in whatever way they like. I presume this does not apply to previously released albums, but hey, who knows, I haven't read the legal documents governing that sort of thing. UPDATE: I missed a paragraph relating that Sony was on board with this project, so everything is fair game it seems.
But speaking as someone who has a passing interest in aesthetic issues, I think it is safe to say that this is an aesthetic nightmare. Not only does it turn me off everyone associated with this project who are, I am sure, destined for the fourth circle of hell, Greed, but I am less and less likely to listen to Glenn Gould himself, who seems more and more to be a caricature of himself. Honestly, I would rather listen to Bach played by Friedrich Gulda, Grigory Sokolov and Scott Ross, whose aesthetic standards seem to be intact even, in the case of Gulda and Ross, after their deaths.
Faced with the Scylla of commercialism and the Charybdis of obscurity, I know which I would choose.
Here is Gulda with some Bach from the Well-Tempered Clavier:
Bryan reading this brought to mind a story in today's Toronto Star about an artist who paints what she hears in classical music. Here is the text of the story:
ReplyDeleteSeeing the colour of music, together
Toronto Star24 Oct 2020DEBORAH DUNDAS BOOKS EDITOR
Even when ideas are communicated in the abstract, we can relate. Colours and music might be experienced differently by each of us, for example, but when we externalize our reactions, we create a shared experience.
Consider the condition called synesthesia, where a person experiences some external stimulation — perceived by others through one sense — through several senses at the same time. So you get a sentence such as: What does the colour blue sound like? Or what does music look like? Van Gogh is suspected to have had this condition, in which each musical note evokes a certain colour; the painter Wassily Kandinsky, too.
It’s an experience that inspires King City artist Ernestine Tahedl’s painting, who painted the work in the series while listening to classical music. Her canvases are often titled after those musical works: Brahms’ “String Quartet No. 3” is the one above; others include Bach’s “Trio Sonata No. 6,” which inspired a triptych of paintings, or Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” which inspired six “very dark” works.
She captures the colour the music evokes in acrylics — “it gives me exactly what I’m looking for: the strength, beauty and transparency of colour. I’ve never worked in oils.”
Her artistic training began as a stained-glass artist in Austria with her father; she continued the form when she emigrated to Canada in 1963. As her art progressed and she tried new techniques and media, one experience informed the other.
She dilutes her acrylics to the thinness of watercolour and builds up layers of glaze, “like putting on sheets of glass so that the colours underneath come through, but are controlled. The glazing process gives vibrancy to the tonality.”
Through art we interpret experiences in new ways; by sharing them together we can help each other see in ways we’ve never dreamt before.
See Ernestine Tahedl’s exhibition “Transposition: Music to Painting,” at Gallery 133 (1260 Castlefield Ave.) from Saturday until Nov. 14, Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.— or at gallery133.com.
Thanks, David. The composer Scriabin also had this ability: he saw musical notes and harmonies as particular colors. Oh, and so did Messiaen.
ReplyDeleteAm not all that familiar with the Gould cultus-- who inherited the rights after his death? Surely, that person or persons ought to be languishing in the Inferno. But, imagining that I am a great artist whose estate has passed to my heirs: they themselves would have no idea how the labels etc might distort my legacy; less than conscientious legal etc advisers might be the true culprits.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have a feeling that the Globe and Mail failed to tell us the most interesting part of the story: how did the rights to the music of Glenn Gould fall into the hands of these corpse-robbers?
ReplyDelete