[f_minor] [f-minor]: From Kevin Bazzana

Mon Jun 20 17:10:40 EDT 2011

Jorgen you're a marvel: Let's have some fun - oh where the devil  have my eyeglasses got to now? - ah yes, ahem,
hah hah on my head the whole time, silly of me really...
Samuel Johnson's 'A Dictionary of the English Language' (Penguin Anthology) describes 'marvel':

MA'RVEL. n.s. [merveille, French.] A wonder, any thing astonishing. Little in use. 

  A marvel it were, if a man could espy, in the whole scripture, nothing which might breed a 
  probable opinion, that divine authority was the same way inclinable.
  Hooker.
  I am scarce in breath, my lord.
  ------No marvel, you have so bestir'd your valour; you cowardly rascal!
  Shakespeare's King Lear.
  No marvel
  My lord protector's hawks do towre so well.
  Shakespeare.

Now what in the world could have possibly inspired me to consult Dr. Johnson? Could it be the truth(beauty) in words?

M&A recordings were not banned  by Sony, simply subject to a 'cease and desist' letter. Shades of the infamous:
It depends on what the definition of "is" is. Oh to be a corporate/copyright litigator-see-you-later-alligator in U.S. Chancery.
"It was all done in a "friendly" manner"".

Which brings us to Sony's "The Secret Live Tapes": has this cd been released in the US? I bring this up because the 
1960 Krips/Buffalo Symphony/Gould 'Emperor' is also to be found on the M&A 'Gould In Concert' 6 cd set. I submit the 
following exchange found on a "groups google" blog:
Quote:
> >It seems a Germany only Glenn Gould CD release, with the Emperor with 
 > >Krips/Buffalo, the first "official" publication of the Schoenberg PC 
 > >with Mitropoulos/NYPO and one more release pf the Bach BWV 1052 with 
 > >Mitropoulos/RCO from Salzburg. Great collection! 
 > Is Sony going to issue the Brahms 1st and Strauss Burleske with the 
 > Baltimore Symphony under Adler? This appeared on Music and Arts for 
 > about ten minutes until the Gould estate started bitchin'. Or has this 
 > been issued somewhere already? 

They will dribble everything out bit by bit until there is nothing 
 else. And then start a complete reissue project. 

The Gould Estate will endure. 
 TD
Unquote. 

In response to Mr. Bazzana's comments about the GG Archives: Point taken. There is no better place (physically) for 'acetates' and old tapes 
to be stored - provided that the wild fans of yesteryear have stopped stealing things.

A query for you all: In the PBS 'extras' 'outtakes' from "Genius Within" there is a short sequence filmed at what is presumably
the home of Ray Roberts. I personally was amazed to see a huge array of what looked like studio tapes (Gould's?) in a bookcase
behind Roberts as he was pulling very personal Gould family photographs out of a cardboard box... did anyone else notice this?
WTF?? And what is Ray Roberts doing with Gould family photos at his house? Was it just for the cameras? What in the world?

Wherever those "basement tapes" are, I hope that the people involved begin to think about them realistically and render 

them to the Archives where they will be cared for by professionals. Hey CBC, what happened to Taussig's archives? Ooops.

On a contrarian note, I would love to read commentary from any of you who have bought into the concert is dead and who 
have thus refused to listen to any Gould live because of it - and who really believe that Zenph has anything to do with Gould.
As Hitchens is so fond of saying: Bring it on. 

Mary

> Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 21:44:51 +0200
> From: jorgen.lundmark at sundsvall.nu
> To: f_minor at glenngould.org
> Subject: [f_minor] [f-minor]: From Kevin Bazzana
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Here's some elucidations and generally expert comments from Mr. Bazzana 
> himself --
> 
> I read the recent comments on F-minor, and I thought I might be able to 
> make some helpful comments on a couple of points:
> 
> = Yes, WHRA (which is based in Canada) is a “sub-label” of Music & Arts, 
> and I also can’t find anything about it on the Music & Arts website. I 
> think the reason is legal: M&A is based in the USA, and these Gould 
> releases cannot legally be sold there—they rely on public-domain laws 
> that make them legal in Canada (and almost everywhere else in the world) 
> but not (yet) in the USA. The confusion is partly my own fault, since I 
> constantly referred to them as “the new Music & Arts CDs”, because I 
> have a long-standing relationship with M&A and its founder, and because 
> that is who I was dealing with then the CDs were being put together. 
> Anyway, fortunately the new GG CDs are being properly sold and promoted 
> and reviewed as “WHRA” releases, and are shown on WHRA’s own website: 
> http://whra.audiophile.ca/en/
> 
> = It is not exactly correct that “the Music and Arts live recordings 
> were banned from further distribution by Sony”. In the early 1990s, when 
> its own GG Edition was about to be released, Sony did send a 
> cease-and-desist letter to M&A, wanting their Gould recordings 
> discontinued, but actually the laws in question were on M&A’s side, as 
> both parties well knew. (It had to do with what country M&A was 
> registered in and things like that—their Gould CDs were legal, anyway.) 
> It was a classic case of a big corporation threatening a small company, 
> with the small company legally in the right but (quite understandably) 
> reluctant to expend enormous financial resources fighting the matter in 
> court. (M&A’s founder told me at the time that there had been such a 
> case fought between a small label and a major label in Europe, over a 
> similar matter, and the small label had decided to fight—and won. At the 
> time, I was told that the matter had never really been tested in this 
> way in an American court, since it inevitably involves an unequal 
> big-company/small-company fight.) So M&A’s GG releases were not 
> technically banned; they were “willingly” withdrawn, under a threat that 
> was toothless but could only be fought at prohibitive expense. It was 
> all done in a “friendly” manner—the head of M&A and the person 
> representing Sony were old acquaintances—but the implicit threat was there.
> 
> = Incidentally, a few things in the WHRA box set did previously appear 
> on M&A CDs (and other labels) in the 1980s/90s, including the Bach 
> F-minor concerto and the Weber Konzerstück. But most of the items in the 
> WHRA box are first releases. One item (Schoenberg’s Op. 11) was 
> previously released by the CBC but appears here in a different source 
> with much better sound quality (tape, as opposed to acetate).
> 
> = Also, it is not correct that I worry about acetates and other old 
> recorded sources in the GG archives in Ottawa—in fact, these are 
> precisely the sources I don’t worry about, since they are in the hands 
> of skilled, reliable archivists. Since GG’s death, however, there has 
> been another trove of recordings—CBS outtakes, live recordings, CBC 
> recordings, private recs. from GG’s teens and early 20s, GG conducting 
> in Hamilton, GG playing his own compositions, etc.—that were in GG’s 
> possession at his death but were kept back by his estate and never made 
> part of the Ottawa archive. (I know about them because, long ago, I 
> received a copy of a survey of these recs. made on the estate’s behalf 
> in 1988.) These recordings (a few of which I was able to pry loose and 
> bring to the public at the 1999 conference in Toronto and subsequently 
> on CBC Radio) were quite literally sitting in someone’s basement for at 
> least 25 years—and quitely likely still are, presumably deteriorating 
> all the while. I heard a few years ago that there was (finally) a plan 
> to make them part of the Ottawa archive, where they would (finally) be 
> properly archives, catalogued, preserved, duplicated, etc. But I don’t 
> know if that has actually been done, or will be. We’re talking here 
> about, for instance, about recordings of the teenage Gould practicing, 
> horsing around, improvising, playing 4 hands with Guerrero, and playing 
> Debussy, Mozart, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Scarlatti, and other un-Gouldian 
> things—and many other unique treasures. The biographical and artistic 
> significance of such things is incalculable—and yet, as far as I know 
> they are soon to celebrate their 30th year of captivity in someone’s 
> basement. Unbelievable.
> 
> = Finally, yes there will be a Gramophone review of the WHRA box (by Jed 
> Distler), and I anticipate that it will get a good deal of press and 
> sell well. I remember reading in The New Yorker a year or two ago that 
> the boxed sets that the CBC released a while ago (The Young Maverick and 
> The Radio Artist) sold unbelievably well, as did Sony’s State of 
> Wonder/Serenity releases—even these were the umpteenth rereleases of 
> familiar material. So even in a depressed classical-CD market, GG seems 
> to sell noticeably well. I hope these new documents of his work in 
> concert will get similar attention—they deserve it. They’re very revealing.
> 
> Cheers, KB
> 

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