[f_minor] Orlando Gibbons

Anita Monroe rubatoatm at gmail.com
Tue Feb 28 09:04:06 PST 2012


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.



Anita


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
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> 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<http://stephaniewright.musicteachershelper.com>
> *
>
>
>
>
>
>
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