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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>I repeat here my reply to Anita:<br><br>"chère Anita,<br><br>From what I understand you have most of Gould's Columbia Masterworks LPs, you've got no worries. <u>If I owned the LPs I wouldn't buy the digital anything.</u>
Keep listening to your albums; I reckon you've already understood that.
I find one or two of them from time to time at a Salvation Army or even
thrown out onto the street in a box with LPs of Schnabel, but it's
quite rare and I always look upon it as a gift from the Gods of Music.
Almost as good as adopting an abandonned cat which decided to hide in my
garden until it could find a trusted friend..."<br><br> I can truly say that when the stylus makes contact with the LP I am ready for the music - the music which will take me to somewhere I never expected to go... <br><br> Mary<br><br><div><hr id="stopSpelling">From: bobmerk@earthlink.net<br>To: f_minor@glenngould.org<br>Date: Tue, 12 May 2015 14:33:53 -0400<br>Subject: Re: [f_minor] Remastered GG edition<br><br>
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<div><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Courier New" size="3">This brings us back
to a persistent theme in GG's art and pychology: perfectionism. His retreat from
the concert </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">stage and advance into the
studio, with its technical wizardry, were his declaration of making </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">perfectionism a central virtue of what he wanted to
achieve.</font></font></div><font face="Arial" size="2">
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">I've grumbled before that IMHO, sterility
is the unavoidable handmaiden of perfectionism. To achieve </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">the perfect requires the loss of spontaneity, risk, daring,
thrill -- like crossing Niagara on a </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">guaranteed solid bridge with sturdy handrails rather than a
tightrope.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">So 33 years after he died, many of us still
long and dream for an even more perfect edition of his </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">keyboard work.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">Although they, too, were ear art produced
by the same brain/spirit and the same fingers, it's </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">interesting that nobody ever asks for audio-improved "more
perfect" re-masterings of the radio </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">documentaries. It's facile to say, "Well, one was keyboard
music, the other was dialogue montage."</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">One of my thrills in recorded music is
early capturings of great talents. I have two editions of the </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">first RCA Caruso sessions, both in 33 1/3 LP vinyl.
The first was RCA/Camden (NJ)'s "standard" </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">lavishing of state-of-the-art analog technology.
</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">(Caruso "made" RCA's phonograph; before his
voice came out of the sound horn, the public had only mild </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">curiosity about this new arcade gimmick. I think RCA paid the
unknown Italian $25 to sing about 12 </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">songs.)</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">The second, issued soon after, was the
Stockham Soundstream version -- the first digital remastering of </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">any music, the pioneering effort of
the technology that soon nearly completely took over the </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">recorded music industry, and nearly extincted the
vinyl analog system. D</font><font face="Courier New" size="3">igitizing Caruso
produced no miracles by itself. But Thomas Stockham had analyzed the Caruso
</font><font face="Courier New" size="3">recordings and concluded that much or
most of the squawk and noise and hiss weren't due to old age or 80 </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">years of dust in the cylinder grooves, but due to
the acoustic characteristics of "shouting" and </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">pointing accompanying instruments into the giant sound
collection horn in the era before </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">electric/electronic microphones. (The horn mechanically
wiggled the groove-cutting needle.)</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">This collection-horn trouble could be
identified and filtered out mathematically by computer. The </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">result "jumped" Caruso several decades toward the era of
sensitive electric/electronic microphones -- </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">from Caruso's recording tech to Billie Holiday's
electric/electronic microphone tech.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">Suddenly modern ears can hear what all the
gossip and buzz about Enrico Caruso was all about. It </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">ain't perfect -- still lots of crude squawk and hiss and
noise -- but Stockham had rescued the lost spirit, the </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">emotion, the concert thrill of Caruso circa
1903.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">The whole issue of what makes a perfect or
an aesthetically valuable recording, or what truly best </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">represents a performing artist, is very under-discussed and
under-thought-out. Some treasures </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">are not rendered "better" by applying new popophonic
dysenstereo 36-bit 12-channel audio techno. Their </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">value or treasure had been there from the first, courtesy of
the performers themselves.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">I guess another way of saying this -- I
started buying GG stuph around 1971 -- is I never heard a GG </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">recording I didn't like. And never yearned for a new
remastering that would technologically "improve" </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">the old recording and make me love it more. I've bought and
had Happy Thought about new editions, but </font><font face="Courier New" size="3">the magic was in the recordings I first heard, the magic
hasn't been improved since.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">Bob <br>Massachusetts USA</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">P.S. Winter finally ended and boy am I
happy. Off-list I'd be happy to dicuss the existence or non-existence of Climate
Change, and Whose Fault it is.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">P.P.S.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier New" size="3">What up recently, if anything, with
lossless digital technologies like FLAC?</font></div>
</font><div><font face="Arial" size="2"></font><font face="Arial" size="2"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Arial" size="2"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Arial" size="2"></font> </div>
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<div><font face="Arial"><font face="Courier New" size="2"><strong>News, Global
Warming, Mozart, Sports, Intergalactic Travel, sausages, <br>VOLCANOS!!! opera,
PIRATES!!! Filth in Extinct Lingos, </strong></font></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><font face="Courier New" size="2"><strong>Big Integers &
BOINC: </strong></font><a href="https://" target="_blank"><font face="Courier New" size="2"><strong>http://VleeptronZ.blogspot.com/</strong></font></a><br><font face="Courier New" size="2"><strong>Remarkable Older Stuph: </strong></font><a href="https://" target="_blank"><font face="Courier New" size="2"><strong>http://Vleeptron.blogspot.com/</strong></font></a><br></font><font face="Arial" size="2"><br></font><font face="Arial" size="2"></font></div></div>
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