Glenn Gould: Dance Suites

The remaining CDs in Sony’s The Bach Box collection of recordings of Glenn Gould playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach are devoted, for the most part, to dance suites. That means, primarily, the BWV 812–817 “French” suites and the BWV 806–811 “English” suites. The French collection also includes the BWV 831 “Overture in the French style,” which, aside from the opening overture movement is basically a suite of dances. BWV 831 was the one Clavier-Übung selection that was not discussed in the first article about The Bach Box.

The Aria theme, which may be interpreted as a sarabande, for BWV 988 written into Anna Magdalena Bach’s Notenbüchlein (from Wikimedia Commons, source unknown, public domain)

The final CD of music in the collection is a compilation of Gould’s personal favorites, which was released as a recording entitled The Little Bach Book, which is presumably a coy nod to the Notenbüchlein (little notebook) für Anna Magdalena Bach. The album itself includes thirteen tracks of dance movements. (The total number of tracks is 33.) The collection then concludes with a recording of Gould interviewed by Tim Page on the occasion of the release of his second recording of the BWV 988 set of “Goldberg” variations. I shall not discuss this recording. I have enough trouble keeping a cool head while reading many of Gould’s articles collected in The Glenn Gould Reader (edited by Page) to keep a cool head while listening to him expostulate at length!

Those who have read the Clavier-Übung article can probably guess how I reacted to the French and English suites. The operative word in this collection is “dance.” Most of the dance forms in these suites were beginning to go obsolete when Bach was composing them. Recently there have been several noble scholarly attempts at reconstructing those dance forms, but I am not sure how many of those scholars have examined Bach’s scores for hints that might suggest the “spirit behind the steps,” even if very little information is available about the steps themselves.

It is clear from these recordings, however, that Gould did not care a fig about such scholarship. He is only interested in interpreting the marks on paper with little, if any, regard to potentially informative context. As a result, there are likely to be two camps of listeners where any of Bach’s dance movements are concerned. Those that like to acquire Gould’s recordings tend to be in the “let Gould be Gould” camp; and I shall not begrudge them their opinions.

Nevertheless, I tend to cast my own lot with the “let Bach be Bach” crowd. For those that recall my account of the exchange between harpsichordist Wanda Landowska and cellist Pablo Casals, I actually feel that Casals is in the “let Bach be Bach” camp. However, my own opinion of Landowska has not yet been settled, since I have only heard her Well-Tempered Clavier recordings and have not yet had the opportunity to consider her approach to the dance forms.

Looking back over the entire Gould collection, I would say that there is no debating that it is a significant historical artifact. That said, I am not quite sure what the content signifies, particularly to the current generation of pianists and the coming generation of students. I have my doubts about whether Gould’s historical record has anything to say to those generations; and the recent Deutsche Grammophon album of Lang Lang playing BWV 988 in both studio and concert settings strikes me as a strong affirmation of the “let Bach be Bach” position. Perhaps Gould’s recordings and writings serve more as a “fossil record” of the second half of the twentieth century, rather than as guideposts for current musical practices.