Unveiling a Virtual Variations
This article originally appeared in Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper, on September 25, 2006.
by Colin Eatock
Glenn Gould, the only Canadian classical musician ever to achieve cult status, would turn 74 today if he were alive. And the 24 years that have passed since his death have done nothing to dim his fame. His recordings continue to sell, documentaries have been made about him, and he’s been the subject of many books and articles. There’s a Glenn Gould Foundation, a Glenn Gould Award, and a concert hall in the CBC’s Toronto headquarters called the Glenn Gould Studio. In fact, Gould has so much presence in the world today that the CBC still occasionally gets letters from people asking how to contact him.
And today at noon, in the Glenn Gould Studio, contact will be made with the spirit of Gould – in a manner of speaking. Although the eccentric pianist famously retired from the concert stage in 1964, Gould will be heard to play Bach’s Goldberg Variations. But this isn’t a recording, or a broadcast, or a performance, in the ordinary sense of these words. John Q. Walker, the computer whiz and amateur pianist behind this event, calls it a “reperformance.”
“There’s a piano on stage, with no bench,” he explained recently from his office in Raleigh, N.C. “The keys are going, and the pedals are moving up and down – and some people may find that disconcerting. The audience will hear the entire Goldberg Variations, which takes about 38 minutes.”
The piano being used for this event is a Yamaha Disklavier Pro, an instrument that can record and play back keystrokes with extreme precision. The people at Yamaha cringe when it’s called a “player-piano” – but in a very sophisticated, high-tech kind of way, that’s what it is. In today’s event, it will be used to play Gould’s version of Bach.
So how does Gould’s interpretation get into the instrument? Since 2002 Walker’s research company, Zenph Studios, has been developing a computer program that can extract from a piano recording the data necessary to reproduce it in minute detail. “There are about 10 different musical attributes that we analyze,” continues Walker, “including pitch, moment of impact, strike velocity, duration, how the note ends, and the angle of the key when it’s depressed. We can do everything we want with the instrument through the computer.”
Gould first recorded the Goldberg Variations in 1955, and it’s this recording that will be faithfully reproduced by the Disklavier Pro. For the last two years, Walker has been using movements of Gould’s Goldbergs to show off his technology around North America: he’s been in Toronto twice already, giving demonstrations at the Japan Foundation and at the IdeaCity conference last June. But today’s event will be the first Gould “performance” of the complete Goldberg Variations in 25 years.
Walker sees an aptness in bringing his invention to Toronto, Gould’s hometown. “The many people in Toronto who heard him live will get to experience that again. At the Japan Foundation, some people who knew him, and heard him play, started crying.”
The live event was initiated by James Hayward, a retired Bell Canada manager. He met Walker last year in New York, at a convention of the Audio Engineering Society, where he heard a demonstration of Zenph’s technology. “I just about fell off my chair,” Hayward recalls. “I couldn’t believe the subtleties and the nuances I was hearing. So I started working, contacting the Canadian head of Yamaha, trying to sponsor John to come up to Toronto.” Hayward also talked to the CBC. “I found the idea fascinating and perplexing,” says Eitan Cornfield, who is producing the event for CBC Radio Two.
Perplexing indeed. The concept of a dead pianist somehow giving a “live” performance opens up a Pandora’s box of issues. Who owns copyright on a pianist’s keystrokes? Is it appropriate, using this technology, to improve on a recorded performance? How are today’s young pianists to compete in a world that can hear concerts by the greatest interpreters of the twentieth century? And in a classical-music culture that already suffers from a chronic lack of newness, isn’t this just fetishizing the past?
In defense of his work, Walker rhetorically asks, “Is your argument that old things should have poorer sound quality?” As for today’s performers, he feels that his efforts should encourage, rather than discourage them. “If you’re a young performer, you should go make novel interpretations. The more interesting your performance can be, the more value it has.” And he says it‘s appropriate to use Gould, a technophile who was always interested in innovative developments, as his guinea pig.
Despite the swarm of unanswered legal, critical and even ethical questions Walker’s ideas have already struck a chord in the music business. Immediately after today’s concert, Sony BMG Masterworks will record Walker’s rendering of Gould’s Goldberg Variations for a CD to be released next year.
Following the Goldbergs, Walker intends to recreate recordings by the composer-virtuoso Sergei Rachmaninoff and also the jazz legend Art Tatum. And while, at present, his analytical computer program only works with piano music, he foresees the day when it might be more broadly applied. “Instruments that are plucked or struck are easier than things that are bowed or blown into. The violin is going to be very hard.”
© Copyright Colin Eatock 2006
by Colin Eatock
Glenn Gould, the only Canadian classical musician ever to achieve cult status, would turn 74 today if he were alive. And the 24 years that have passed since his death have done nothing to dim his fame. His recordings continue to sell, documentaries have been made about him, and he’s been the subject of many books and articles. There’s a Glenn Gould Foundation, a Glenn Gould Award, and a concert hall in the CBC’s Toronto headquarters called the Glenn Gould Studio. In fact, Gould has so much presence in the world today that the CBC still occasionally gets letters from people asking how to contact him.
And today at noon, in the Glenn Gould Studio, contact will be made with the spirit of Gould – in a manner of speaking. Although the eccentric pianist famously retired from the concert stage in 1964, Gould will be heard to play Bach’s Goldberg Variations. But this isn’t a recording, or a broadcast, or a performance, in the ordinary sense of these words. John Q. Walker, the computer whiz and amateur pianist behind this event, calls it a “reperformance.”
“There’s a piano on stage, with no bench,” he explained recently from his office in Raleigh, N.C. “The keys are going, and the pedals are moving up and down – and some people may find that disconcerting. The audience will hear the entire Goldberg Variations, which takes about 38 minutes.”
The piano being used for this event is a Yamaha Disklavier Pro, an instrument that can record and play back keystrokes with extreme precision. The people at Yamaha cringe when it’s called a “player-piano” – but in a very sophisticated, high-tech kind of way, that’s what it is. In today’s event, it will be used to play Gould’s version of Bach.
So how does Gould’s interpretation get into the instrument? Since 2002 Walker’s research company, Zenph Studios, has been developing a computer program that can extract from a piano recording the data necessary to reproduce it in minute detail. “There are about 10 different musical attributes that we analyze,” continues Walker, “including pitch, moment of impact, strike velocity, duration, how the note ends, and the angle of the key when it’s depressed. We can do everything we want with the instrument through the computer.”
Gould first recorded the Goldberg Variations in 1955, and it’s this recording that will be faithfully reproduced by the Disklavier Pro. For the last two years, Walker has been using movements of Gould’s Goldbergs to show off his technology around North America: he’s been in Toronto twice already, giving demonstrations at the Japan Foundation and at the IdeaCity conference last June. But today’s event will be the first Gould “performance” of the complete Goldberg Variations in 25 years.
Walker sees an aptness in bringing his invention to Toronto, Gould’s hometown. “The many people in Toronto who heard him live will get to experience that again. At the Japan Foundation, some people who knew him, and heard him play, started crying.”
The live event was initiated by James Hayward, a retired Bell Canada manager. He met Walker last year in New York, at a convention of the Audio Engineering Society, where he heard a demonstration of Zenph’s technology. “I just about fell off my chair,” Hayward recalls. “I couldn’t believe the subtleties and the nuances I was hearing. So I started working, contacting the Canadian head of Yamaha, trying to sponsor John to come up to Toronto.” Hayward also talked to the CBC. “I found the idea fascinating and perplexing,” says Eitan Cornfield, who is producing the event for CBC Radio Two.
Perplexing indeed. The concept of a dead pianist somehow giving a “live” performance opens up a Pandora’s box of issues. Who owns copyright on a pianist’s keystrokes? Is it appropriate, using this technology, to improve on a recorded performance? How are today’s young pianists to compete in a world that can hear concerts by the greatest interpreters of the twentieth century? And in a classical-music culture that already suffers from a chronic lack of newness, isn’t this just fetishizing the past?
In defense of his work, Walker rhetorically asks, “Is your argument that old things should have poorer sound quality?” As for today’s performers, he feels that his efforts should encourage, rather than discourage them. “If you’re a young performer, you should go make novel interpretations. The more interesting your performance can be, the more value it has.” And he says it‘s appropriate to use Gould, a technophile who was always interested in innovative developments, as his guinea pig.
Despite the swarm of unanswered legal, critical and even ethical questions Walker’s ideas have already struck a chord in the music business. Immediately after today’s concert, Sony BMG Masterworks will record Walker’s rendering of Gould’s Goldberg Variations for a CD to be released next year.
Following the Goldbergs, Walker intends to recreate recordings by the composer-virtuoso Sergei Rachmaninoff and also the jazz legend Art Tatum. And while, at present, his analytical computer program only works with piano music, he foresees the day when it might be more broadly applied. “Instruments that are plucked or struck are easier than things that are bowed or blown into. The violin is going to be very hard.”
© Copyright Colin Eatock 2006
