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In 1999 The National Ballet of Canada commissioned a score by John Oswald for the recorded voice of Glenn Gould, robot piano, ghost pianist, and orchestra, to accompany choreography by James Kudelka. Oswald entitled his suite of compositions ‘The Idea of This’. Kudelka called the ballet ‘A Disembodied Voice’ with reference to the recreated humming/singing of Glenn Gould in the ‘ariature’ movement that constitutes the opening of the ballet. The piece premiered 2000 in a programme entitled "Inspired by Gould" which ran from November 20th to the 27th at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto.
The half hour composition is in 10 sections, each of which approaches some of Gould’s musical preoccupations from a different angle. Several technological innovations were utilized by a team under the direction of Oswald which researched and created materials during most of 1999.
A major bit of sonic archeology was the dissecting of Glenn Gould's 1981 recording of the ‘Aria’ of the ‘Goldberg Variations’. To start the piano was filtered out of the recording as much as possible, leaving Gould's inadvertent vocalizations as a more prominent element. Christopher Butterfield in Victoria made a phonetic and music notation transcription of this vocal line. Where there was difficulty ascertaining a sound the team referred to a video of the Gould recording session to study Glenn’s mouth movements.
Eventually Christopher's brother, opera tenor Benjamin Butterfield, was recorded singing a version of Christopher's transcription, with his own revisions. Christopher was also recorded, and several takes of his version were layered in combination with Benjamin's solo version to produce a chorus of Glenns near the end of the 'Aria'. To this Oswald added a klangfarbenmelodien-like arrangement (this is a technique where a melody line is passed from instrument to instrument, changing its timbral colour over time) for live orchestra, which gradually added clues as to the source.
For the ballet performances the monophonic voice of Gould ’strolled around’ via routing through several hidden speakers from on stage to the orchestra pit where it was joined by the chorus.
‘Ariature’ was immediately followed by an orchestral arrangement of pianist Reginald Godden’s ‘Panorama’ which condenses all of the 'Goldberg Variations' into approximately a minute and a half (this section in the present recording is performed by Casey Sokol as a piano solo).
Meanwhile in Toronto, Ernest Cholakis, who is best-known for designing the groove templates found in various sequencers, worked on making a very precise MIDI transcription of Gould's piano performance of the ‘Aria’. This transcription was custom-tailored on a Yamaha Disklavier very similar to the piano Gould played for the original recording. The result was a reproduction of the piece which is much more realistic than any hi-fi system could ever recreate; with the added bonus, for some listeners, of the absence of Glenn’s voice.
These two ‘Aria’ derivations were the bookends of a suite which featured abstractions, rascali klepitoire and plunderphonic derivations of Gould's own music and some of his favourite pieces, including works by Richard Wagner and Petula Clark. Elsewhere Bach and Mozart clash in one section, and the invisible pianist was a featured soloist throughout.

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from CLASSICS from the Rascali Klepitoire, released April 1, 2020
by J.S.Bach, John Oswald, & Reginald Godden

'ariature' is performed by the Borges Orchestra, with Christopher &/or Benjamin Butterfield emulating the aria-voice of Glenn Gould.
'panorama' is performed as a piano solo by Casey Sokol.

see hear a recreation of Glenn Gould performing the 'invaria' from 'The Idea of This':
youtu.be/0waIofDVRSo

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rascali klepitoire

John Oswald is best known as the the creator of the Plunderphonics genre, an appropriative form of recording studio creation which he began unfolding in the late ’60’s. This got him in trouble with, and also garnered invites from major record labels and musical icons. In the early ’90’s he began, with three commissions from the Kronos Quartet, to compose in what he calls the Rascali Klepitoire. ... more

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