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Sat, 10 Mar 2001 18:28:30 -0500 |
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Juozas Rimas Jr writes:
>I was totally confused by your imagery of the Fugue in E minor. Were
>you talking about the 10th fugue (I have no musical education and therefore
>prefer numerical values)? "Body parts", "pure evil"?
The 10th fugue is the right one.
>But maybe it's because I'm used to Gould's version. The fugue is fast,
>elegant and almost comical, with no shade of evil in Gould's rendition.
>I'll try to borrow a copy of Richter to check for the gruesome sight.
I just listened to Schepkin, Gould, and Richter again. I included Schepkin
since it's his version which gave me the imagery of a gruesome blood-bath
to begin with. Having finished, I think that I've got a handle on the
different views that Juozas and I have of the E minor fugue. What Juozas
recognizes as "almost comical" in Gould's version, I recognize as a
grotesque display of the pleasures involved in the vicious elimination of
an entire village of people. Switch to Schepkin and the whole scene
becomes much more gruesome. I didn't expect to find a version more
evocative of these images than Schepkin, but Richter takes it to another
level through increasing the brutalism and chaos. On a macro basis, the
fugue conveys to me the all the worst that humans have within them, and
that includes a ghoulish pleasure in destroying other humans - physically
or spiritually. It's a great piece of music, and it lasts only one minute.
Don Satz
[log in to unmask]
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