Misconceptions are abounding all around. Far from being a curse of our modern day and age, this wrong thinking about misconceptions is also ages old. Only dogmatic leaders and servants to dogmas find their thinking without self-doubt. And there is not a lot that is more conservative and obeying to dogmas than music knowledgeables and far mor prone to misconceptions than the regular modern man. One of those misconceptions regards the concept of the island, especially in the modern day pop-cultural question of “name three things you’d tag along onto an island”, functionally condensed in our musical world to “name three records you’d take along on an island”. In a way, the condensed version is more realistic, since it presupposes a supply with food, water and electricity as well as the appliances to play those records with, very much like selecting what you’d take along on a holiday, only that you may never come back, because you are headed off to paradise. The most common misconception within lines of that question being that most people think of an Caribbean or pacific island with sand, white beaches and palm trees. No one ever thinks of a stony, fog-riddled and cold island up north of the coast of Scotland, with a big house made of concrete and stones, a fire burning and the dark winds outside blowing, even though that also has its appeal. Especially if you find some old novels to read and some good old whiskey to drink. Of course, I hit on that misconception when I was thinking about this question myself (it has become one of my favourite questions to ponder in some free minutes, along with the evergreen: what I’d do if I got 40 million Euros) and realized there are two of my all time favourite records that I wouldn’t be able to take along because they just won’t fit on a dream island, because they are solo-piano records. One is “Solo Monk” by Thelonius Monk and the other “Goldberg Variations” by Glenn Gould and this piece of text is about the similarities between them.

   I’ll wash away all instant precautions of throwing two of the most important records of vast genres – classical music and jazz – into one bucket and then mashing them up, by simply stating to myself that I might do whatever I find correct or needed to be done. Just like Gould and Monk (without ever aspiring to be somewhere else than way below them looking up admiringly) who were criticized by the conservative hardliners and powers of their respective genres for almost the same things, which included “not playing right” from their posture and technical playing (how many times did people focus on Gould’s habit of bringing his own stool to play instead of the music he played) to not having enough respect for the great masters of their art. Respect is something else than preservation and canonization. These two artists took their forerunners very seriously and got deep into their work, maybe deeper than everyone before them – Monk with the jazz greats and Gould with J.S. Bach – and asked their work questions that demanded new and serious answers. Both artists are masters in taking a musical piece and recomposing it to fit their unique vision, to fit their own unique pianistic technique. Therein lies the importance of their records.

   And their beauty. Because amidst all the high-faloofin’ theory and art both records glow with a lively and playful energy that makes them a lot of fun to listen to. Just take the opening song to “Solo Monk”, a rendition of the old classic “Dinah”, that Monk decorates with a pouding oomph-bah bass figure that might have come from directly from the 1920’s piano classics. More than just a respectful bow towards his musical ancestors, it is also a light-hearted spoof that, without degrading them, also shows them of the future that is up ahead. In a similar manner Gould stresses the dynamic parts of the Goldberg variations in relation to the classical recordings before him, making the slow parts slower, the faster parts faster and infusing the more powerful parts with extra volume. Both do this hyperbolizing of the classical texts without stepping over the borders of what the original score demands, but also with giving it enough originality and posture to mark them as unique works that define a step away from the classical canonical library.

There are of course more similarities that I find interesting to explore, for instance the way both musicians bring out the core of the works through reducing them to their heart and spine, while adding in flavour and their own genius by painting new colours on only sparsely. Especially in the jazz area where a lot of mediocre artists hide between long solos and wide-faring excursions into wholly different chromatic schemes, Monk’s habit of staying within the melody and his fascination with playing chords stays out as true greatness, because he is able to fill the voids – not at all a matter of efficiency. Or in his own words: “Anybody can play a composition and use far-out chords and make it sound wrong. It’s making it sound right, that’s not easy.” A classically noted piece of music, at first glance, seems to offer less possibilities for interpretation – at least less than jazz – but within the framework of given artists, their ways of expression are just as big, since both are playing with the structural integrity of their works, e.g. by expanding the rhythms, rather than with singular notes. It should be noted right here, that both artists chose music that was written for leisure or smaller occasions – piano songs to be played or sung (Monk originals and scores written by other people) and variations on a piano piece intended for lecturing basically. The fact that some people would listen to these while having dinner or doing the dishes, is just a hint at the way that people treat music only the way it is presented to them. Of course, some mythology has built around these two records (and here I am adding to it), so that might spare them such a cruel fate, but overall people will react to what is presented to them in exactly the way it was intended. Thank god, these two records were recorded and released long before marketing took over in music production.

    In between there are differences as well: Monk had almost two decades of musical career behind him and done quite some recording before doing this, his first solo album. Glenn Gould burst onto the classical music scene with his recordings of the Goldberg variations as a newcomer and went straight to superstardom (it that term would have been applied back then). Gould played technically perfect and more so, though his habit of humming along with the music got a little unnerving in the years to come, whereas Monk hits a wrong note here and there without caring. Hm, I find the main difference between jazz and classical music somewhere in that last sentence, but anyway. Their different ways of playing does nothing to undermine the status of these recordings. Anyway, even Glenn Gould said, when he returned to Goldberg in the Eighties, that he learned he made a few mistakes, which he wanted to correct, though I am not sure if anybody was able to hear them except for Glenn Gould himself. Which hints at another difference, which comes from the characters of these artists, which of course comes from their different backgrounds – one black, poor, born in the early years of the last century, the other a brash white kid convinced of its own genius. All that in mind, the statement “that nut is a genius” could have been made about both of them.

  Reading this, I am sure you found yourself wondering because there are still some important issues left open, that could have been included in here, e.g. the magic of the piano as an instrument, why I think that just being a fan makes me acceptable as a writer about this music (and what else would?), the structural form of the “variation” or what the third record would be I’d take on an island with me, but I leave that to someone else for the time being. Let’s suffice it to say that with quoting Jules Combarieu “music is the art of thinking with sounds” here are two philosophical masterpieces of great thinkers.

Georg Cracked (December 2005)