Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is one of his best known works, and Tudor church music was a major influence on the composer. During 2008 I am playing all the Vaughan Williams symphonies on my Future Radio programme , and this Sunday (Feb 17) it is the turn of the Eighth Symphony. This for many, including me, is one of his finest works, and it certainly destroys the myth of the composer as a backward looking English pastoralist, with its scoring for vibraphone, xylophone, tubular bells, glockenspiel and three tuned gongs. I'm coupling all the Vaughan Williams Symphonies with choral music from Thomas Tallis . This will be taken from the splendid new 10CD box of Tallis' complete works at bargain price from Brilliant Classics sung by the Chapelle du Roi directed by Alistair Dixon . Tallis also composed a number of instrumental works which are included in the box. They are not of the same peerless quality as his choral works, but are, nevertheles...
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With regard to the main question, I picture most people listening to the computer playing the Goldberg out of curiosity and then moving on. If it did indeed play the work like Gould, the point would escape me altogether, though they did well to constantly invoke Gould's name, for his obsession with the perfect recording suggests one performance fixed in time, which I take it is what the computer 'performance' would also be.
That brings to mind those artists -- Curzon, Serkin, et al. -- who had to be dragged to the studio, or Celibidache, who wouldn't record in a studio at all, because the idea of a fixed performance was alien to them. And so, we have fixed performances from Gould and a computer, but I think there are few of us who would not turn to Perahia, Hewitt, Tureck et al. for greatly varied performances, and the concert hall where inspiration of the moment (notable with Arrau, Cherkassky, though I'm straying from the Goldberg again here) may make for magic moments.
So, no, we don't NEED genius robots. But I was delighted that your blog was mentioned and given due credit in the discussion, Bob, and in tones of such well-deserved respect.