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I wasn't motivated to do it [re-record Bach's Goldberg Variations] until rather recently, when it occurred to me, on one of my rare relistenings to that early recording, that it was very nice, but that it was perhaps a little bit like thirty very interesting but somewhat independent-minded pieces, going their own way, and all making a comment on the ground bass on which they are all formed and to which they all conform. And I suddenly felt, not having played it in, well, since I stopped playing concerts, about 20 years, having not played it in all that time, that maybe I wasn't savaged by any over-exposure to it, and that if I looked at it again, I could find a way of making some sort of almost arithmetical correspondence between the theme and the subsequent variations, so that there would be some sort of temporal relationship, I don't want to say just exactly 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, that kind of correspondence, but, you know what I mean, there would be a sense in which, substituting for the fact that Bach had absolutely no melodic design that is continuous but rather a base {bass?} harmonic design that is continuous, there would be at least a rhythmic design that is continuous, and the sense of pulse that went through it. And that seemed to me sufficient justification [...] to do it all over again.
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transcribed from The Glenn Gould Collection vol 13 (Sony laserdisc).

 

Glenn Gould

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I also don't want to feel bound to the harp, I'd be interested in bringing other instruments in at some time. But I think the harp has been viewed in one particular way for so long, and has been limited for so long, that I feel like I am really interested in stretching the boundaries of what it's capable of doing and how it's perceived.

 

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