Guest Blogger - Yuka Zuver

The Contrapuntal Blog Guest Blogger Series begins now. The purpose is to showcase some of the worlds most passionate and creative Gould fans' creations through photo, video and writing.

Yuka Zuver (@StudioDaCapo) is a Japanese-born self-taught pencil artist. Over the past few years she has focused her drawing talent on portraits including Glenn Gould. The late Canadian pianist has been the main inspirational subject since 2006 and continues to motivate in all elements of her artworks. She lives in the United States, on Whidbey Island near Seattle with her husband, two daughters, and a dog.

The Prospects of Cyberchondria.

Some time ago we considered the possibility that Glenn Gould would have benefited from today's technology to do stuff that he wanted to do but wasn't possible at the time. Imagine what GG could have done with today's information technologies. It may have produced some awesome results. Or maybe not. If you've ever found that the internet can be a more pernicious time-waster than TV ever was, then you know that technology can be a hindrance as much as a help. It's all up to you to determine which it will be.

For example, consider popular reference sites like MayoClinic.com. If you're feeling sick you can use this site to gain useful information on your condition that will help you make a rational decision about what course of action to take, if any. Or, if you're so inclined, you can use the site to determine without exception that every little ache or pain you feel is a sure sign that you have six weeks left to live. If you fit the latter description you would be what is known as a cyberchondriac. Based on what we know of Glenn Gould's personality, do you think it's possible that if he were alive today that he would have been an obsessive cyberchondriac? Yes, that is a rhetorical question.

Gould took careful notes about every real or imagined symptom he ever felt. A typical list is reproduced in Kevin Bazzana's biography of Gould. The single handwritten page lists: 1) escalating blood pressure; 1A) chills and shivering; 2) plugged nostrils and some difficulty breathing; 3) gastro-intestinal troubles that he associated with a hiatial hernia; and 4) several months in which he was sleeping only three to four hours at a time. Let's use the trusty MayoClinic.com Symptom Checker to find out what these symptoms mean!

Well, there isn't an entry for high blood pressure as a symptom, so we'll just assume that this means hypertension.

As for "chills and shivering" this could be symptomatic of anything, including the common cold. But it couldn't possibly be that. In view of the co-incidental presentation of joint pain documented elsewhere in GG's notes, I'd say this is a clear indication of Septic Arthritis.

"Plugged nostrils and some difficulty in breathing:" combined with other reports of mild body aches and "puffiness in eyes" obviously indicates Acute Sinusitis.

"Gastro-intestinal troubles:" although Gould associated these with a possible hiatial hernia, with the help of modern information technology, he could have arrived at the much more alarming diagnosis of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD).

Finally, the report of "sleeping only three to four hours at a stretch." According to MayoClinic.com "Conditions linked with insomnia include arthritis, cancer, congestive heart failure, diabetes, lung disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), overactive thyroid, stroke, Parkinson disease and Alzheimer's disease." So, if there was any doubt about the diagnosis of GERD, above, this pretty much nails it. And, just to be thorough, I would assume the presence of at least two of the other possible underlying causees for this symptom.

MayoClinic.com sure is a lot of fun! Go ahead and try it out. As for myself, I've already determined that I am practically a dead man.

One Cole

Glenn Gould called himself “the last Puritan”—a claim consistent with his seemingly Gnostic attitude toward the physical world. He took no pleasure in eating, could not tolerate alcohol, avoided physical contact with other people, had minimal regard for his personal appearance, lived in a Spartan apartment outfitted with dull, functional furniture, and had an almost allergic aversion to color. When Gould was a child, his mother took him to see Disney’s Fantasia. The film’s celebrated abundance of bright color made him feel ill, and he had to go home and lie down. In fact Gould’s favorite color was one that most of us consider depressing: battleship grey.

In Toronto the color grey is, shall we say . . . prevalent. Of course this is one of the many reasons that Gould liked Toronto. Personally, I enjoy grey as much as the next guy but, by the time it gets to be February, I’m starting to get just a little tired of it. And so I was surprised this afternoon to be impressed by a new building so perfectly grey that, right on the spot, I was moved to imagine an award for which it could be nominated: The Glenn Gould Memorial Award for Outstanding Civic Achievement in Greyness (GGMAFOCAG).

One Cole, currently under construction, is the first building in Phase One of the renewal project for Regent Park, Toronto’s oldest social housing community. Back in the 1940’s civic planners thought that the best way to design social housing was to create a kind of isolated park in the midst of the city. Reality, however, did not play out according to their theories; while the “isolation” part of the concept came through pretty strongly, the “park” aspect did not. Better integration with the city was needed. Furthermore, the individual buildings of Regent Park had deteriorated to the point where replacing them was more practical than trying to renovate them.

And so Regent Park will soon have new buildings that will be much better designed, much better built and, if One Cole is a reliable leading indicator, much more grey.

Now, given the bad reputation that grey has acquired over time, I hasten to make it clear that I consider the greyness of One Cole to be a positive thing. The building’s worthiness of the GGMAFOCAG is not on account its excessive quantity of greyness, but rather on the outstanding quality of its greyness.

Many of Toronto’s buildings date from the 1970’s and are grey merely because the budget was tight, and pre-cast concrete is relatively inexpensive.

One Cole is not like that, however. Since it’s clad in brick it could be any color in which brick is available (which, admittedly is not the most exciting range of colors, but anyway.) The grey brick of One Cole was chosen specifically for its aesthetic properties and it shows. One Cole takes the idea of grey and runs with it. Feel the excitement.

I took the pictures here with my phone, so they’re not the best quality and they don’t really do justice to the building. But I hope you get the idea. This is just the first building of many in a large project. When the new Regent Park is finished, the whole area from Dundas to Gerrard and from Parliament to River will be covered in battleship-grey buildings like One Cole. If Glenn Gould were around today he might even be eager to move in.

So You Want to Play Bach's Prelude No. 3

My latest trial by fumbling is Bach's Prelude No. 3. It is beautiful and tricky and this edition includes an awkward page turn after 12 bars. Like many adults attempting to master piano, I have a sense of how I wish to render the piece (though it often sounds like RENDING), if only the synapses would fire properly. I want the poco dims and the poco crescs to come out subtly, sensitively, exquisitely too, please.
And because Bach is nearly synonymous with Glenn Gould, I have been trying to decide whether I ought to listen to his recording of this Prelude. Though I have no doubt that my Prelude and his would hardly be recognizable as the same work, there is a strange sort of alliance going on. I would like to know what he has done with these clever unexpected accidentals, the balance of the left hand reaching for that low D, the resolve of the poco rit. What does one learn from another's interpretation of a piece? Why do some musicians avoid listening to someone else's version while others study it intently? What does Glenn, not even remotely in the same musical sphere as I, have to offer me? And will it be useful to me as my fingers are wont to play Broken Telephone with my head, producing what I did not have in mind at all?
Listening to Gould has its dangers. One begins to believe his is the definitive version. But does not everyone have his Idea of What It is Supposed to Be? When I consider the two versions of the Goldberg Variations recorded 26 years apart, I am reassured. Glenn believed in exploring. And changing his mind.
The possibilities are endless. Even my ham-fisted version.

Note-Maker

Man of the Future?

Throughout his professional life Glenn Gould was in touch with the latest developments in technology. It wasn't simply a matter of keeping "up to date" with it but more of being inspired by it. New innovations in recording and broadcast technologies stimulated Gould's creative mind to imagine new artistic possibilities in much the same way as they did for contemporary rock musicians such as The Beatles.

The hackneyed phrase "ahead of his time" never really makes any sense. But it could be said to apply to Gould at least insofar as he had certain ideas which became technically possible only decades after his death. For example, Gould was enthusiastic about the possibility of enabling listeners to become creative partners in the recorded music experience. He recognized the potential for this simply from the fact that listeners at the time could control some very basic sonic parameters, such as frequency equalization, on their stereo systems. But this amount of control is relatively trivial. Gould wanted to go further and he imagined giving listeners kits composed of the individual parts of a piece of music which they could then re-assemble to their preference. At that time it was practically unfeasible to do this. Today however, it's easy. Simply post individual audio tracks for download on the web and then let people reassemble them in GarageBand, ProTools, or the audio application of their choice. And in fact this is now common practice.

Consider the technology available to GG. Look, for example, at the chart at the top of this page. It's a score from Gould's radio documentary The Latecomers. It is drawn on a piece of paper. With a felt-tip marker. Forget ProTools. We're going to go cut up some tape now. Let's refer to the graph.

What's more interesting, however, is that Gould's idea was ahead of its time not just technically but also socially. Even if it were possible in the 1960s and 70s to distribute the kind of musical self-assembly kits Gould envisioned, it is hard to imagine that anyone would have wanted them. This too has something to do with technology. Not the technology of recording but rather that of social networking.

As Lawrence Lessig points out in this lecture, for most of the 20th century we lived in a "read-only" society. That is to say, a culture wherein a small group of people is professionaly responsible for producing cultural goods (i.e. they do the "writing"), which are then broadcast out to a wide audience of "consumers" (who do the "reading.") In such a culture, one's role as a producer or a consumer is clearly defined. This cultural condition was largely a result of the kind of mass media that—ironically—made Gould's carreer possible. Broadcast radio & television, mass-market publishing, and record manufacturing/distribution all have a "one-to-many" profile, like someone with a megaphone addressing a large crowd of people. Again, one person does the talking. Everyone else does the listening.

Sometime around the turn of the milennium, however, that paradigm collapsed as the internet allowed everyone to become a producer and consumer in equal measure—to the point where those terms may soon become culturally meaningless. The internet is the world's first "many-to-many" communication platform. In the space of only a few years our culture has transformed from a monologue into a conversation.

And this is just the social transformation that had to take place for Gould's idea to work. What Gould was really proposing way back in the 70's was open source music. I think Gould probably assumed that most people have a natural creative impulse strong enough to create a demand for open source products. The degree to which people now post, remix, and share their own creative work online suggests that this assumption was correct. But the prevailing 20th century "read-only" culture made this hard to see at the time. In fact, not only did few people have the imagination to conceive of such a culture in the 1970s but, even today, those who have a professional stake in traditional media are seemingly blind to its emergence, even as it springs up all around them.

Its a pleasure that is bound to satisfy, when you decide that Mr. Gould must have been a very personable guy

Over the past six months, I have listened to the Goldberg Variations, watched Thirty Two Short Films, pondered the Solitude Trilogy. I have looked at pictures, met countless people who have been deeply touched by Mr. Gould, read many articles and interviews. Yet I still do not know. There is still so much to learn about Mr. Gould.

Thankfully, I do not walk alone. Every young grasshopper needs a sansei and I am lucky enough to work alongside mine. I call her "Dr. Piano." Dr. Piano is both kind and knowledgeable. She patiently answers all of my seemingly random questions. She doesn't judge me when I repeatedly need her to pronounce the words 'Salome' or 'Fidelio' before going to an opera. She understands that I am both unsure and forgetful when it comes to foreign pronunciations.

In December, I asked Dr. Piano to come with me to see the Elmer Isler Singers perform Handel's Messiah. As we sat listening, I felt like there was something familiar about the arrangement. I eagerly shot Dr. Piano a look, wordlessly asking "Is this contrapuntal!?!" She understood but quickly shook her head. I was wrong. Later, I work up the nerve to try again, looking at her like an eager puppy. This time I am rewarded with an enthusiastic nod. I have identified the contrapuntal music! I beam triumphantly. Needless to say, I like Dr. Piano a lot.

The other day, I asked Dr. Piano about the relationship between fugues and counterpoint. Dr. Piano smiled. She had just the thing for me. Liz, meet 'So you want to write a fugue.' Written by Mr. Gould, the song is in the form of a fugue and uses fugue devices in its composition. How impressively clever! (...Although doesn't Mr. Gould say in the song, "Never be clever for the sake of being clever, for the sake of showing off." Now I am confused...?) I love the string quartet paired with the utter professionalism of the singers. The best part? I think I get it. I understand the fugue and its devices! I even feel that I can appreciate Mr. Gould's dry wit.

There is only one thing left to do: I shall conquer the Art of Fugue with my newly discovered clarity!

Fran's Restaurant

There's an unusual amount of interest in Glenn Gould's eating habits—mainly, I guess, because he didn't eat very much, so it so it ties in to the ascetic quality of his personna.

You probably know that Gould was a frequent patron of Fran's Restaurant, and I can think of at least three good reasons why he would be. First, Fran's served the kind of food that, for a long time, was the only kind of food you could get at a restaurant in Toronto: i.e. bland and/or boring food—GG's favorite kind. Here's the menu from 1940 featuring such gourmet items as Pork Sausages and Gravy, Boiled Ham, and Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches. Second, and probably more important, Fran's is open 24 hours a day, which would accommodate Gould's nocturnal schedule. And third, Fran's had locations immediately proximate to both Gould's St. Clair Avenue apartment and the Eaton's auditorium on College Street where he made many of his recordings.

Fran's is still around as a chain although the original Yonge & St. Clair location is now closed. Fran Deck and his family sold the business to independant investors in 1977.

I don't eat out much because I'm a low-budget kind of guy these days. But some days I don't feel like cooking. Okay, most days I don't feel like cooking. So, a few weeks ago I decided to go to Fran's on College St., both to get some dinner and to do some reportage for this blog here. So, what's Fran's like now?

Well, first of all, the menu has been updated insanely. Now you can get items such as "Cajun Jambalaya Pasta" or "Foil-Packed Halibut Florentine." Actually it now resembles, both in character and in scope, a menu from one of those suburban franchise "eateries" like Applebee's, typically located on the perimeters of shopping mall parking lots the size of Switzerland.

But anyway, remember the 1980's, when it was briefly fashionable to describe certain things as being "post-modern?" No? Okay, well one of the many contemporary interpretations of that term involved the concept of ironic self-reference. The idea was that (for example), whereas in the past, you would simply have a diner, in the post-modern era you would instead have a "diner." That is to say, the proprietorship of the post-modern enterprise would be aware of the cultural trope of "The Diner" and thus self-consciously conform the presentation of the establishment to match it. In the case of an artificial franchise like Johnny Rockets, you might describe the end result as a "fake" diner. And in the case of a place like Fran's, you might call it an instance of a thing's becoming a parody of itself. And if you won't, I will. Here's their website. You be the judge.

I'm not sure whether there was ever any agreement about what the term "Post-Modern" really meant. This may well be because most of the writing about it was fatuous academic mumbo-jumbo. The term has pretty much disappeared now. I think it was a passing fad. So let's move on to discussing actual food.

I just got off the subway at College St. after work, and Fran's is basically right across Yonge St. It's about minus 20 degrees outside, and so my first thought is just to go for a rice pudding and coffee, but I actually need to eat something substantial and so resolve to order an actual plate. My recent Fran's experiences have been kind of hit-and-miss. I don't trust the more "Applebee's" selections on the menu, so I decided to go for one of the few remaining "old-school" selections: Liver and Onions with Bacon, a side of vegetables, mashed potatoes, and a Coke, as shown below:

Overall, I found this to be a really good platter. The liver was cooked nicely—not over done, and with a subtle, peppery flavor. There was, albeit, a fair amount of gristle, but this is pretty much unavoidable with liver. The mashed potatoes had just the right amount of butter mixed in, and also a good, fluffy texture. The bacon was a fitting compliment to the liver and was cooked, I think, to suit all tastes—exactly mid-way between floppy and crispy. But, the big surprise here was the vegetables. I was expecting, of course, that the vegetables would be re-heated from frozen. And perhaps (ok, probably) they were. But frozen vegetable technology has come a long way from what I remember when I was a boy back in the 20's. These vegetables had a good flavor and al dente texture that was a very pleasant surprise. They were so good that I actually finished them! Imagine that.

They say that Things Go Better with Coke. I'll say, at least, that Liver and Onions go better with Coke.

I would have had the rice pudding and coffee, but I was really full and, also, over budget.

So, there it is. Fran's: now kind of an 80's theme restaurant, but you can still get good food there if you order right.