"Bravo Gustavo" iPhone app Review

The below blog post is also a Google Wave wave. View the wave to see screen shots of the app!

Adam Lazzarato (@adamlazzarato) is a 19-year-old Intern at The Glenn Gould Foundation. He is responsible for overseeing the Contrapuntal Blog and tweeting for the Glenn Gould Foundation at @GlennGouldFndn. His musical tastes consist of mainly North American indie rock, but over his time at the Glenn Gould Foundation, he has learned to love and respect Glenn Gould’s piano. He will be entering into his second year at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario in September to study Computer Science.

I recently sat down with the free "Bravo Gustavo" app on the iPhone.

"Ever wonder what it is like to conduct a world-class orchestra? Spend some time in the shoes of Gustavo Dudamel, the LA Phil's new music director and experience the rush of a maestro. Transform your iPhone or iPod Touch into a conductor's baton or set the tempo by tapping the screen. Your audience awaits!"

- iTunes Music Store

There were a couple things I really liked about the app:

1) Music

There are two (more available to buy) pieces that you can play, both of which are energetic, and exciting, exactly what you would expect from an iPhone app made with Gustavo Dudamel in mind.

March to the Scaffold (Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique)
Dream of a Witches' Sabbath (Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique)
Now, the app is not an mp3 player. It gives the user control of the tempo of the piece, effectively letting the user become the conductor! It is quite interesting to see how the pieces can change when you hand the app to different people.

2) Motion Sensing

Apart from the amazing music that the user has the opportunity to play, the fact that the user can physically wave the iPhone like a baton is quite an awesome feature.

Though, I prefer not to use the motion sensing. I prefer to tap the screen to set the tempo of the piece while watching some of the stunning images of Gustavo and the Los Angeles Philharmonic pass by.


Overall:

I wish there was more selection in the number of songs that come with the app, but since the app is free and there are simply awesome photos of Gustavo and the LA Phil, the poor selection is not a major problem.

Overall, this app scores a 4/5.
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Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould

Hello all!

To give a quick report on the new documentary that screened at TIFF this week - Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould - I am happy to report that this will likely become the gauge by which we measure the quality of future films about Gould.  It is a brilliant and highly accurate piece of work, in that the many interviews conducted, were done with those who were closest to Gould.  The Foss family is absolutely delightful, and one really gets a sense of how much of Gould's public facade was just that.  While the film is not just about his relationships with women, namely Cornelia Foss, it does make up a good portion.  And rightly so, because never before have we been able to see this other side of Gould.  There are some incredible pictures AND footage which has never been seen before.  The film does not sensationalize anything or anyone, nor does it perpetuate the myth of him being a recluse who wears winter clothing in the summer.  Gould definitely had issues with being in control, and totally knew what he was doing in creating his own image.  Let's face it, we all still buy into it to some extent.  This film goes beyond that, as I said, and shows us a side that has not yet been revealed.  We need to know this side existed, not to be nosy or anything, but more importantly, to have an accurate conception of who he was and what he was about.  It's a brilliant film and you all MUST see it!  It's worth it for the interviews alone, never mind the footage.  I particularly liked the interviews with Lorne Tulk, Kevin Bazzana and Pet Clark.  Yes, she's in it too!

On a side note, we were informed that the film will be in theatres across Canada very soon, and also that an American company has purchased the rights to show it in that country (not sure about overseas).  I believe that company will be announced shortly.  In the US, the film will show in about 30 different cities.  Back here in Canada, a shortened version of the film will air on Valentine's day, on the Bravo! network. As for when it comes out on DVD, I have been advised by the Estate that it likely won't be for at least another 6 months.  Indeed, something to look forward to!

Best wishes from Toronto!
Penny Johnson (Contributing Author, The Glenn Gould Foundation)
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New Horizons

Glenn Gould once said that he would stop playing the piano at the age of fifty. This happened in fact—just not in the way that he had in mind. The idea was that he would then move on to some other pursuit. Probably conducting, or further explorations in documentary radio production.

This is what you would expect. But I think it would have been interesting if GG had branched out in completely new directions. He certainly had the opportunities, if not necessarily the inclination, to do any number of things. Here's a few of the alternative occupations I would have liked to see GG try out, at least.

1.) Jazz Musician. Gould was an awesome improviser in the manner of the great composers of yore. But he said he was not cut out to be a jazz musician, claiming that he had no sense of swing. I don't doubt it. Gould had a few jazz records in his collection, focusing on pianists who were either really virtuosic like Oscar Peterson, or more cerebral like Lennie Tristano. Gould was telephone friends with Bill Evans and the two of them have sometimes been been compared to each other, kind of in the sense of being jazz vs. classical versions of the same guy.

Anyway, I think it would have been cool if Gould was just thrown in feet-first into the middle of something like Miles Davis' electric band from the late 60's with no preparation or time to think about it. Just go. It would have been way out of his comfort zone but eventually I bet it would have produced good results.

2.) News Announcer. Gould actually almost did this. I was reading about it somewhere. He was at the CBC studio and the news announcer couldn't go on for some reason. Gould was the only person around at the time who was prepared to go on mic, so he volunteered. He got as far as actually having the papers in hand and getting ready to go into the broadcast booth when, at the last second, a replacement announcer was brought in. I think it would have been cool if Gould decided to take the gig and make it his new full-time job.

3.) Variety-Show Host. In the 60's and 70's, variety shows were big TV. In those days there were only a few channels, so network executives figured that to get the biggest audiences you should make a show that had a little something for everybody. Hence, the variety show, usually featuring some combination of music and comedy. Various musicians or comedians had their own shows at one time or another: The Smothers Brothers, Glen Campbell, The Jackson 5, Sonny and Cher, Donny and Marie, and the list goes on and on . . .

I imagine that The Glenn Gould Music and Comedy Hour would most closely resemble The Carol Burnett Show, with a focus on sketch comedy featuring recurring characters, interspersed occasionally with music performances. On this show Gould would develop and expand his existing repertoire of comedy characters like Karlheinz Klopfmeister (or whatever) and Myron Chianti. There would be a regular cast of performers as well. It would be cool if the guys from Goin' Down the Road were on it.

There would be music on the show but Gould would not perform it, and it would not be classical either. It would be stuff like Ann Murray, or The Guess Who.

Apparently, Gould actually wanted to do more comedy for the CBC, but the producers discouraged him because they thought his performances weren't very funny. If so it would be the only known case of the CBC rejecting a comedy idea on the grounds that it wasn't funny enough.

4.) Game-Show Host. I believe Gould would have made a good host for a show like Jeopardy although I'm not sure why. I also think he would have been an okay panelist on Hollywood Squares, or What's My Line? But, being Canadian, he would most likely have ended up as a panelist on Front Page Challenge, which would have been best suited to his personality, but also very boring.

5.) Stock-Car Racer. Gould should have looked into this since, apparently, he drove like that anyway.



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Guest Blogger - Kamila Dameron

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

Kamila Dameron is a 20 year old student in Seattle majoring in English and Journalism. She is a closet pianist, and has studied on and off for nearly 15 years. Contact Kamila: kamiladameron@gmail.com

The Invisible Artist

Thomas Mann once wrote something to the effect of “The piano is not an instrument on which to learn a skill, but rather music.” In our highly competitive, commercialized society, music, like most things, is being used as a means to an end. Conservatories and private teachers pump out Wunderkinder by the thousands, competitions establish who is surely going to end up with a record deal with Sony Classical, and eighteen-year-old violinists tour the world with their Kreislers and Mendelssohns and Dvořáks. Is this how we want to treat music? As a self-affirming tool, a spotlight for our egos? Granted, numerous gifted artists are discovered this way, too. However, the atmosphere is eerie; it is one of competition, one wherein the Self is more highly regarded than the art which one is propelling. Glenn Gould, in theory, would agree.


“The purpose of art is not the momentary ejection of adrenaline, but rather the lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity” (Gould). With wonder there comes a sense of smallness, a sense of being a part of something bigger; the Self is no longer the Universe, but a humble servant of its symmetries. I often find myself turning off the radio in a fit of frustration, for it seems all I hear these days are bloated performances of Chopin etudes and ballades, Take-No-Prisoners-Beethoven string quartets and German symphonies for whose interpretations the conductor had a few too many “Original Ideas.” As an antidote, I’d put on a recording of Glenn Gould, who, irrespective of his humming, had the rare gift of making himself invisible. Leonard Bernstein once said, “I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.” Are we so desperate to be remembered, in a country whose arts have been ravaged by war and commercialism, that we are willing to shove Beethoven aside and say, “Look at me, look at me”? Has it gotten to the point where any sixteen-year-old pianist who can play Prokofiev without missing a note is a virtuoso artist—even though, in most cases but not all, the student hasn’t the emotional capital to understand what he is playing?


I propose we all skip a few piano lessons and listen to Glenn Gould. He said once that you could learn technique in five minutes. It’s the giving one’s self up to the music, as a servant and not a star, that makes it genuine. Music should teach us that the universe is impossibly infinite, not that we are the masters of it. As a young pianist, I used to get violently nervous about performing and piano lessons, because the music was directly attached to my ego and self-esteem. But with time and isolation from the mainstream world of music education, I was lucky enough to put myself away and pay attention to what the music wanted to say, as opposed to what I wanted to say. One might argue that Glenn Gould, in his seemingly eccentric interpretations (tempi, etc) was being selfish; but I see him as a man exploring all the possible angles of a work, simply because it is an injustice not to explore them. A fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier is a capital example. In his “official” recording of the WTC, the fugue no. 9 in E Major from book two (BWV 878) is a triumphant exclamation, whereas in a stray recording of the same fugue (year unknown to me), it is “reserved,” placid, filled with reflection and wisdom. This polarity is Bachian, for it seems in his music there lie the equations for divinity, no matter the tempo. Gould took full advantage of this, providing us with a multidimensional Bach. Though it may have been Gouldian to explore extremes, I would argue that it was his desire to portray as many true versions of music as possible, for music’s sake and not his own.


I don’t expect that many will share my form of pessimism about the modern music scene, and maybe they shouldn’t, for maybe it is not productive—but I long for the days when music was about music, and where people like Glenn Gould dedicated their lives to doing right by it.
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Guest Blogger - DJ Young

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

DJ Young hails from the Pacific Northwest. She grew up on the island of Wrangell, Alaska, surrounded by Tlingets, drunken lumbermen and lots of water. When she wasn't climbing trees and stealing cigarettes she enjoyed listening to tales of mystical land otters, ravens and cholera epidemics. As young musician in college she came across Gould's '81 recordings of the Goldberg Variations and has lived in fascination ever since. She is currently at work revising her first (well third really) novel, To the End of Love.

This post can also be found at DJ's blog.

The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Glenn Gould, A Review

“As in judiciary practice, polemics allows for no possibility of an equal discussion: it examines a case; it isn’t dealing with an interlocutor, it is processing a suspect; it collects the proofs of his guilt, designates the infraction he has committed, and pronounces the verdict and sentences him. In any case, what we have here is not on the order of a shared investigation; the polemicist tells the truth in the form of his judgment and by virtue of the authority he has conferred on himself.”

-Michel Foucault

Why does Glenn Gould matter, still? This is the question I asked myself as I approached a re-reading of Peter F. Ostwald’s 1996 biography The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Glenn Gould. When I first came across this book, back in 1998, I was initially impressed with the detail that Ostwald employed to flesh out Gould’s life and the circumstances for his famously eccentric behavior; I enjoyed it as a sort of companion piece to the film 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould.

Released in 1995, 32 Short Films encapsulated Gould’s life into a series of snapshots, featuring interviews with friends, working acquaintances, colleagues and Gould’s surviving cousin, Jessie. Interestingly, Ostwald was not among those interviewed for the film, nor was he ever featured in the involving 1985 CBC documentary, Glenn Gould: A Portrait. In fact, Ostwald’s biography is the only reference I could find to his relationship with Gould (though there maybe others) and while it may mean little or nothing (one can hardly expect every Gould relationship to turn up in every documentary or biography written on the man), I do find it perhaps a little telling, especially in light of these opening lines in the introduction to Ostwald’s biography (provided by Ostwald’s wife, Lise):

“Forty years have passed since the first meeting between Peter and Glenn took place. Why was this an unforgettable event, permanently engraved in both their minds? Was it the intuitive knowledge that this was the beginning of a twenty-five year friendship – and occasional collaboration – leading to the tragic tale of Glenn Gould’s premature death at age fifty; which would be written by Peter Ostwald, a sixty-eight year old professor of medicine, a violinist, and a distinguished author, who fought an unrelenting battle with cancer for twelve years?”

There is an arrogance to this admission that is, to this reader shocking. Is Lise (through her husband) insinuating that his ‘friendship’ with Gould was such a distinctive and serious relationship and that Ostwald’s biography of Gould is somehow definitive? After all, there have been dozens of books written about Gould – before and after his death – why should this one stand out so completely?

The answer we are given here is that Ostwald’s friendship with Gould makes the piece that much more important and deserving of our special attention; yet, throughout the book, Ostwald gives us more reasons to question whether such a ‘friendship’ was as ‘unforgettable’ as Mrs. Ostwald would have us think and whether Ostwald’s insights into Gould are truly penetrating, but, perhaps more of a glimpse into the psyche of a doctor who built much of his own career writing about the mental illnesses of famous artists?

The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Glenn Gould opens with the first meeting of Gould at Ostwald, in 1957, thus setting up the potential for a memoir of sorts. Ostwald describes sneaking backstage, something he admits to being well versed in, to meet Gould after the concert. An amateur musician himself, did Ostwald carry any dreams of progressing, of some fame for himself? He mentions his friendships with other musicians at the time, including Martin Canin, a name he drops to get in Gould’s dressing room door. From there he describes a night that results in an impromptu chamber session at the apartment of a friend, and Gould’s first reaction to Ostwald the psychiatrist – a fact that, no doubt, would have been attractive to the pill-popping hypochondriac.

Does this mean their friendship began on something of a false note and progressed from there? We are not really allowed to know; Ostwald does not evolve his writing in memoir-fashion. Instead, he begins a gradual and highly detailed breakdown of Gould’s childhood and early adulthood, including the almost-Freudian take on his relationship with his mother, a woman who, after giving birth for the first (and only) time at 42, developed a controlling and protective attitude toward Glenn’s upbringing and musical training. It is to Florence Gould, an amateur pianist herself that the possibility of many of her son’s more florid manias, including his hypochondria and controlling, isolated tendencies evolved from. Yet Gould’s unquestionable musicality, exhibited before he was even three years of age, and, later, the obsessive-repetitive and increasingly narcissistic attitudes he developed may have led to a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome, a question Ostwald does not shy away from, but never explores fully.

It is through Gould’s often unconventional ideas about performance, sometimes ignoring a composer’s dynamics or tempo markings, that caused confusion and consternation from critics and even from Ostwald, who, without qualification for his objection, states plainly on several occasions that he felt Gould was ‘wrong’ in his own judgments. To some degree he openly denigrates Gould’s choices:

“…he said he ‘hated’ late works by Mozart such as the Symphony in G Minor, K. 550. (Had Glenn ever listened to the late viola quintets? How could anyone ‘hate’ such sublime music?)” pg. 249.

It is at these moments (and there are several in the book) that Ostwald the Polemicist comes to the fore: in spite of Gould’s legendary intellect and immersion into music, his deep and well-developed sense of composition, form and structure (and the artistry involved), Ostwald, perhaps out of some unsatisfied argument with Gould himself, attempts to undermine and negate Gould’s well-considered opinions.

“As a concert pianist, he came to detest what he perceived (wrongly, I believe) as a struggle to the death between the performer and the audience. And as a media artist, he expected (wrongly again) that advances in technology would reduce human competitiveness.” Pg. 265

What are we without our opinions? Gould’s were an extension of his highly evolved inner life and his own experiences as a performer. Who are we (or Ostwald) to say that he is ‘wrong’ in his thinking? For Gould, stage performance was a nightmare both personally and morally and, for him, this was nothing more than truth. A personal truth, perhaps, but to question those truths about a person derides a closer insight. Though Ostwald makes every case for the reasons why Gould gave up the concert stage, he still doesn’t seem to appreciate the real optimism that was behind it. Like so many critics before him, the emphasis on Gould retiring from the concert stage as some sort of personal failing is grossly misrepresented and exaggerated. Gould most likely did not give as much thought to leaving the stage as those who have questioned his decision to do so have. For Gould, ending his concert career was a flight of freedom. How do you question that?

Glenn Gould was an artist full of contradictions, but do those contradictions invalidate his ideas?

“What Glenn never seemed able consciously to perceive or acknowledge was his own extreme competitiveness in having to play faster and more brilliantly than any other pianist…in his highly successful gambling on the stock market, and in his sheer joy at coming out the winner in conversation and games of wit. In fact, one might consider his having won, posthumously, the biggest competition of them all, that of survival in public memory.” Pg. 266

What is Ostwald saying here? There is almost a tenor of resentment – as if being a success, for Gould, was something that shouldn’t have happened, that such an arrogant, narcissistic figure who (to Ostwald’s description) played a ‘part’ to the public – that all his moral posturing was really Gould hiding behind his own insecurities and that, perhaps Gould wasn’t the artist he wanted everyone to think he was?

Ostwald describes himself as Gould’s ‘friend,’ a perhaps overly generous title; other than their first and last meetings, he describes almost no real interplay between them, yet, obviously, conversations occurred that, one senses, Ostwald did not always care for or ‘win’ himself. He must have had very few actual meetings with Glenn for, by the time of their last visit, in 1977, he had not seen Glenn in ten years. This final event is marked by a not-so-subtle bitterness:

“I must have said something uncomplimentary about the recording [Glenn’s latest on Bach], for Joe Stephens remembers Glenn “bristling” at my remarks. Glenn in turn said something that annoyed me very much.”

Ostwald never tells us what Glenn said that ‘annoyed’ him. At the end of their meeting Glenn challenges Ostwald to write a book about a ‘really important musician’ (instead of the Schumann biography he was working on).

“Was he thinking of himself?”

Did the germ of this biography begin that night, at their last meeting? Did Ostwald decide to embark on this biography toward the end of his own life in order to ‘have the last word’ as it were? In his writing Ostwald gives much detail: doctors Gould consulted, pills he took, concerts he gave, his own thoughts and opinions on composers and performers and, most movingly, the very last days of Gould’s life. Yet Ostwald’s commentary on Gould grows like a composition that starts out with a strong, clear theme only to result in clangs and clamor of dissonance and disillusion. He does not explain all the years that he and Gould did not communicate; he does not even explain how he comes to his own conclusions to deride Gould’s many complex musical and philosophical ideas, yet the sense that he himself bristled at Gould’s self-involvement, his ‘arrogance’ is a variation he never quite lets go of.

In the end, Ostwald’ biography is still a fascinating collection of ideas; its weaknesses I think stem from Ostwald (in a Gouldian fashion) relying more on his own opinions about Gould than real conversations with those who were closer to him and worked with him for many years. I also find it strange that Ostwald invokes a word that is often used to describe Gould: ecstasy. Perhaps due to the complexities of trying to sort through the many layers of Gould’s thought processes and his wide-ranging imagination, Ostwald never really touches on this aspect of Gould’s character: the great joy he experienced as a musician, as a man who devoted himself so completely to exploring every nuance of that which he loved, that which compelled him and held him in thrall his entire life. Ostwald the psychiatrist misses this point completely.

I hearken back to my first viewing of 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould and a section of the film entitled ‘Crossed Paths:’ brief vignettes with those who knew Glenn, perhaps only briefly, giving commentary about their experiences with him. The memories range from the humorous to the dour, with one woman expressing what seems like resentment that Gould did not understand the needs of others, that sometimes it wasn’t just all about him.

Though he gives us no reason to imagine his own relationship with Gould was anything more than a ‘crossed path,’ Ostwald, in a way, attempts to interject himself into Gould’s life as something more significant and telling than it was and I cannot help but think of this as a sort of personal letter to Gould himself: part of it inscribed with the honor and wonder of that initial meeting, that initial acquaintanceship, to voicing his own complaints, ones he never dared voice to Gould personally, and, finally closing on an old heartbreak. Did he ever wish he had intervened further, for Glenn’s health? There is surprisingly little judgment toward those other physicians who may have also done more to help prevent what was, in fact, inevitable.

Ostwald himself passed away from cancer before this biography was ever published; I wonder, following Gould’s death and all the subsequent biographies and documentaries about him that aired if Ostwald felt the challenge of telling another side of the story, if that was his purpose in pursuing this work. If so, he did little to steer us away from the ‘conventional’ understanding of Gould as an eccentric, self-involved genius, but, instead, chose to focus on the effect his behavior had on those he worked with and how, often, that behavior was simply too difficult to endure for long.

There is no question that Gould’s character required sacrifices (usually on the part of others) in order to maintain any sort of connection; in his reach for perfection, he may have struck a few sour notes with others, but one cannot fault him for trying, for doing the very best of what he could do as only he knew how to do it. He was a man who lived by his own rules, his own order and while many of his idiosyncrasies fall in line with an Asperger’s patient, he was always concerned with communication and devoted himself to explore the limits of communication, ironically, to the exclusion of those who were closest to him. For any reason, this alone explains why Gould matters, still. He set a standard that no one who has come after has ever reached.

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Guest Blogger - Allison Schwartz

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

Allison Schwartz is an architect.

Gustavo Dudamel plays in LA VEGA

Edit (Aug. 28, 2009): Three amazing videos of the event







On Sunday August 2nd, I visited the barrio La Vega to see a free musical performance of Caracas´s Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela or El Sistma led by the superstar Venezuelan conductor, Gustavo Dudamel.

Dudamel comes out of the El Sistema program here in Caracas, but he has now reached international attention due to his talent and energetic style. Ordinarily obtaining Dudamel tickets requires arriving at the theater at 5 AM and waiting in line all day, but for this performance, the concert was on the streets- free for anyone who showed up, without seat assignments, and without any semblance of exclusivity.

La Vega is an enormous barrio (slum) in Caracas and is known to be very dangerous- one of the many neighborhoods that gives Caracas its bad reputation. While I have seen many from the outside, it was also my first time inside a barrio, creating a heightened awareness throughout the visit that I was slightly in danger just by being within La Vega.

It was impossible to know what to expect from the performance because an orchestra playing in the middle of a slum is as rare as it sounds.
The concert was in a small piazza almost entirely filled with the stand for the musicians. Several hundred people were watching the concert from the joining street and crammed into overlooking houses. Surrounding the stage from 360 degrees, people of all ages were watching the performance from every balcony, staircase, and ledge. This type of outdoor concert would have been impressive anywhere, but the unlikely setting in the center of a barrio made it magical.

There was energy in the air from the start of the performance. The audience chanted “Gustavo” in anticipation of the conductor’s entrance, and this excitement transformed into dancing, singing, and cheering that was present throughout the entire event. Following the lead of Dudamel’s enthusiastic attitude, the musicians were also in high spirits- even occasionally standing up and dancing with their instruments. The Orquestas Juveniles e Infantile played a mixture of classical music, the Mambo, the Himno Nacional and other Venezuelan classics, that maintained an engaging and high-energy performance.

For the afternoon, everyone was there to enjoy the music and the unique experience- the music reached beyond social classes, engaging the audience and demonstrating the power of music to bring people together. It was difficult to imagine that this street corner could have been ever been used for any other purpose than a venue for El Sistema.
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Guest Blogger - Bren Finan

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

Brendan Finan is an Irish composer, piano teacher and technology obsessive. He keeps a blog at www.brendanfinan.com, a Twitter page (@TheMadderHat) and runs a (usually) weekly podcast called Classical Introductions, which uses free and public domain recordings on the internet as a springboard for introductions to the world of classical music. He sometimes wonders what Glenn Gould would have thought of this new world of technology that has emerged since his death, and thinks Gould would probably have been a great Twitter user.

This post can also be found at his blog.

I’ve never understood puritanism.
I have often seen Glenn Gould described as a puritan, and justifiably so. Certainly in his approach to life, and in his taste in music, Gould was extremely conservative, but when it came to the way that he played, I think it’s fair to say that he was the greatest rebel in the twentieth century performing tradition. It didn’t seem to matter whether he was playing music he loved or music he hated; his approach was invariably to tackle it in a way that would remain completely unique. To become almost a second composer.

When Gould played, you always heard something completely new. It didn’t matter if you’d heard the piece a thousand times before, his approach was always unique and interesting. In his hands, listening to the Prelude in c minor from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier is like receiving two hundred tiny electric shocks. The Goldberg Variations either skate by at an impossible pace or allow you time to contemplate every note. The Brahms rhapsodies feel like they have been deconstructed and rebuilt from the ground.

But, of course, this is all well-known. And you would think that three or four records in, critics would be ready for the fact that Gould played music his way. So reading criticisms of him making music sound like it was his has always made me raise my eyebrows. The staunch complaints about, for example, his organ recording of Bach’s Art of Fugue (which is on my list of favourite Gould CDs) condemned his use of the organ as ‘creaking’ and ‘groaning’, and generally seemed to moan that he wasn’t using it properly. Well, what exactly did they expect? He had been using the piano in a completely unique way for years - why on earth should he submit a conventional organ recording?

When we listen to Gould, we are not really listening to the composer: we are listening to Gould playing that composer’s music, and I really don’t see what’s wrong with that. He did point out on several occasions that there were more than enough faithful recordings of all the established works and nearly everything else that’s been written, and that that frees up (indeed, if memory serves, he felt it obligates) performers to take what liberties they need to make the music new. If this was true in his time, it is doubly so now.

Though his approach was very different from anyone else’s, there were some general consistencies: if he didn’t like a piece, he would often rush through it at an exceptionally high speed as if he couldn’t wait to get to the end, and vice versa in his later years; his touch was always light and very carefully articulated; he used the pedals exceptionally sparingly, and didn’t seem to spare a thought for the long legato phrases lauded by most musicians. But even with these approaches in mind a new Gould purchase is always surprising. Even having an idea of his tastes and styles did not make him predictable, because he always saw things differently.

And really that’s what made him so valuable, isn’t it? He had a different definition of beauty from the rest of us - he loved cloudy skies and gloomy weather, but disliked bright colours; he preferred solitude over company; he was roundly dismissive of many of the established masterpieces of music. But when he saw a piece as beautiful, he could make us see the beauty in it too. Listening to Gould play a piece you’re familiar with is like discovering entirely new music.

Though there is of course something to be said for the ability to listen to many performers’ interpretations of pieces and the nuanced differences between them, there are very few performers alive now willing to give us that break with tradition and that assertion of personality which Gould provided. His insistence on doing things his way has ensured that we have an artist and performer of the twentieth century in possession of unparallelled individualism. It is unfortunate that few others in the classical world have taken up his mantle as ‘extreme’ interpreters, but this is a side-effect of the way we are taught music: that the composer always has to come first.

Rubinstein played Chopin. Kempf played Beethoven. But Gould always played Gould, and for that we are thankful.

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