During this past hectic and difficult month, I've wanted to comment here about the interesting 9/2012 issue of Gramophone magazine, with its cover story about pianist Glenn Gould. Gould was born September 25, 1932 and died October 4, 1982, so these past two weeks have been the 80th anniversary of his birth and the 30th anniversary of his death. Among the essays, journalist Tim Page situates Gould’s 1955 recording of the “Goldberg Variations” within the times, making Bach’s music seem contemporary not only to the musical scene but to the charisma of James Dean and Marlon Brando. Composer Steve Reich praises Gould as “the first classical musician to really understand recording.”
Kevin Bazzana’s biography of Gould at the glenngould.com site notes, “Gould’s musical proclivities, piano style and independence of mind marked him as a maverick. Favoring structurally intricate music, he disdained the early-Romantic and impressionistic works at the core of the standard piano repertoire, preferring Elizabethan, Baroque, Classical, late-Romantic and early-twentieth-century music; Bach and Schoenberg were central to his aesthetic and repertoire. He was an intellectual performer, with a special gift for clarifying counterpoint and structure, but his playing was also deeply expressive and rhythmically dynamic. He had the technique and tonal palette of a virtuoso, though he upset many pianistic conventions – avoiding the sustaining pedal, using détaché articulation, for example. Believing that the performer’s role was properly creative, he offered original, deeply personal, sometimes shocking interpretations (extreme tempos, odd dynamics, finicky phrasing), particularly in canonical works by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms.”
Bazzana discusses Gould’s famous “Goldberg Variations” recordings, his hatred of performing, and his other work in broadcasting, composing, and writing. The “Gramophone” issue contains several reminiscences by his contemporaries, including one by Petula Clark about whom Gould had written an appreciative essay, praising her music above that of the Beatles. Bazzana writes that Gould’s “postmodernist advocacy of open borders between the roles of composer, performer and listener, for instance, anticipated digital technologies (like the Internet) that democratize and decentralize the institutions of culture.” Unfortunately Gould died of a stroke just as the digital age was beginning.
Thirty years ago I was a young, recent graduate of divinity school, feeling exceptionally lonely inside my rural parsonage. It was a small house along the state highway. The afternoon light shown brightly into the paneled living room, a Spartan place at that point in my life, since I’d not yet purchased nice furniture, but there I had my record player, receiver, and reel-to-reel tape deck. The front door was open so that not only the sun and the breeze could enter the room through the screen door.
While at div school I’d gained a love of classical music and was embarked on a kind of pilgrimage to discover favorite music. That day, my plan was to read a favorite book and listen to music from a nearby university's radio station (the same one where I’d try to catch Karl Haas’ “Adventures in Good Music” show as I drove through the countryside on pastoral calls). The station, though, had substituted the usual afternoon programming for a feature commemorating the death of Glenn Gould, a pianist I’d not heard of. It was an interesting feature, explaining the pianist's innovations, eccentricities, and significance.
Although these days I listen to Angela Hewitt’s Bach music more frequently than Gould’s, his name and music will always stay in my mind because of that lonely afternoon in the country, redeemed by the mastery of this independent, creative spirit!
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