Glenn Gould Life Gould As Musician Gould's Recordings

Gould was born in Toronto, Ontario. After being taught piano by his mother, whose grandfather was a cousin of Edvard Grieg, Gould attended the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto from the age of ten. There he studied piano with Alberto Guerrero, organ with Frederick C. Silvester , and theory with Leo Smith.

In 1945Events January January 5 The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland. January 7 British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge. January 12 World War II: he gave his first public performance (at the organ) and the following year made his first appearance with an orchestraAn orchestra is a musical ensemble used most often in classical music. A small orchestra is called a chamber orchestra''. Full size orchestras may sometimes be called "symphony orchestras" or "philharmonic orchestras"; these prefixes do not indicate any d (the Toronto Symphony OrchestraThe Toronto Symphony Orchestra is a leading Canadian orchestra. 200,000 people attend its live performances each year and it is often broadcast over CBC Radio 2. It was founded in 1922 and plays in the Roy Thomson Hall which was renovated in 2002. It prev) in a performance of Beethoven'sLudwig van Beethoven (baptized December 17, 1770 d. March 26, 1827) was a German composer, the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of all tim Piano Concerto No. 4 . His first public recital followed in 1947Events January January 1 British mines nationalized January 1 Nigeria gains limited autonomy January 1 The Canadian Citizenship Act went into effect January 3 Proceedings of the United States Congress are televised for the first time. January 10 United Na, and his first recital on CBC radio came in 1950Events January January 5 US Senator Estes Kefauver introduces a resolution calling for examination of organized crime in the USA January 6 The United Kingdom recognizes the People's Republic of China. The Republic of China severs diplomatic relations with. This was the beginning of a long association with the radio and with recording in general.

In 1957Events January January 2 San Francisco and Los Angeles stock exchanges merge. January 3 Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch January 4 After 69 years the last issue of Colliers magazine is published January 5 Russell Endean becomes t, Gould made a concert trip to the Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1. He was the first North American to play there after the Second World War.

On April 10, 1964, Gould gave his last public performance, in Los Angeles, California, and for the rest of his life he concentrated on his other interests: making recordings, writing, broadcasting, documentaries (see below), and composing (although he produced few works as a composer).

2 Gould as musician

Gould was known for a vivid musical imagination, and listeners regarded his interpretations as ranging from brilliantly creative to (on occasion) outright eccentric. It was said of Gould that he never played the same piece twice in the same way.

His playing had great clarity, particularly in contrapuntal passages. Gould lived at a time when a heavy, grandeur-emphasizing approach to the performance of Bach, dating from the 19th century, was still very much on the musical scene. In comparison, many listeners found Gould's own approach to Bach to be refreshing, even revelatory. Gould's style arguably has strongly influenced later pianists who have played Bach, notably Andras Schiff .

Gould had a formidable technique that enabled him to choose very fast tempos while retaining the separateness and clarity of each note. Part of the technique consisted of taking an extremely low position at the instrument. As Charles Rosen points out, this position is crippling for purposes of playing the louder and more virtuosic music of the 19th century, and Gould occasionally had to fake certain effects in his recorded performances of Liszt by overdubbing. However, it yielded excellent results for Gould in music originally written for the harpsichord.

3 Gould's recordings

Gould's first record came in 1955. For it he chose the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was a piece with which he was to become closely associated, playing it in full or in part at many of his recitals. One of his very last recordings was also of the Goldbergs, one of the few pieces which Gould recorded twice in the studio. Both recorded versions are critically acclaimed. The two recordings are very different, the first highly energetic and often at frenetic tempos, the second slower and more introspective.

Gould recorded many of Bach's other keyboard works, including the complete Well-Tempered Clavier and the keyboard concertos. For his only record at the organ, he recorded around half of The Art of Fugue.

Gould also recorded pieces by many prominent piano composers, though he was outspoken in his criticism of some of them, apparently not caring for Frederic Chopin, for example. He was fond of some of the lesser known byways of the repertoire, such as early keyboard music of Orlando Gibbons, and also made critically acclaimed recordings of little known piano music by Jean Sibelius, Richard Strauss and Paul Hindemith. His recordings of the complete Arnold Schoenberg piano works are also highly regarded.

4 Gould's eccentricities

Glenn Gould frequently sang along while he played, and his recording engineers varied in how successfully they could exclude his voice from his recordings. Gould claimed this singing was unconscious, and increased proportionately with the inability of the piano in question to realise the music as he intended.

Gould also was known for his peculiar body movements while playing and for his insistence on sameness. He would only play concerts whilst sitting on a folding chair his father made. He continued to use this chair even when the seat was nearly worn through (image). His chair is so closely identified with him that it is shown in a place of honor in a glass case in the National Library of Canada.

Many people with Asperger's syndrome, many parents of children with this neurodevelopmental disorder as well as some experts in diagnosis of it, believe that Gould had Asperger's syndrome. He died before it was first included in the DSM (the main reference book for mental disorders used for diagnosis in the United States). Many people with Asperger's syndrome have extraordinary abilities, some are savants; it would not be unlikely that Asperger's syndrome contributed to Gould's musical genius.

5 Gould's documentaries

Less well known, but also critically praised, is Gould's work in radio documentary. These were, in part, the result of Gould's long association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for whom he produced numerous television and radio programmes. Notable here is his Solitude Trilogy, consisting of The Idea of North, a meditation on the north and its people; The Latecomers, about Newfoundland; and The Quiet in the Land, on Mennonites in Manitoba. All three use a technique which Gould called " contrapuntal radio," in which several people are heard speaking at once. According to his co-producer Lorne Tulk , he first used this technique out of necessity, when he found he had fourteen minutes too much material for The Idea of North. It is this technique, combined with the skillful editing of music and the use of recordings of ordinary people in conversation, which makes his documentary work stand apart from the crowd.

6 Tributes

Glenn Gould was the recipient of many honors both during and after his lifetime. In 1983, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. In 1993 he was the subject of an award-winning movie, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.

The Glenn Gould Foundation was established in Toronto in 1983 to honour Gould and perpetuate his memory. Among other activities, the foundation awards the Glenn Gould Prize every three years to "an individual who has earned international recognition as the result of a highly exceptional contribution to music and its communication, through the use of any communications technologies." The prize consists of $50,000 Cdn. and an original work by a Canadian artist.

7 Gould's music in films

In addition to Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, Gould's recorded music has been featured in many films, both during his life and after his death. Slaughterhouse Five ( 1972) and The Terminal Man ( 1974) featured selections from his 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations, while Hannibal ( 2001) contains the Aria from his 1982 recording. The Wars ( 1983) features Gould playing music of Richard Strauss and Johannes Brahms. Triplets of Belleville ( 2003) includes a segment in which an animated Glenn Gould with greatly exaggerated mannerisms plays the Prelude No. 2 in C minor, from J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1.

8 External links

9 Books

Bazzana, Kevin (1997) Glenn Gould : the performer in the work. Clarendon, BooksEnthsiast.com
Bazzana, Kevin (2003) Wonderous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould. Oxford University Press, BooksEnthsiast.com
Bernhard, Thomas (1991) The Loser . A fictional account of a relationship with Glenn Gould. University of Chicago Press, BooksEnthsiast.com
Canning, Nancy (1992) A Glenn Gould Catalog. Greenwood Press, BooksEnthsiast.com
Carroll, Jock (1995) Glenn Gould : some portraits of the artist as a young man. Stoddart, BooksEnthsiast.com
Friedrich, O. '(1990) Glenn Gould : A Life and Variations. Vintage, BooksEnthsiast.com
National Library of Canada (1992) Descriptive Catalogue of the Glenn Gould Papers., BooksEnthsiast.com
Ostwald, Peter (1997) Glenn Gould : the ectasy and tragedy of genius. Norton, BooksEnthsiast.com
Page, Tim (1990) Glenn Gould Reader. Vintage, BooksEnthsiast.com
Payzant, Geoffrey (1992) Glenn Gould Music and Mind. Key Porter, BooksEnthsiast.com
Robert, John PL and Ghyslaine Guertin (1992) Glenn Gould : selected leters. Oxford University Press, BooksEnthsiast.com
Rosen, Charles (2002) Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (New York: The Free Press, BooksEnthsiast.com). [Rosen’s comment about dubbing a recording of Liszt appears in the first chapter.]

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1 Life