Hi. Here's something I'd written & submitted to an internet magazine. They've been slow to publish/upload it, so I thought you might be interested in the meantime. Thanks for reading.
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Glenn Gould is considered one of the most notable classical pianists of the twentieth century. His unusual musical perspective often led him to publish essays and write scripts as well as tinkle the ivories, and for many years before his death in 1982 he kept a high profile on Canadian radio and television.
Some of Gould's broadcasting work included scripting and editing experimental tape pieces which highlight speech as a musical medium. To this day, these programs are often declared below the scope of appropriate listening. However, one of Gould's speech pieces is reviled more than any other, even by Gould's own cult following. It is also the only speech composition for which Gould's own voice provided the raw sound materials.
That piece is the hour-long "Fantasy", released in 1980 on the second disc of a double lp, The Silver Jubilee Album. Ostensibly dedicated to celebrating the outtakes from Gould's 25 years with Columbia records, The Silver Jubilee Album contains a variety of short piano pieces recorded eight to ten years prior to its release. However, the strikingly different =93Fantasy=94 was scripted and recorded specifically for the occasion. In it, Gould impersonates three conversing music critics, the engineer recording the conversation, and even himself- Gould in addition being the topic under critical discussion. Playing referee to these many voices is broadcaster Margaret Pascu, who plays a fourth music critic as well as herself. The counterpoint in both sound and content between these initial seven characters finally explodes with Gould's 'hysterical return'- a simulation of a piano concert held on an oil rig floating in the Arctic ocean.
In the eighteen years since his death, Gould's renown has only grown, and the meticulous cataloging of his property at the National Library of Canada (http://www.gould.nlc-bnc.ca/egould.htm) has continued to uncover and restore a wide variety of documents and keepsakes. In September of 2000, the National Library Archives published for the first time a collection of letters sent to Glenn Gould upon the release of the "Fantasy" recording. While a few of these letters were from fans, most were sent by music critics and were accompanied by reviews they had written of the Silver Jubilee Album.
Here are some highlights from the critics' letters, arguing the aesthetic implications of this most eccentric recording by an already eccentric pianist.
Dear Mr. Gould,
As "Toronto's divine son" you've recently displayed the capacity to publish your buried treasure, touted by your accompanying liner notes as being far from insignificant juvenilia. This is all rather amusingly put, yet at the same time it has to be said that your piano playing is the keystone of your greatness. Indeed, the Goldberg Variations you recorded for CBS in 1955 have acquired an iconic existence of their own. No performance has penetrated the collective musical consciousness so completely. In short, I know of no other musician who possesses in equal measure such irresistible charm, and inscrutable genius. What now drives you to add to these qualities such infuriating perversity?
Even granted that you have renounced the concert stage permanently (and who could but hope that you will return to it one day) your commercial success has clearly been with the "basic" repertoire - all it took was that first Goldberg recording to buy you the key to CBS studios. And you've evidently made extravagant use of the privilege, recording whatever and whenever you've liked. In fact, from what I understand, the only thing CBS has ever nixed was your proposed satire on the 1960's Vladimir Horowitz "comeback" albums (vestiges of which seem to have found their way into your current release). =20
CBS's gamble has paid excellent dividends. Sales of your legendary Bach continue to offset the losses racked up by such somnolent rarities as piano music by Strauss and Scriabin. And your willful interpretations have kept the critics completely at odds, and the name of Gould in the news. But what prompted forays into editing radio programs? And although you must have wished to flaunt the tape-splicing techniques of which you seem so proud, surely there was no pressing need to display them on this release... and in the form of a scripted comedy album, no less.
Your stubborn inclusion of this spoken "performance" along with your latest outtakes obscures more discourse than it encourages. The "Fantasy" is a triumph of your anti-canonical spirit. If it can be judged music at all, it is a suite of oblique, ugly montages; sounding in places like Bach and the Americans' Bob Costas mated with a ball-peen hammer. If comedy it must be, I would also advise the hiring of a voice coach, as your "impressions" of various ethnic characters are as sloppy as they are in bad taste. If I may say so, my memory of the slight but lovely English accent propagated by my Churchill schoolmistress is especially offended.
Worst of all, CBC's sound on the existing piano clips in the comedy piece provides only a provisional impression of your unique textural translucency and brilliance -qualities I can vividly recall from four London performances which CBS has captured on different releases with the dazzling fidelity essential to a proper musical experience. I see no reason why a good recording on good equipment should not bring concert hall realism into our homes. You seem convinced that a microphone is something other than an extension of our ears and sounds added by the machinery or the process of recording should not be extirpated. Are musicians and technicians alike not there to see that a composer's music reaches our ears intact, unaltered, and accurately preserved? Is it not integrity that compels the best of them to leave nary a trace of their own presence?
Sincerely,
Halscot Woodruff Smith
[Music and Culture Editor for over 17 years at Churchill, Ontario's periodical review of the environment in its entirety, Canadian Good and Green]
Dear Glenn Gould,
Well, when the second disc from your new double album for Columbia arrived at our office turntable, several people expressed surprise -- though not exactly dismay -- to learn that the most enduring Western musical art form had died. Who knew? Here in London, the conductor of the local symphony is a household name whose face graces billboards all over the city, and the local record emporium displays posters of yours as prominently as those of Tom Jones'. Still, "After playing Chopin," says Gilbert in Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist, "I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own." Using your record as a point of departure to discuss the issue, I decided to pop off a letter.
Gossip has reached me that you are a dedicated environmentalist and animal lover in your spare time. I can't say I know how you find so much of it. Perhaps you=92re just the zealous sort. I mean after all, if you've retired from performing and are no longer even recording piano music, but scripting skits; that is to say, if orchestral music has indeed been killed off even in your own life, then it must be dead indeed. Luckily, I have a happy proposition for you: Who cares? I must say that if that competitive performance spirit which bothers you so much didn't slay the dragon, cultural irrelevance would have. Why would a hierarchical, precious, European musical tradition thrive in the face of anyone-can-do-it, sex-symbol-charged, hit-parade rock 'n' roll? Shouldn't we be surprised the form has lasted this long? However much we may have liked it at one time, the healthy thing to do is 'follow the lieder', give t!
he tradition a decent burial and a glowing obit, and move on to the next thing.
And why not? I for one had no idea your speaking voice could be as charming as your celebrated piano concerts! And yet, I'm not exactly sure how popular music is going to fill the void (however small) left by 'serious art music'. It's probably not realistic to expect seriousness from Pet Clark. But maybe we could do without so much seriousness. I, as I'm sure you must, think it is as overrated in art as in life. What I mean to say is that if I have something of a grudge against classical music, a chip on my shoulder the size of the Ring Cycle, then I'm wondering whether you do, too.
On the other hand, I can completely understand where much of your famous 'eccentric' physical behavior comes from. Now, don't deny you know what I mean, hmm? All that humming, waving of hands while you play, rocking back and forth, and your rather-too-passionate interest in your body temperature and pulse rate. A little bird told me that you even wear gloves, hat, and coat in the height of summer... Turns out my own relationship with classical music has been just as shaky and complicated. Having had a bit of training in my younger years, I once tried to write a song for the office Christmas party. By the time I quit, I was throwing up every time I tried to notate even one measure. The process was so daunting it made me literally sick. I too just didn't see that I had anything new to offer the form.
But I think you may have a bit of the churlish bachelor in you. Clearly, this whole recording philosophy business is not the sort of thing you'd be occupying your time with if you were married (and I do think it's about time you dropped us poor columnists a bit of news on that front). After all, you could be quite the catch, if you'd just be willing to bend on a few practical difficulties, which I'm sure we could iron out in a more personal form of correspondence. You often speak of solitude, but I think people need people to be psychologically healthy. Can Canada really be so dour? Why not simply treat yourself to a little change of climate? Even if for just a short visit, I understand the Acapulco beaches are the place to be just now, and there are so many after hours discotheques perfect for a 'night person' such as yourself.
Let's face it, only the most rarefied of listeners give the weight of a Wagnerian soprano to music's nuances. Why should you bother keeping up such a complicated personality for people like that? And speaking of nuances in personality, I'm getting tired of the sound of my voice in my head. So, if you insist that you're too busy to telephone, do at least return my letter. And if you can, send an autographed photo for the girls here at the office.
Good luck,
Faye Rondewaist
[Special Craft Lifestyles consultant to the UK edition of Woman's World Observed. Review published 10/80.]
Monsieur Gould,
As if there were no preface to Karl Jaspers' Strindberg et Saussure, Signification et Swedenborg, your ancient essentialist schema, even more bare this time, once again appears in the guise of the second disc on your latest Columbia release, The Silver Jubilee Album.
In our post-phenomenological world, I would agree that a recording of musical speech signals the sole possible response to the discourse of our times. Yet what is the relevance of this formal schema when we turn to what is called your "Fantasy"? This sonic event, I call a rupture, a disruption, which presumably would have to have come about as soon as the structurality of structure had to begin to be thought, that is to say, repeated, and this is why I say that your disruption is repetition in every sense of the word.
You wish to make interpretations rather than performances, even with regard to all sounds of the "environment", n'est pas? Substitutes do not substitute themselves for any things which have somehow existed before them, Monsieur. For some time now, it has been necessary for me to begin thinking that you too perceive that there exists no center of musical presence, that the center could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center has no natural site, that it is not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions come into play. This is but of course the moment when language invades the universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a center or origin, everything becomes decentered discourse.
If this is so, then you must be aware that the entire history of the concept of structure, before the rupture of which we are speaking, must be thought of as a series of substitutions of center for center. The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, can be none other than the history of these metaphors and metonymies. It could, plus certainment, be shown that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated an invariable presence- eidos, arche, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject), aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth. You have predicted the death of the concert hall and the death of art. Is it not the absence of just such transcendental signifieds which extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely?
A careful socio-literary deconstruction of your numerological references to J.S. Bach lifts the veil to reveal only that you are still committed to a Western essenitalist dogma. I refer especially to the Freudian implications of your sound effects and to your technique of splicing overlapped voices. How can you, l'artiste extrordinaire, find yourself epistemologically superior to the play and re-play of phenomenological veils? "Meaningful" counterpoint between a recording and a listener, c'est mort! Against this violent hierarchy, against the pact of fear which gives birth to man and to God, the unity of deconstructed discourse must be restored.
from Quebec City,
Yves Nicaud
[review published 11/80 in the celebrated continental quarterly The Overtone]
Glenn Gould,
Wow, that was... intense. Full steam. Yeah, it's a talking record. It's like an "All right, let's rock." kind of talking record, totally over the top. Goddamn.
Last summer, I was looking through the dictionary, which I like to do a lot, and I saw the word "solipsist," which is one who thinks the world is an extension of himself. And I feel like that a lot, when I'm in album mode, when I'm making a record, or if I'm living in New York City. Everything tends to get very closed in. The only reason they make a subway train is to pack it full of people and stick you in it; that's how you feel at 7 a.m. on the train.
But you turn things around, and it's my kind of subversion. To me, it's really fascinating on that level, knowing the distortion of reality, and how you probably sit with people and have these power meetings. They are so full of shit, and you talk the shit with them, and they're nodding, and you think about the meaning of pain.
Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine. And that's why... How can I put this? I've got the will of the cockroach, but I'm more interested in being pretty good for a long time than being `very good' for two records. I would still like to be able to talk to young people when I'm older.
Not so sure why you had to make it a double lp though. What's with those piano tunes on the first half? I mean, I heard Mahler's Third Symphony last night, and the irony of that is like falling on your keys. Yeah, I respect good music; Harry Partch and Ken Nordine and all that shit. But I left the hall before the hour and a half was up.
But man, it wasn't too bad. I sat in the second row from the ceiling, and after about 45 minutes the heat of all those performers and listeners had risen and settled in the second tier. Now, at a Black Flag concert, everyone would have done what was natural and stripped down. But it was a classical concert, so we sat there, clothed and suffering, and then, at the conclusion of the longest hour and a half in human history, we clapped politely our approval. Not only do I not give a fuck; it gets me hostile at some guy who I could kill with my hands, who, like, gets to wield his fake superiority over me.
But, hey. Keith Richards says that there is an art to listening. I say listening, not hearing. Ducks, like Stravinsky says, also hear. So I'm in. I'm back in. Yeah, that's me.
You get it done. Go fuck people up.
Henry Rollins
[An open editorial from the 1/81 issue of Manhattan's now defunct punk fanzine Snot on the Dot.]