Canadian Glenn Gould was an eccentric genius of the piano, as well as a writer, composer, and broadcaster. Gould had one of the most cultivated classical keyboard techniques of the century. He exerted total control over his playing, demonstrating the most precise finger technique, remarkable rhythmic ingenuity, a strong sense of dynamics, plus an emotional empathy with and a clear intellectual understanding of all that he performed.
Glenn Herbert Gould was born in Toronto, Canada, in September 1932. A child prodigy, he trained at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music from 1942–45, studying under Alberto Guerrero (piano) and Frederick Silvester (organ). He was quick to impress, winning the Conservatory’s associateship gold medal when he was only 12 years old. Gould made his performing debut at 14, playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He toured throughout Canada for the next few years, making concert and radio appearances, and his studies at this time concentrated in particular on the modern Viennese school (made up of composers such as Schoenberg, Berg and Webern).
Gould’s first concerts in the United States were in 1955, when he performed in both Washington, D.C., and New York. He achieved celebrity with his performance of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which won him not only critical acclaim, but also a recording contract with Columbia Records. The recording of the piece went on to become a best-seller. He performed with many American orchestras in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Gould took to the international stage in 1957, touring the Soviet Union, Europe, and Israel with Herbert von KARAJAN and the Berlin Philharmonic.
In spite of his tremendous success as a live performer, he abandoned the stage for the recording studio in 1964, when still only 32 years old. The rest of his life was devoted to building a fine catalogue of recordings because he thought the concert hall was becoming obsolete, and that it would disappear completely by the year 2000. His recordings included the complete piano music of SCHOENBERG and a number of pieces outside the standard repertory.
Gould was very eccentric, with many unusual mannerisms that matched his unique playing style. He would, for example, appear in public on warm days muffled in an overcoat, scarf, hat, and gloves. He would only grant press interviews on the telephone, and he could clearly be heard singing or humming while he played, both in concerts and in the studio. These quirky traits of character simply endeared him further to his admiring public.
Gould also wrote articles for High Fidelity and Saturday Review, proving himself a brilliant, controversial, verbose, and witty writer. He conducted interviews on radio programs and was an occasional composer— his Op. 1 being an exceptionally beautiful piece for string quartet. It is a powerful and highly emotional fugue, somewhat reminiscent of Schoenberg’s early writing style. He also arranged and performed the score, based on Bach, for the 1972 film adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse Five.
In 1993, a film honouring Gould was released, entitled 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. The film is a revealing and affecting biography, tracing the pianist from childhood to his premature death, and touching on his private and professional lives. On his death in 1982, Gould left half of his estate to an animal shelter, and the other half to the Salvation Army.
Richard Trombley
SEE ALSO:
AUTHENTIC PERFORMANCE; CHAMBER MUSIC; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC; RECORD PRODUCTION.
FURTHER READING
Payzant, Geoffrey. Glenn Gould: Music & Mind (Toronto: Key Porter, 1992);
Sachs, Harvey. Virtuoso: The Life and Art of… Glenn Gould (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Bach: Goldberg Variations; Johannes Brahms: Ballades, Op. 10.