More has been said and written about Glenn Gould than about any other classical musician of the 20th century.
The late pianist and broadcaster is classical music’s Elvis, growing larger in death than he was in an already public life. Only instead of Elvis’s kitsch factor, he had a peculiar geek factor. Instead of helping popularize a new kind of music, like Elvis with rock ‘n’ roll, Gould made an old kind of music sound new again.
As we approach what would have been his 75th birthday on Tuesday – and the 25th anniversary of his death on Oct. 4 – we have to wonder if any place in the world will ever again produce a concert phenomenon like this lifelong ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½nian.
Popular culture in 2007 is much different from that of 60 years ago, when Gould made his Massey Hall debut with the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Symphony.
One of the keys to understanding the phenomena of pianist Vladimir Horowitz, conductor Arturo Toscanini or Glenn Gould lies in North American middle-class musical culture of the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, according to Gould biographer Kevin Bazzana.
“Nearly half of middle-class adults had a relationship with classical music at that time,” says Bazzana, whose book Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould is considered to be the definitive biography so far.
Because of this connection between popular culture and classical music, it was easier for Gould to become a household name, for people to rush to the record store to buy his latest long-playing record.
I remember once visiting grandparents as a little boy, probably in the early ‘70s. Their open door created an endless riot of family and friends indoors. Yet, that afternoon, everything came to a halt because Gould was going to be on TV.
Adults and kids were silenced as the black-and-white TV set flickered to life. For the next half hour, we were transfixed by the image of a strange man humming, gesticulating, practically crouched at his keyboard, weaving magical piano music.
With so much of Gould’s output preserved on DVD, many of us continue to stop the roistering of the world to commune with this man’s eccentric, yet magnetically compelling, musical vision.
Bazzana says that Gould came along in the record business at the perfect time: “Columbia (his label) was run by people who played musical instruments – imagine!”
The CBC had money to spend on daily live radio concerts and documentaries, spurring Gould to develop his lifelong “love affair with the microphone,” as he once said in an interview.
Gould was featured in the CBC’s first English-language television broadcast, and remained a frequent presence thereafter.
The pianist, who hated the stress of performing live, quit the concert stage after a decade of sometimes intense touring that included the first visit of a Canadian artist to the U.S.S.R. There, just like everywhere else he went, he left audiences staggered by his musicianship.
The power of his art was so strong that no one cared how strangely he behaved on stage.
But after 1964, he sequestered himself behind studio walls and, contrary to commercial wisdom that still applies today, managed to sell even more records than when he was appearing live.
“There was always a venue for him,” says Bazzana. “But it’s hard to imagine today.”
In 2007, despite healthy ticket and disc sales, classical music is largely considered to be on the fringes of mainstream culture.
“We have made of classical music something so serious, something almost religious, that many people don’t feel comfortable approaching it anymore,” says internationally applauded Canadian pianist Alain Lefevre. “There are two or three generations of people who no longer feel comfortable inside a concert hall.”
At the same time, music schools and universities churn out thousands of new graduates every year.
“There was a time when there were too many pianists. Now there are as many violinists as there are clarinetists, and everything else,” says Lefevre.
“The environment is so different today,” says ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ pianist Patricia Parr, 70, who made her ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Symphony debut at age 9, and appeared at New York’s Carnegie Hall a year later, in 1947. Since 1974, she has taught piano performance at the University of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ and at the Royal Conservatory of Music.
“There are so many great young pianists out there,” says Parr. “You have to win a competition to get noticed.”
Yet aside from participating in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½’s first Kiwanis festival in his early teens, Gould stayed away from competitions.
“What really made Glenn famous was the release of (J.S. Bach’s) Goldberg Variations,” in 1955, says Parr. “That would never happen today. You have to establish yourself before a record company will even look at you.”
Yet as we chat, Parr eventually concedes Gould “was so good at it that he would find a way to succeed at it today.” It is a view echoed by ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ artist managers Richard Paul and Andrew Kwan.
Gould’s own agent, former ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ Symphony general manager Walter Homburger, agrees: “A Glenn Gould will always come out at the top. He was a genius and he played unique piano. You might not agree necessarily with how he played, but he was unique.”
Paul thinks an eccentric personality is an asset in an age where too many people are clamouring for our attention in all forms of media: “There is lots of room and almost a necessity today for individuals such as Glenn Gould.”
We also know that someone like him does not show up on stage or disc every day. Parr, who knew Gould and heard him perform live, says that, in 35 years of teaching, she has only had one student – a 17-year-old she currently teaches privately – “knock her socks off.”
Yes there will be pianists who dazzle us. Will they have the luck to be born at the right time and place, and with the special ingredient that will take them beyond the now-less-mainstream world of classical music?
Liss Jeffrey, director of the McLuhan global research network at the University of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, thinks it could happen: “The power of Internet-assisted digital media will make it even more possible for stellar artists who are – and whose work is – eccentric, original, and even marginal to find their enthusiastic audiences, and for those enthusiasts to share their discovery with a wider and wider popular consciousness.”
We can’t forget that, among his many talents, Gould was a prophet of the 21st century – regarding recording technology, creating personalized playlists and wanting music all around him all day long (something he called “electronic wallpaper”).
He knew a performer had to be unique in a media-saturated age. In a 1966 BBC interview, Gould left a lesson to ponder at a time of “super-recording technique and super artists and super engineers:”
“I think that all the basic statements have been made for posterity. Now, what I think we must do is find our way around, try to find a raison d’être that is somehow different and yet is somehow right ...
“The key to it is to turn performance into composition.”
In other words, someone will have to reinvent how we listen to music all over again.
