Partita for Glenn Gould by Georges Leroux

Author:Georges Leroux [Leroux, G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gould never stopped reading, never stopped writing. What is available to us of what he wrote, in particular the published selections from his letters, reveals someone for whom writing played a significant role. Gould was always a conscientious correspondent, careful to make the proper response and to be precise on all fronts. In his writings, we can trace the progress of several of his projects, for example the Solitude Trilogy, and chart the development of his ideas as work progressed. The diary to which he committed – often, alas, cryptically – the serious crisis when he was both depressed and anxious about his playing, is a perfect example of what he expected of the act of writing: it was a chronicle, a record of his life in art, and a developmental tool to help him master a situation. No one would go so far as to say that Gould was a talented writer, but he had a passion for writing that nourished his passion for communicating. This life in writing went along with his passion for documenting a subject, as we can see in his radio broadcasts, such as his series on Casals and Stokowski; he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of musical history and an opinion on everything. The volume of his writing is impressive, but its diversity impresses even more: musicological discussions, his mastery of which was evident from the start in the texts he wrote to accompany his first recordings, are only the best-known examples. Consider the important work he produced on Arnold Schoenberg, for example the 1974 CBC Radio series made available to us by Ghyslaine Guertin, well represent his aesthetic methodology and preoccupations. And consider his many commentaries on technology and the media. Finally, there are his personal writings, including a number of complex interviews and autobiographical fragments. All these texts have their own point of origin: Gould’s apartment in Toronto, site of his isolation.

In this accumulation of writings, there is of course a wealth of artifice and complex argumentation, Gould never seeming to know what public, exactly, he was addressing, but no one can doubt the authenticity of his mission to communicate a conviction, an intensity, a comprehension of the music. I know of few performers who have written so much, and even fewer who have done so with such candour. At no time does Gould take even the most basic precautions; he doesn’t worry about subtleties or the impact of a cutting judgment, he exposes his vulnerability, and always writes as if he is the only one to speak of the works, to propose a radical reading, and to experience them from inside to the degree that he does. To read him without irritation requires a confidence and a camaraderie akin to what he imagined was his own vis-à-vis the musicians and writers he admired. He received in return many objections and criticisms, and even low blows. But I do not think he was ever wounded by academic scholarship, whose pretensions he joyously caricatured,

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