GG: The G'berg video

[Mary Jo Watts <mwatts@rci.rutgers.edu>]

Many thanks to Mary Lause (Hi Mary!) who receives f_minor digested off
line and corresponds via snailmail with some of us.  She's just sent me
the most interesting article:

"Rerecording the G'berg Vars.-- Glenn Gould's Workshop" by Ken Forfia.
_Piano and Keyboard_ Sept/oct 1995 pp 34-38.

For those of you who ever wanted to sneak into Bruno Monsaingeon's
editing booth, Forfia chronicles the out-takes-- what happened during
the G'Berg video recording while the camera was rolling between takes. 
(I don't know where this out-take footage is housed.) 

The most amusing bit for me was when during a technical break someone in
the booth asks GG if he takes requests.  GG agrees to play Duke
Ellington's "Caravan": "Gould actually begins to deliver it canonically
in the keyboard's lower register but breaks off laughing."

Other interesting details re: GG's look in the film.  That blue shirt
had lost a button and the unrolled cuffs actually *were* getting in the
way of some hand cross overs but GG insisted that he just deal with it
because he'd begun in the shirt and wanted the video to appear as if it
were one continuous performance.  Also he actually thought to cross his
legs to give the film a casual atmosphere.  To me this is what GG meant
by that famous "art phasing itself out" comment-- simply that art would
be so much a part of our daily lives that it needn't be treated with any
ceremony at all-- no "capes and temper tantrums."   How much trouble he
went to in order to appear "casual"!

-MJ