re: Intros

[Donald McCune <dcm01@www.gnofn.org>]

Mary Jo Watts wrote:
 
> So many people have come and gone on the list (which hovers in membership
> around 170 people from around 14 different countries) that I'd like to
> extend the request for new members to introduce themselves, maybe
> explain how you got interested in Gould, what your favorite recordings
> are, etc.

Recent lurker here, Mary Jo.  Greetings from N'Awlins, where today
dawned 79 degrees and muggy, with the coffee laced with chicory, a
swarm of Formosan termites and the boss mockingbird singing his heart
out nearby.

My first and greatest gift from GG was to get me inside Bach.  Back
at the turn of the midcentury, the Goldberg meant harpsichord and
Wanda Landowska:  discriminating, fastidious, delicate, refined.
Here comes this weird, gangly kid to make us hear it with new ears.
And the thousands of words in his hilarious liner notes were alone
worth the price of admission ($3.98).

GG is not everyone's cup of tea.  In the late fifties, I was
stationed near Huntsville AL and moolighted as a deejay.  Many in the
large German workforce at the spaceflight center did not care for my
broadcasting of this young revisionist's Goldberg.  For my part, I've
never grown used to his later rethinking of the work; GG's late
Goldberg seems to me to come from some parallel universe.  Ah, well.
Absorbing, nonetheless.

Let me present Canadian credentials:  My mother's family settled in
Brockville, Ontario, on the St. Lawrence.  Now let me add that it has
never struck me that GG "belongs to" Canada any more than Bach to
Germany or, say, David Oistrakh or Sviatoslav Richter to the Soviet
Union.  Or Martha Argerich to crypto-Europa. :)   They belong to the
world.  Canada may proudly claim parentage and influence on this
great and cantankerous artist.

I trailed writer Pamela Plummer here from Listening-l, captivated by
her superb way with words.  Happy to be here.  Laissez le bon temps
roulez.
                                            
                                                        Donald 

Donald McCune <donald.mccune@nopc.org>      |||      <dcm01@gnofn.org>