Re: GG:Glenn chat/Sony

[Ron Davis <rdavis@chass.utoronto.ca>]

Greetings.

I am new to this list. I am heartened to note Junichi Miyazawa's
participation, as he is someone who has done important and serious work on
Glenn Gould.

Mary Jo Watts' forward of Jennifer Henderson/Sony's message prompts me to
vent my views on the GG industry: I believe that Sony's treatment of the GG
legacy has been abominable and tasteless. Sony has packaged and repackaged
the recordings in multiple configurations that oblige music lovers to
purchase the same pieces again and again (never the mind the sequential
non-reasoning behind some of the reissues: e.g. the Glenn Gould Edition).
And they have squashed serious efforts (such as those by Music and Arts) to
release otherwise unavailable material.

Then there's Sony's unforgiveably butchered GG video series. Why could the
TV footage not be released integrally (as was the case for the 3 Monsaingeon
videos)? What hugger-mugger principles governed the decision to group the
videos thematically? And where are those "themes" anyway- certainly not in
(most of) the footage? How could Sony have led the wonderful Bruno
Monsaingeon to participate in this unappetizing slice-and-dice entreprise? 

Sony's mucking up is of course is a mere token of the GG posthumous
management industry: you know- the one that puts on piano competitions (good
grief! a GG piano competition- I still haven't recovered from that one), but
tries to suppress brilliant books like Jock Carroll's; the one that puts out
press releases, but won't release CD's with multiple takes of a piece,
thereby  implementing GG's oft-expressed wish to allow the listener to do
his/her own mixing; the one that has yet to make any radio footage (other
than the Solitude Trilogy) available...

So to Sony and all the other members of the GG posthumous management
industry: live long and prosper (the latter being of course the
desideratum). To those truly interested in GG's brilliant art: the way lies
elsewhere.

Ron


Ron Davis  / Assistant Professor 
Department of French  / University of Toronto
Vox: (416) 929-2324 / Fax: (416) 929-1087
e-mail: rdavis@chass.utoronto.ca