GG: The Gould Variations

[Anne-Maree Kate ENGLUND 9104791 <e9104791@rainbow.anu.edu.au>]

> This weekend, I watched a movie called The Gould Variations, directed by
> Manuel Huerga.


> Throughout the film I kept thinking of the members of the f_minor list and
> how comments, such as the one about the idea of sound, would be met.  Has
> anyone else seen the film, and if so, how did you find it?

Yes, I saw the film on television a couple of years ago.  
It was part of a series called Masterpiece, where they have a 
documentary about a different person each week.

I enjoyed it very much 
and was particularly amused by Glenn's comparison of Richard Strauss to a 
chocolate sundae.

I found the Hungarian narrator quite irritating and not particulalry informative. 
(Oh! The second recording of the Goldbergs is so COSMIC!!!!!), and would probably 
have been happier if they'd used more footage of Glenn to narrate the documentary - 
he speaks fairly well for himself.  Certainly it seems obvious from his ``contrapuntal 
radio'' and recording experiments with different mike perspecives, that he was 
interested in sound.  But was he more interested in the ``idea of sound'' 
than in music?  I doubt it.  There isn't a lot of intellectual meat in 
the idea of sound unless you're a physicist, and I don't think the idea could 
have satisfied his obvious delight in musical structures.

I thought it was interesting that they finished it up with the bit about Voyager, 
just like in 32 short films.  Is this where Francois Girad got the idea from?......

Anne-Maree Englund
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Dept Engineering, ANU Canberra