Re: GG: GG as vocalist

[Tim Conway <tpconway@ozemail.com.au>]

I too find GG's humming a most attractive part of his playing. I have 
often wondered why he did it so much. After seeing some GG videos for the 
first time recently, and after reading other people's ideas on the matter 
in recent messages, I have formed a most preposterous hypothesis that 
should be laughed out of court, exiled and thrashed to within an inch of 
its life, so I am offering it to f-minor as The Only True Reason Why That 
Gould Guy Sang.

I once heard of a war casualty who lost the use of a hand after his wrist 
was badly cut. After the war, remedial surgery was used to sever and then 
rejoin the nerves in the damaged wrist. The operation worked up to a 
point, but the poor chap found that his 'repaired' thumb mirrored the 
actions of the other thumb at all times. As this was in the days before 
zips became common, he found it very difficult to do up and undo his fly 
buttons. Playing the piano -- indeed, playing most instruments -- was 
impossible (what a marvellous challenge for JSB to tackle: a mirror-image 
or inversions-only fugue that this guy could play).

This chap had his two thumbs 'hard-wired' together. I would like to 
suggest that Gould's humming/singing was soft-wired to his piano playing. 
There was a definite connection between playing and singing. The war 
casualty could not control his wayward thumb, no matter how hard he 
tried. GG, on the other hand (pardon), could stop his singing -- but only 
at some cost: his playing deteriorated.

Perhaps, to Gould, the sound produced when playing the piano was a 
secondary result. Perhaps the primary objective was to reproduce an 
interaction between hands and keyboard. When most people read music while 
playing the piano there is a chain of events that starts with the 
recognition of the notes shown on the score, proceeds to the allocation 
of the various notes to the fingers, goes on to the pressing of the keys, 
and ends with an aural feedback confirming that the translation from 
notes-on-score to glorious sound was done properly. Maybe GG was 
different. Maybe his real thrill -- and therefore his motive for playing 
-- was to flesh out the bare bones of the score into concrete action. He 
didn't need the resulting sound -- he could hear that in his head anyway. 
What GG was trying to do was to reproduce the very actions used by the 
composer of the score. His knowledge of music and musicians was 
encyclopedic, so he could read a score once and remember it, then mull it 
over in his mind until he _knew_ what it was about those notes that had 
inspired the composer to write them down. Glenn Gould: the perfect 
translator.

So why the singing and humming? Because the sound the piano produced got 
in the way of his enjoyment. He used the singing to block out the piano's 
sound so that he could concentrate on the very action of playing the 
piece, and doing so properly. That is why he closes his eyes, seems 
almost to roll them up like someone in a trance, and clearly does his 
best to concentrate -- but not on the sound the piano is making. He is 
concentrating on the way he is sure the composer played. He is 
reproducing his arm, hand, wrist and body actions.

There is some evidence for this. GG is reported to have placed noisy 
vacuum cleaners (I think) and even hifi speakers on either side of him 
while he practised. He was trying to block the sound the piano was making 
from his mind. But that was when he was young and his voice was a 
child's. When his voice deepened it alone was enough to drown out the 
piano and let him concentrate purely on his physical movements.

One might object that there is little difference between the music 
produced by the piano and the music produced by the human voice, and 
therefore how could GG's singing block out the piano? Well, all I can say 
is that I know a woman who can't sing for toffee. If she gets within a 
tone of the note she thinks she is singing, that's good. But when she 
plays the piano she knows immediately she has played a wrong note, and 
she knows it from the sound it makes. To her the sound of the voice is 
simply not music (and we all have to agree with her when she tries to 
sing).

As you can tell, this hypothesis is truly half-baked. I haven't given it 
enough time to mature. You may also discern how poor I am at even amateur 
psychology. Nonetheless, I am sure there is a PhD somewhere in this mess 
and I am open to offers for the use of Conway's Conjecture, (unless of 
course someone has already thought of it and I'm repeating a well-known 
theory -- in which case, D**n). Thank you for your patience...and please 
don't assume I agree with a word of what I have written.

Tim Conway
<tpconway@ozemail.com.au>