Fw: Re: Gould vrs Horowitz?

[Elmer Elevator <bobmer@javanet.com>]

I don't know much about Gould's negative feelings about Horowitz, but I
recall a famous rumor/legend that Gould stumbled across an editing session
of Horowitz in the studio one night. The editors/engineers were having
trouble with a short badly recorded passage, so, with great glee, Gould
(allegedly, purportedly) ran to the piano and mimicked the passage a la
Horowitz so the editors could splice it into the Horowitz recording. Later
he loved to point to the Horowitz recording and whisper, "I'm on that, can
you find my playing on that?"

There are two issues in this thread. One is: Was Gould a wonderful human and
nice fellow?

I have no trouble at all believing and saying: Yes, absolutely, I would have
been thrilled to have known him, to have had the privilege of being close to
him.

But if the alleged Horowitz rivalry represents to some Gould's "dark side,"
I think it's simpler and far more natural and much less negative than that.

Anyone who aspires to be the world's best at something in the creative arts
has at his/her core a huge, massive ego. You can't "compete" -- if this is
the proper term for what Gould did or believed he did -- at that
top-of-the-world level without such a huge ego.

And such an ego makes an artist extremely sensitive, sometimes even
paranoid, about those he perceives as his peers or "competitors." It would
have been impossible for Gould to read a reviewer's unbridled praise of
Horowitz without its raising hackles.

Hemingway loathed Faulkner because his competitive paranoia made him suspect
(I think correctly) that Faulkner was his better as a novelist and
storyteller.

Having such feelings about the handful of peers at Gould's level is simply
an inevitable and very natural thing. The only reason we discuss Gould here
is because he had ambitions to be the world's greatest interpreter of Bach
and other classical music. And with such artists -- there is just no way
around it for such prima-donna-esque people -- come intense feelings of
competition, envy, suspicion, loathing.

Of all the people with whom Gould was personally close, I don't recall a
single pianist of world reknown. Such friendships are almost impossible to
sustain among artists. The best you can hope for is chilly and grudging but
sincere respect and admiration, preferably at a distance, by mail/post.

Bob