GG in The Classic Voice

From theItalian Magazine "The Classic Voice" page 42

"Glenn Gould : ‘Absolute even egocentric’ "

"We don’t are yet in accord. To seventy years from the birth and to twenty from the disappearance the figure of the Canadian pianist continues to arouse conflicting reactions. Here the exemplary reasons of a "defense" and of a "accusation". To you the verdict."

Nostalgia of an extreme reason by Quirino Principe

Well I am sided impudently for Glenn Gould. To remove the misunderstandings: I don't belong to the zoological kind that takes left for this or for that interpreter, with a spirit of fan of the sport and don’t care of the music in the own meaning of the word.The discussions in more or less abilities on Callas and Tebaldi make me furious or similar, those more or less muscular on Gilels and Richter, those more or less water divining on Muti and Abbado.I find you it boring and detestable, and, worse, depressing.The house is burning and goes to look for the butterflies under the arc of Tito. I don't side for Glenn Gould against an other pianist, and not even against an other manner of play or of stay sat hunchbacked or not hunchbacked to the keyboard or of choose what play or of opt for a solitary or public, direct or recorded execution.Apart from the stupidity of the typhus according to the Gluck model- Piccinni (or Bartali- Coppi, that is almost the same), they am all interesting but secondary options. I side for Glenn Gould thank to the themes that he has lifted with his way of be musician(before that pianist)! and thank to the implied idea of music or declared idea of music in Gould’s written from those themes.. The ideas are more and more important of the people that represent it, the words are more important than the things, the abstract is more important than the concrete, the archetypes are more important than the world. Like Aristotle has written: the craftsman owes must hide behind the own work.I try to reassume the man’s aspect that has stayed judged with surprise and often with hostility. Gould would have betrayed the natural function of the interpreter and. worse, of the true musician, devoting less of to the communication of his art in public, and all the rest of the brief life (worse , the culminating part and final part of the life) to the recording of his talent, to the cooling of what he could have done, and all in name of an abstract perfection that would deny the life. From this induced [siè] a sovereign contempt for the public and in general for the others, without which the musical communication would be nothing. To the guilt of the despise is been wanted add the accusation of snobbery and of exhibitionism, what on the other hand pushed Gould to declare: "No, I’ am not an eccentric," like quote the Italian title of a book that picks up his interviews and other.Accused Gould is been not certain of be missing (excluded in a man of this cultural thinness) but of make fun of the historical sense; of have a snobbish preference for the part for piano of the Lieder [op]. 67 and 68 of Richard Strauss and generally of play at the piano music not for piano and not for soloist . ; of tell horrendous thimgs about Beethoven and, about Mozart; of utter an iniquitous judgment on Mahler; of impose undue times like it was the case of the Concert op.. 15 of Brahms whose execution in"Gould" style pushed Bernstein to the famous I distinguish;of feel immodestly the first of the class, what induced Thomas Bernhard to his interpretation of Gould in "Der Untergeher (but justly Mario Bortolotto in his preface to the "Ala del turbine intelligente" Italian edition of "The Glenn Gould Reader"spoke about the modesty like virtue of the ragamuffins).Remixing the papers seemed to me that from these heads of accusation to emerge the highest Gould’s glory He has frustrated, transforming his radicalism in genial boldness, a series of miserable words of order and of querelles. Sweep by the matter of the original instrument and historically in "style": affirmed the supremacy of the music on the instrument and on the interpreter.Broken the athletics image of the hero at the piano , symbiotic with his healthy instrument, vital, winner.The music, like each art, it is illness, exclusion from the world, antithetical to the sociability and to the "heat of cow" of which spoke with derision Thomas Mann for mouth of Adrian Leverkuhn ( this fictitious character and therefore more true than the reality, is like Gould!). The shine radiated from the public execution entrusted to a summit talent is admirable, but to isolate that space and that time, and change it in a garden and in a fortitude; to underline and to embitters the difference of the music as regards the world, that is his brittleness.We don't know if the big music, like has written Adorno in a his spine-chilling page, it is an episode that in the history of the civilization would have destined to ephemeral life and duration. We don’t knows,, if am it historically, because for essence suspects that the music precedes the world and survives him after his end. To dehumanized the music (if such it is the accusation, and if all or partly she is truthful) could reveal the persistence of the good music over of the warm vitality and sociability.. In this manner seemed to me we must be thought about Gould Gould, twenty years from his death, and I that's why I side for him.

His Gioconda had the moustaches by Guido Salvetti

That there has stayed and that persist a "Gould phenomenon" (any troubles the old fashion word "myth" ) its evident. Like tell: Is almost impossible listen to him indeed, like another very excellent pianist. The biographical datum prevails, the clinical report, the shrewd writing, the adoration of the admirers, the exaggeration and the raving. Glenn Gould don’t appreciate that, not at all. The whole news tell us that his problems of relation was serious thing, not a pose, his fear of the public was true , not invented. His idiosyncrasies for htis o or that style, for this or that author, branded him really. He was not a "beautiful tenebrous" in exhibition, a person in meal to dames . He was a serious person . Even if too much have forgotten he was a musician. The rest should not interest.Besides I think that nobody would speak about Gould like composer, like organist or like performer at the harpsichord if has not stayed big like pianist. But also like pianist, nobody would remember it like collaborator of singers or of quartets, sees the problems that make to his partner up to do them go out of nerves. A big soloists pianist was, even solitary, that ran away from the public that cough slightly and speak slighty for choose the silence of the recording study. Kind of himself and never yet indeed happy of himself .There is like a certain greatness is seen: what do we recognize to the big set apart (but there are still any?); to those that they believe indeed in what do they do to the point of leave us the skin, if necessary. Chapeau!The respect doesn't prevent from listen to and appraise: Not that they are missing evaluations, also very variegated, you on his interpretations deliver the history in form of recording . Therere is even, an infinity, you almost all flatten on the standard of the absolute values ( "Oh, the an or the other edition of the Goldberg Variations!" "Oh "his" Nine hundred"!) and on the reserves for the his been missing romanticism. But ,is frequent case that these reserves on the been missing Gould’s romanticisme changes in titles of worth, because there are legions those that the romanticismedoesn't love because it they don't want understand it ,because is too much hard to understand it.Ther is sadisfaction , when they spread the upset notes of his Schumann or of the his last Beethoven. Gould has done the revenges for account of whoever prefers a "Ordre" of Couperin to a "Symphonic Poem" of Richard Strauss . Of these inconsiderate we have the full world .It is not his guilt , someone could object. And it is true: no pianist could be forced to love what he is playing. Yet his Sonatas of Mozart or they of Beethoven seem fruit of a perfidy, of an intentional crime .And what sense could never have behavior the work of rouse a sonata of Grieg or a Sonata of Strauss for then to pepper it with shot?This, then, seems me the knot: Gould was a serious person: His choices were deep and motivate.To need a true effort, therefore, for understand what it could never connect the wonder of the Goldberg with the deformities dell'op.111.I think that this connection stays in the way with which Glenn Gould stays in front of the musical page.For him the music from the remote past or hte next past was a whole of signs.. These signs seemed him prescriptive, above all for the height of the notes and their duration. The rest (times, accents, order of the voices, dynamic, etc.) was for him an invitation to the free creative choice. To the will, would be better tell.His interpretations of Bach are not therefore more beautiful than those of Beethoven: Bach bears (with his pages practically white of other signs that are not the height and the duration of the notes) a similar exorbitant immission of subjectivity.Beethoven that, if he is known , he entrust the page written most accurate prescriptions, he goes out some violated, distorted: a Gioconda with the moustaches. Gould however, don’t desecrate. He was instead perfectly egocentric, I don't sole toward the public but also toward the authors that he happened under the fingers and on his keyboard. Didn't the question ever be set "Which will the intention of the author have stayed"?. Each time was told: "Like will I succeed to perfect being in the realize this sketch of sounds on the piano?" His search was not therefore a search of sens . Was a search of sonorous structure. That does the joy of the formalist : justly: a big, eternal Bach polifonista and precise obsessive in the rhythm; a Bach that perhaps has not ever existed, but to act like measure and model of whoever other before and after of him. Nobody could deny that many executions of Gould are magnificent, haughties, insuperable.: but not even in these cases these executions rise to the rank of "interpretation." They don't bear from a dialogue with whoever has thought, creating that music: they bear from a pure and simple conscience of the pianist that is compared, here and , with the own instrument. That is why, if we still could speak about myth, I think that Gould is a negative myth: it needs to know him for avoid it.His greatness circumscribed in the time and in the place in which it was to act. risks of give birth grandsons deformed intent to make to tinkle pianos from the unlikely sound. Of these people, that so much is already, not you feels any quite still the need.

Translated by Valeria Massari