How I Discovered Glenn Gould

[khutchin@us.ibm.com]

This is an interesting topic for discussion.

First a little background, I'm in my mid 40s,
which puts me in the age brackets that would
have caught Sinatra in his fifties, The Beatles and
Rock in its infancy, and Glenn Gould just passing
away from public performances.

Needless to say, after listening to the Beatles and
top 40 music through the mid 1960s, I moved to
listening to Sinatra, American Popular Music
standards, and later jazz from say 1967 through
about 1974. Sinatra continues till this day. I'm
involved with a Sinatra mailing list, and have written
an essay for a book of essays on Frank Sinatra and
Popular Culture.

Sometime in 1974, while working my way through
college, I became aware of classical music --
mostly instrumental, some opera. At the time,
my listening habits weree driven by recommendations
to listen to Toscanini, Szell (picked up the complete
Beethoven Symphonies and Piano Concertos with
Emil Giles or was it Fleisher???). While I listened to
some Bach, it was mostly limited to the Brandenburgs
for several years. Perhaps broadened when the
"Go For Baroque" movement was hitting the stores.

I was probably aware of Gould, but certainly not with
any passion or any reason to collect his music. In fact,
as CDs were hitting the market, I can remember buying
some Columbia's Piano's Greatest Hits or something, which
I think had at least three volumes, some of which inc luded
Gould recordings. However, in no case, was their any
desire to listen to any other music of Gould.

Which brings us to December 1999. For some reason, while
adding to my renewed interest in the music of Bach, I decided
to buy a Gould recording. Then I saw a couple of books on
Gould, and probably remembered looking at a couple of the
older biographies and their New York Times reviews. Then
I purchased a couple of books, and then started buying the
rest of the Gould recordings. In fact, when I cleaned out the
local Tower store(s) of their Gould Editions, I think searched
the Internet to complete the collection. I did the same with
the Sony video collection as well.

I now have virutally all of the available biographies, as well
as the Columbia/Sony recording and videos, the CBC's
available CDs, and the imusic treatment of Gould's music.
I'm still waiting for The New Listener -- the reviews of which
probably contributed to me looking for Gould material! I did
manage to pick up the BIS recording, but unfortunately,
have not been able to come up with the Music and Arts offerings.

I find the music very interesting - and certainly different than
many of the other versions of similar music. In his own way,
I can see a similar dedicated approach to music in both
Sinatra and Gould. Although in the end, Sinatra needed the
audience feedback to live -- Gould needed a person  to listen
to for long periods of time.

Finally, I did join the Glenn Gould Foundation. Now I just have to get
the releases that were made available during last year's conference.


Ken Hutchins