Re: WARNING: This discussion could be deadly!

[David Pelletier <PROMONDE@aol.com>]

The point of your discussion: Who would want to be...... and why?

Sometimes the struggle to get to a plateau where you find yourself its only
occupant is, to some a difficult task. To find no other joiners or others
attempting to reach an equivalent plateau has a tendency to make you question
what sets you apart. Delving into that realm, when the only person available
to question your actions is yourself can spawn answers that further removes
you from the company of the competition. Thus you tend to believe in "the
supreme value of what you are doing."  Who was GG to turn to with his
perceptions, technical questions, excitement?

Not everyone is equipped to display their work, as well as the motivistic
mechanisms that allowed for its creation, in the usual acceptable manner. Too
often we see someone finish their journey, not knowing how they started, what
they encountered along the way, nor what made them start in the first place.
Such exposition would probably turn up as many quirks as we have found under t
he GG microscope. Unfortunately, the impact of many of those performers has
had far less impact and certainly hasn't been able to generate the forensic
interest.

Glenn Gould's legacy is this: he left behind a body of work "that relatively
unsophisticated listeners are capable of responding strongly and
enthusiastically to what they perceive  as musical power, commitment and
skill." "That the untutored should, on occasion, reach sounder judgments than
professionals should not be that surprising."  "....the very conformity to
tradition that makes them  (professionals) indispensable as conservers can
function both to rob their own work of interest and to disable them as judges
of a single, enormously rare, enormously gifted individual." (from 1979:
Samuel Lipman)   DP