Re: Richter, Gould-moving with the flow.....

[Kate Clunies-Ross <goldbergs@TALK21.COM>]

Alice wrote

> I question that Gould's movement while playing was staged in any way only
> because when i watch tapes of him playing, I  actually feel sort of
> embarrassed for him (or by him?)!  I guess I don't believe that someone
> would purposely *look* that way for affectation.  Perhaps I am wrong, and I
> guess we'll never know for sure, but it just seems like it would have been a
> lot of effort to do all that moving around and making ecstatic faces and
> also focusing on the music?  Maybe it depended on what and why he was
> playing (any musicians out there with some input?).

Well I'm not a musician, but I agree that it wasnt "staged' for the benefit
of onlookers. In fact I have read that people who glimpsed him rehearsing
for recording sessions, when he believed himself to be unobserved, reported
that he still made the same gestures and movements.

Gould  himself wrote (in a letter dated 12th April 1967) to a fan who
questioned the reason for his 'gesticulations" :-
"I would indeed like to think that they represent that they represent a kind
of intensifying relation to music that you very generously suggested. But
its hard to know, since I have never been able to play the piano without
gesturing semaphorically toward an imaginary horde of sidemen. I suspect
that it has to do with a desire to externalize, not the music oe even one's
relation to it, but perhaps the responsibility for it. That sounds rather
strange I know, but .....it is the only relevant answer I can arrive at."
(Well. yes, Glenn, it does sound rather strange and I for one am not at all
sure what you mean!)

And it makes no mention of the persistent clockwise ( I think) circular
movent of his whole body, Maybe this is my imagination, but he seems to do
this more when playing Bach than when playing music by other composers.
(Anyone else noticed if this is true?)

By his own admission then, he felt that he could not play well without both
the gestures...AND the humming, of course. Like Alice, the first time I
actually watched a video of Gould playing, I found his mannerisms slightly
embarrassing to see; but not any more. Perhaps I am alone in this, but I
actually find the way he plays very beautiful; he demonstrates such a total,
ecsatatic involvement in his music. I've even reached the point where other
pianists have begun to look bland and unemotional by comparison!

 As I have already said in an off-line email,  I feel that Bruno Monsaingeon
managed to film Gould in a way that simply allows you to see these so-called
"eccentricities", without exaggerating them or inviting any comment. Some
shots from other videos do not manage this.

No, he didn't do these things for effect. In any case, Glenn Gould was not a
man  who enjoyed overt demonstrations of emotion. But oh , what emotions his
music evokes in his listeners!

Kate