Re: GG Studio recordings by heart?

[Tim Conway <timcon@COMSWEST.NET.AU>]

Evalynne wrote:

>> Glenn Gould was reported as having a photographic memory.  He could study
>> the score away from the piano and later go the piano and play the music
>> perfectly.
>> Every thing that I have read indicates that he almost always played for
>> memory.
>>
>> Anne
>>
>
>I've read the same accounts concerning his photographic memory. He apparently
>never needed to have the sheet music in front of him to play.

I read that somewhere, too, I think -- in Page's 'The Glenn Gould Reader'
perhaps? My copy is in storage so I cannot check.

Timothy Maloney made the same point in his hypothesis about GG's being
partly autistic (Asperger's Syndrome). In the same way that some
Asperger's sufferers can view a large and complex building for a few
seconds then sketch it in great and accurate detail a year later without
having seen the building since, GG (so I read) could read a score once
(and not just keyboard music) and recall it accurately years later, never
having seen or heard it since.

However, that may all be hyperbole or wishful thinking on the part of
GG's contemporaries...or faulty memory on my part. Has anyone any
_factual_ knowledge about GG's memory and whether he ever needed to see a
score more than once?


Tim Conway
Broome, WA, Oz