Glenn Gould: ...we'll be able to look back and appreciate the vital things that have happened in our age more clearly, because one superb iconoclast didn't belong. Eric Till: It's not surprising that the most evocative of all the radio portraits is of another
iconoclast. Leopold Stokowski: It must be very difficult for you, and really you have my sympathy, because you see printed 'piano' and I'm asking you to do something different.Then another
conductor comes and he says, "exactly what's printed!" I don't know, I'm not speaking personally, but I imagine this happens to you sometimes [laughter from the orchestra]. So forgive me, but I'm trying to find a spirit of the music, what it feels like. ET: As a young music student, Glenn had admired Leopold Stokowski when, amongst the musical elite, it wasn't quite done to do so. After all, Stokowski had forsaken
the real world for those of Deanna Durbin and Mickey Mouse: he'd sold out to Hollywood, or so it seemed to some. But Stokowski was more than just a brilliant and controversial conductor: for him, a musical score was like a collection of newly discovered parchments for a gospel
yet to be transcribed. He constantly put his reputation on the line, and it's not surprising
that his numerous recordings tended to sound better than those of his colleagues, because, for him, technology was a
higher calling - the very philosophy of Glenn Gould. These fine impressionistic portraits all
deal with people who chose to stand apart from the cultural mainstream; who avoided
the herd instinct. The solitude motif returns. In the Stokowski program, Glenn cunningly combined
all kinds of unlikely music to accompany the great conductor's voice. Some combinations were so
clever they needed to be brought to your attention. Glenn adored hauling people off into listening rooms for some fun, and a little edification. GG: The sequence is one in which Shostakovich sits a long time on a C flat in the basses, and gradually moves down to G. There's a descending sequence in the high strings, and there's nothing in the middle. It's one of those spare, spare textures, and we found pair of Yugoslav peasants who managed to ruminate interminably on the notes G, G flat, and F, and after many, many such clashes semi-tonally, came to rest on an F, which provided the dominant seventh of a thirteenth chord which didn't have one, and the effect is really nice. Margaret Pacsu: He had such tremendous enthusiasm
for even the smallest joys in life. You simply couldn't refuse him your attention, ET: even if what
he said when way over your head. ET: Though he'd stopped being a churchgoer from about eighteen, Glenn often repeated a phrase that he'd learnt in church: "O Lord, grant us that peace which the world cannot give." He had all his life a tremendous sense that there is a hereafter in the transformation of the spirit: a phenomenon which one must reckon with and in the light of which one must attempt to live one's life. Infinity was more plausible than its opposite: oblivion. It was Glenn's mother. Jessie Greig: Glenn missed her terribly, he really did, and she was the one to whom he spoke most about his musical accomplishments, and she was the one he shared his reviews with, and he was really devastated by her death, and he became more introspective, and I don't know... He turned even more to me at that time, you know. Then I became the one he shared the reviews with and uh... But it was a very traumatic experience for him. Ray Roberts: He didn't weep openly: he didn't do that type of thing. He went through her funeral and her death with dignity. Very... and one of the things that I'd learned very early was not to poke into the personal feelings too... he didn't like that. JG: No, I never saw Glenn cry, ever. I think he fought back tears, but I never saw him cry, Even as a small child, I never saw him cry. Never. MP: I think he was a very sensitive, spontaneous person who was afraid of his own spontaneity and feelings, and that there was a conflict all the time between controlling his emotions and admitting that he had these feelings of strong sensitivity toward music, of course, and toward people. He was quite afraid of his emotions, I think. JG: I know that after his mother's death, he phoned and he said that he never knew what the loving support of a family could be until that time, and that was... He first became aware of it then. ET: Glenn rarely opened himself to people. When he did you had to understand that his acceptance meant that he trusted you totally and one received this present, this gift of trust, with joy but also
with an awareness of his vulnerability. GP: Gould, in common with a few other theorists, were quite sure that when you really came to be aware of the order-seeking, order-making characteristic of the human subject - of the self - deep, deep down, that merely to become aware of this is a profoundly moving affair, but the emotion in question is a controlled emotion. This doesn't mean that it's bloodless, that it's indeed passionless and to listen to any Gould recording whatever and use such words as 'bloodless'
and 'passionless' would be ridiculous. JR: He was a man in a great hurry, but a great hurry to do the things which interested him, the things which he felt he had to do, and he wanted to leave everything else by the wayside. He didn't want to
become encumbered with people who he felt were going to hold him up. He felt he had certain instincts, certain concepts, certain ideas, which would work, and he always said, "well in one of my future careers, I really want to be a film director. I would like to conceptualise, write, produce, and direct a film. GP: Some guy gets up there on the concert platform and if we like him we applaud him, and if we don't like him, we boo him, and for the length of time he's up there, he is as much under our power as we are under his.That interaction in the performance situation is precisely the sort of thing that is subject to the rule of impulse, subject to chance, which might be calamitous chance. Gould, when he looked inside himself, saw at least the possibility of a world in which that kind of thing couldn't happen, or at least if it did happen, it could be set aside. You had another chance; you would get it right. And by 'get it right', I don't mean just this time you don't make a mistake. I mean this time you remove all the contingencies that can arouse passion or can arouse ridicule, and you can produce a product which, in its own clarity of structure and order, reflects the clarity and structure of the revealed self. Lorne Tulk: Insert one, take one. Excuse me, Glenn. GG: What's the matter? LT: It may be just my ears - I'm not sure - but I don't think I hear enough soft pedal. GG: Oh, you're absolutely right. You didn't hear any. Let's do it again, quickly. LT: Ok, Insert one, take two. GG: Let's try it. One more. LT: Insert one, take three. ET: As a young boy, Glenn had enjoyed stories of mystery, mist, the innocent hero in impossible situations, but he hated violence of any kind. With its anti-war theme, the story of The Wars immediately attracted Glenn. Arranging the music for this film became a labour of love. After all, the theme was a subject Glenn had touched on previously, through Leopold Stokowski, as well as in the moving climax to his radio portrait on Pablo Casals. Albert Kahn: Sometimes I look about me with a feeling of complete dismay. In the confusion that afflicts the world today, I see a disrespect for the values of life. Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe; a moment that never was before, and will never be again, and what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each them, "do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. And look at your body. What a wonder it is: your legs, your arms, your cunning fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo or a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything! Yes, you are a marvel. When you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must work - we all must work - to make this world worthy of its children." JR: Well if that is, of course, extraordinary, that is not just him speaking, that's Glenn speaking, because that's exactly what he thought. Kevin Doyle: He was a very peaceful man, and it really shows in the music for that film, where a lot of it is almost like romantic type of music. It's very soft, and it's very emotional, and it's very almost contradictory to what music for a violent movie should be like. ET: The church scenes were Glenn's favourite. JG: He said, "get out your old Presbyterian hymn book, and we'll find the hymns", and the interesting part was that if I mentioned a hymn, he would immediately sing it to me. He knew them all off by heart. ET: Glenn's interest in theology and philosophy deepened, and his writings became quite extraordinary and extensive. The degree of dedication never lessened, be it music or writing. BM: I think that our great losses concern Glenn as a writer, because I'm sure that he would have finally used his talents as a writer for major fiction books, and also as a conductor, because he could have taught us another view of what conducting is about. One of the most interesting reactions that I've had really was with that great, wonderful conductor called Gennadi Rozhdestveknsky, who came to my apartment when we had finished the film of the Goldberg Variations, and who was so stunned by Glenn's performance that he constantly said to me, "this cannot be", and he begged me to make him a copy of the film, because he wanted to exploit it, not in a commercial sense, but he wanted to make it the subject of his conducting class at the Moscow Conservatory, which he did. ET: Glenn was constantly conducting at the piano. He'd always done so. It was something that seemed to annoy a great many people. 'Antics' was a favourite word. Though Rozhdestvensky was very struck by the fact that Glenn's movements and gesticulations were so concentrated... BM: and so completely technical in terms of conducting, that it was as though he was conducting an imaginary orchestra, that his piano was divided between oboes and clarinets and cellos and violins, and that he was giving not only the cues but the phrasing of every instrumental part, and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky said to me, "you know, if this man is going to start conducting, we are all going to lose our jobs overnight", and I think it's a very wonderful comment coming from one of the greatest conducts that exists at present. PH: I think Glenn Gould would have been the same kind of conductor that he was as a pianist if he got into it. There would be such an approach, and that musicians would be delighted to play for him and under him because of the way he would... the preparation and thought with which he would come to whatever he did. ET: Glenn had talked about conducting since he was a young man, but was always concerned about any physical effect it might have on his piano-playing. JR: The thing which motivated Glenn, which kept him going, which provided the turning points in his life, were in fact new challenges. He had to have them. ET: Glenn arranged for a private recording session, conducting a hand-picked orchestra. MP: And why not? It was something new. He always wanted to do something new. That was what was so delightful about this personality, was that he was growing and trying things all the time. The music was Wagner's Siegfried Idyll. BM: I don't think that Glenn was really concerned about effect. I think he was more concerned about the joyful essence of creation. MP: I think he also had some very definite musical ideas that he wanted to express, that he could no longer do as a solo instrumentalist. Victor di Bello: The pleasure at the result of that first recording just showed itself with so much enthusiasm and vitality, I mean the kind of vitality that one associates with a youngster - someone in their teens, like a school boy in the very best sense of the word. ET: Glenn now made a most intriguing decision: to rerecord Bach's Goldberg Variations. It was his extraordinary recording for Columbia
Masterworks in 1955 that brought him international fame. Now, still happily with CBS, he wished to record it again. GG: Let's skip the false start...That's very nice. Sort of a dixieland...it does not hiccup there... Yeah....totally different character...that justifies the repeat. Marty, thank you. That's the one. That's the keeper, I think. Yeah, absolutely. It occurred to me on one of my rare relistenings to that early recording that it was very nice, but that it was perhaps a little bit like
30 very interesting but somewhat independent- minded pieces going their own way and all making a comment on the ground bass on which they all are formed, and to which they all conform; and I suddenly felt (having not played it in, well, since I stopped playing concerts about 20 years) having not played it in all that time, that maybe I wasn't savaged by any overexposure to it, and that if I looked at it again, I could find a way of making some sort of almost arithmetical correspondence between the theme and the subsequent variations. Along with Dolby and even stereo, to do it all over again, so here we are, twenty five, six, whatever it is years later. We're going to try. ET: Solitude and ecstasy. Glenn was happy, but sometimes he had the impression fate was looking over his shoulder. PH: Well, he had said that he didn't believe he would live long beyond his 50th birthday, and I wondered how much into the future he was looking and seeing. JR: For a long time he looked eternally young, and I think it was at that moment that one noticed that he did begin to look older. He began to look rather haggard, but he was always talking about the next thing he was going to do with such exuberance and such enthusiasm, and as though his absolute life depended on it, and there was no stopping. ET: It was a Sunday and Glenn's birthday. VdB: It was just his 50th birthday and there was an article that appeared in the New York Times. Glenn was not always that pleased with articles written about him, but this one he really enjoyed. JG: When a good review came out, he would immediately phone and read it, just as that last Sunday the Goldberg review had come out in the New York Times, and he read me every bit of it, and it's very interesting because whenever he would come to something very flattering, he'd say, "now, who would like and enjoy this?" And he always wanted the response, "mother", you know, his mother would have. He was still
trying to please her even at that late date. ET: The spectacular autumn was fading as his birthday passed. RR: Glenn had a capacity, when there was an emergency, for taking absolute calm control of the situation even when it involved him, and the... I was upset, concerned, making calls and everything else. He didn't want any fuss. He wanted preferably to stay where he was, and create the least amount of... He knew he had had a... He knew what had happened, but he felt that at that point, that it was
minor, and didn't want to have a great hubbub and the press and everything else involved. He didn't want that. Very controlled, as he always was. Kevin Doyle: I was editing the Brahms Rhapsodies when.. and I remember knocking on the door and there was no answer, and I knew there was something wrong right away. PH: It's one of the very difficult times, no matter who is involved, when you think, if this lasts any length of time, you don't want them to come out of it, and that's a dangerous thing to say, but because there seemed to be this which I have always thought of as a kind of mystical streak in Glenn Gould, I immediately then began to associate that with the comment that he'd said he didn't think he would survive his 50th birthday by that much time. ET: It was less than a week since Glenn's 50th birthday. His death, from a massive stroke, was a stunning shock to everyone. VdB: I was engaging the orchestra for this next session. Glenn had chosen to do the Fingal's Cave Overture
of Mendelssohn and Coriolan Overture of Beethoven, and I said, "Glenn, you're going to love this orchestra", so it was really on that mood and feeling of total elation and joy
and pleasure and that was the last time... ET: Glenn had more will than strength. JG: I could hardly bear to be at the memorial service because because of St Paul's. I know it was
such a beautiful service, but it brought back a lot of memories that had been a part of what he had been telling me and reading me. There's one thing that many people don't know about Glenn, and there was a mysticism about him. Perhaps people realise that - I don't know, but there was one... there were two things: one, he was always telling me about a dream that he had that where he stood without - outside of his body, and he was looking down on the earth and upon all people, you know, and he was always without form, he said, and he was looking at it that way, and then he always related every dream he had in great detail and looked for a meaning in it, and if he couldn't see a meaning right then and there. a day or two later he'd phone up and
say, "oh, I just found out what such-and-such meant", you know. And there was one other thing that he told me when we were talking about this mystical quality, and he said that, "I would love to be at my own funeral", and I said, "why on earth would you...?" He said, "I would like to know who comes", and I realised that he never - when I went to St Paul's - that he never realised his own
greatness. But I felt at the very end, when the Goldberg was played, that he really was at his own funeral. It was... He was there. ET: Glenn's life had been very much akin to a fugue, with its extraordinary overlapping of subjects; the fact that he was as great a writer as he
was a pianist; as great a broadcaster as he was a musician and philosopher. A fugue is a process which is concerned with process itself: something that is capable of any evolution, has no end, is infinite. Glenn was exactly like that: open to any discovery, any adventure or experimentation. Fugue is also a French word meaning escapade or flight. The Voyager spacecraft, on its flight to the
outer reaches of the solar system and beyond, carries onboard a phonograph record. The disc contains a message which says in part, "this is a present from a small distant world: a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our times so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilisations. This record represents our hope, our determination, and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe. With its aluminum cover and the emptiness of interstellar space, the record is likely to survive more than a billion years. Thus it represents not only a message into space, but also a message into time. On this record there is a Bach Prelude and Fugue played by Glenn Gould. Surely there is no better symbol of man's achievement than a Bach fugue, played by Glenn; nothing with more universal meaning. [captions edited by Bruce Cross]
