Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

My mother tells me that by five years old...

I had decided definitively to become a concert pianist.

I think she had decided sometime earlier.

The story goes that while I was in the womb...

she played the piano continuously to give me a head start...

and evidently it paid off.

My mother was my first teacher and I've never doubted her methods.

After all she introduced me to Bach.

Oh good. Try another.

By the age of ten I had the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier...

pretty much under my belt.

Good. Oh that's good.

Very good. Let's try one up at this end here.

My childhood was full of music even at our cottage on Lake Simcoe.

Those days seem particularly idyllic to me at least in retrospect.

- Go ahead. - They were compared to my school days.

Eight-seven times twenty-three is...

At an early age I could read music and memorize it on the spot.

In fact I could read music before I could read words.

I remember I used to play a game with my mother...

where I would identify the chords she played from the other side of the house.

People always seem to make a great deal out of these early signs...

but they hardly constitute miracles in my opinion.

I simply have a facility with a certain kind of minutia.

- I always have. - 87 times 26 equals 2262.

Eighty-seven times...

Eighty-seven times 27 equals 2349.

Eighty-seven times 28 equals 2436.

I often think how fortunate I was...

to have been brought up in an environment...

where music was always present.

Who knows what would have become of me otherwise?

It's a question I often ask myself...

but I've yet to come up with an answer.

After all when we met for the first time in a hotel in Toronto...

after having talked at length several times over the phone...

or having written to make our first appointment...

I met him the temperature was ninety degrees it was very warm...

He was wearing a coat a hat scarves and gloves...

A seemingly extravagant getup...

which in fact corresponded exactly to the protection he needed...

against the outside world to protect himself from what finally killed him...

Problems of germs and blood pressure...

So let us say that the first vision...

one would have of such a person was very surprising.

You could not avoid being surprised at the sight of someone resembling a tramp.

But he walked into the hotel room and stayed 18 hours straight.

No outside worry food or anything...

interrupted the rapport we were establishing.

The other striking thing was his sense of humor...

his extraordinary ability to have fun and offer ideas stimulating...

both because of their depth and because they were fun.

So this slightly bizarre manner which was the first thing you caught...

and which lasted for that brief instant of the first meeting and then was over...

This disappeared very quickly to make way for the real man that he was...

who was not trying to shock others. He was just trying to express himself.

Mr. Gould to begin let me ask straight out: Are there any off-limit areas?

I certainly can't think of any apart from music of course.

Well Mr. Gould I don't want to go back on my word.

Your participation in this interview was never contractually confirmed...

but I assumed we'd spend the bulk of the interview on music-related matters.

Do you think it's essential?

I mean my own personal philosophy of interviewing...

and I've done quite a bit of it on the air as perhaps you know...

is that the most illuminating disclosures usually derive from areas...

only indirectly related to the interviewee's line of work.

- For example? - In preparing radio documentaries...

I've interviewed a theologian about technology...

a surveyor about William James...

and a housewife about acquisitiveness in the art market.

But surely you've interviewed musicians about music.

Well yes I have on occasion but only to put them at ease with the mike.

But it's been far more instructive to talk with Leopold Stokowski...

about the prospect for interplanetary travel which is I'm sure you'll agree...

Let me ask this: Is there a subject you'd particularly like to discuss?

What about native rights in Alaska?

Well I must confess I had a rather more conventional line of attack...

so to speak in mind Mr. Gould.

As I'm sure you're aware the virtually obligatory question about your career...

is the controversy you created by giving up live concert performance at age 32...

and choosing to communicate only through the media.

I do feel we must at least touch on it.

As far as I'm concerned it primarily...

involves moral rather than musical considerations.

In any case be my guest.

Now you've been quoted as saying that your involvement with recording...

with media in general indeed represents the future.

- That's correct. - And conversely the concert stage...

the opera house or whatever represent the past...

an aspect of your own past in particular perhaps...

as well as in more general terms music's past.

That's true.

I hope you'll forgive me for saying that these ideas are only partly justified.

Also I feel that you Mr. Gould have forgone...

the privilege that is rightfully yours of communicating with an audience.

From a power base?

From a setting in which the naked fact of your humanity...

is unedited and unadorned.

Couldn't I at least be allowed to display the tuxedoed fallacy perhaps?

Please Mr. Gould we shouldn't allow this conversation to degenerate.

I've tried to pose the question in all candor and...

Well then I'll try and answer likewise.

To me the ideal audience-to-artist relationship...

is a one-to-zero relationship.

- That's the moral objection. - Run that by me again?

First I'm not at all happy with words like "public" and "artist"...

or the hierarchical implications of that kind of terminology.

The artist should be granted anonymity.

He should be permitted to operate in secret as it were...

unconcerned with or better still unaware of the marketplace's demands...

which demands given enough indifference on the part of enough artists...

will simply disappear.

Given that disappearance the artist will then abandon his false sense...

of public responsibility...

and his audience or "public" will relinquish its...

- role of servile dependency. - And never the twain shall meet.

No they'll make contact but on a much more meaningful level.

Well Mr. Gould I'm well aware that this sort of...

idealistic role swapping has a certain rhetorical flourish.

The creative audience concept of which you've spoken at length elsewhere...

has a kind of McLuhan-esque fascination.

But you conveniently forget that the artist however hermetic his life...

is still in effect an autocratic figure.

He's still however benevolently a social dictator...

and his public however generously enfranchised by electronic options...

is still on the receiving end of the experience.

All your neomedieval anonymity quest on behalf of the "artist-as-zero"...

and all your vertical pan-culturalism on behalf of his "public" won't change it.

May I speak now?

Of course. Sorry to get carried away. But I do feel strongly about the...

- About the artist as Superman? - That's not quite fair Mr. Gould.

Or about the interlocutor as controller of conversation perhaps?

There's no need to be rude.

What about this?

If you imagine that the artist...

Yes. That's right.

Toronto.

Toronto Canada?

It should read as follows:

"Dear Walter. Stop.

Under the weather yesterday. Stop.

X-rays reveal chronic bronchitis...

Bronchitis in right lung. Stop.

Feeling as foggy as it is outside. Stop.

Stop.

It would suit you perfectly. Stop.

Cannot and will not leave this room. Stop. End."

Sir I am sorry to disturb but we have a...

- From New York? Yes. - Yes sir.

At last. Excellent. Thank you.

Yes that would be it indeed. Could you read that back to me please?

Wait. Wait please stay.

"Concerts tomorrow and Monday cancelled" not "can't sell."

That means something entirely different.

Go ahead.

Yes.

That's absolutely flawless. Could you send it off immediately please?

Room 318.

Thank you.

Salzburg to Stockholm Berlin...

Wiesbaden Florence Tel Aviv Jerusalem...

and on the whole tour I'd say there were maybe six good hotel rooms...

five comfortable beds and at least three adequate pianos.

Some of these pianos were so hopelessly unwieldy...

I decided it was best just to ignore them.

It required a kind of mystical transcendence to get me through.

I have no idea what the audience resorted to.

I'm not one of those piano freaks you know. Of course...

I know there are people who would gladly sit in the most uncomfortable chair...

with 3000 other people in uncomfortable chairs...

and listen to hours and hours of the stuff...

but it's nothing I would ever subject myself to.

I just don't like the sound of piano music that much.

Five minutes Mr. Gould.

Yeah. Tell them to close the doors now.

Yeah I think he's ready now. I told you go ahead. Here he comes.

This way Mr. Gould.

I didn't want to bother you now but I'm not gonna be here after the show.

- Fine. - Gary's gonna be here...

the guy with the short you know... he's gonna pick you up.

And there is a reception after. I know it's gonna be squaresville man...

but you'd make some gray-haired ladies happy if you waltz through it one time.

I did wanna show you a schedule for tomorrow. No don't bother with it now.

Don't think about it. But later if you wanna change anything...

- I'm sure it's fine. - you wanna see more of L. A...

I'm gonna leave it on your dresser.

I think we should take the stairs.

Maybe we should.

Don't even think about it now.

- It's a long way. - It certainly is.

If it weren't for you I'd have been dropping bread crumbs along the way.

- Mr. Gould? - Of course.

- My wife has all of your records. - Well...

tell your wife that she has exceptional taste.

Also she's very lucky.

I'm never going to sign one of these again.

How long have you worked for this theater?

It's been almost 30 years.

Thirty years? You must be near retirement? If you don't mind my asking.

- No. At the end of the season. - What will you do after that?