Glenn gould biography

Born Glenn Herbert Gould, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, September 25, 1932; died of a stroke October 4, 1982, in Toronto; son of Russell Herbert (a furrier) and Florence Greig (a piano teacher) Gould.

The most notorious of these was a belief that the live concert would cease to exist by the year 1999 and would be replaced exclusively by recordings. His pronouncement on BBC One that the concert hall was finished set heads shaking and tongues wagging: it was even discussed in Parliament.

Glenn’s idiosyncrasies made him a publicist’s dream. On MacMillan’s recommendation, Gould was taken on as a student by the Chilean-born pedagogue Alberto Guerrero, whose own style was partly the basis for Gould’s own sensitive touch.

The first few bars of the Goldberg Variations are carved on his marker. He felt that a piece of music could neither be played nor appreciated as well in a concert hall as it could via recording in one's living room. His piano teacher Alberto Guerrero instilled a fabulous technique. Gould’s passion for media and communication technology began with his long association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

His first recording, of Bach's Goldberg Variations, was released in 1956 and became a best-seller. Gould wrote a string quartet in his youth; his 1964 So You Want to Write a Fugue? is a humorous piece for voices and instruments.

Author of liner notes and contributor to periodicals.

Glenn Gould's Awards

Lady Kemp Scholarship; honorary doctorate of law, University of Toronto, 1964; Grammy Award, 1973, for liner notes to his recording of Paul Hindemith's Sonata No. 2 in G Major.

Famous Works

• Selective Works
• On CBS/Sony, except where noted Bach, Goldberg Variations 1956.
• Beethoven, Sonata No.

  30 in E Major, Op. 109 1956.

• Berg, Sonata, Op. 1 1959.
• Krenek, Sonata No. 3, Op. 92, No. 4 1959.
• Schoenberg, Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 1959.
• String Quartet, Op. 1 1960.
• Brahms, Intermezzi: Op. 76, Nos. 6 and 7; Op. 116, No. 4; Op. 117, Nos. 1-3; Op. 118, Nos.

  1, 2, and 6; Op. 119, No. 1 1961.

• Schoenberg, Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23 1966.
• Schoenberg, Piano Pieces, Op. 33a and b 1966.
• Scriabin, Sonata No. 3 in F-sharp minor, Op. 23 1969.
• Byrd, A Voluntary; Sixth Pavan and Galliard; First Pavan and Galliard; Hughe Aston's Ground; Sellinger's Round; Gibbons Orlando.
• Lord of Salisbury Pavan and Galliard; Allemand, or Italian Ground; Fantasy in C Major 1971.
• The Idea of North CBC Learning Systems, 1971.
• The Latecomers CBC Learning Systems, 1971.
• Hindemith, Sonata No.

  3 in B-flat Major 1973.

• A Glenn Gould Fantasy 1980.
• So You Want to Write a Fugue? 1980.
• Haydn, Selected Sonatas 1982.
• Bach, Goldberg Variations 1982.
• The Glenn Gould Legacy Volume 1, 1984; Volume 2, 1985 Volume 3, 1986; Volume 4, 1986.
• Glenn Gould the Composer 1992.
• The Art of Glenn Gould 1992.
• The Glenn Gould Edition 1992.
• Compositions
• String Quartet, Op.

  1 1956.

• So You Want to Write a Fugue? (for four-part chorus of mixed voices with piano or string quartet accompaniment), 1964.

Further Reading

Books

• Cott, Jonathan, Conversations With Glenn Gould, Little, Brown, 1984.
• Friedrich, Otto, Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations, Random House, 1989.
• Page, Tim, editor, The Glenn Gould Reader, Knopf, 1984.
• McGreevy, John, editor, Glenn Gould Variations: By Himself and His Friends, Quill, 1983.
• Payzant, Geoffrey, Glenn Gould: Music & Mind, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978.

• Canadian Music Journal, Fall 1956.
• High Fidelity, April 1966; August 1975.
• London Review of Books, March 26, 1992.
• Musical America, February 1962.
• New Republic, October 1, 1986; June 26, 1989.
• Newsweek, October 18, 1982.
• New York Times, October 5, 1982.
• Piano Quarterly, Winter 1982/83; Summer 1974.
• Pulse!, October 1991.
• Saturday Review, December 1980.
• Vanity Fair, May 1983.
• Additional information for this profile was obtained from a recorded interview, "Glenn Gould: Concert Dropout," The Glenn Gould Legacy, Volume 1, CBS/Sony, 1984.

To this day renowned Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932 – 1982) continues to fascinate and entice fans and artists alike.

In 1962, two years before he stopped performing in order to devote himself solely to recording, Gould contributed an article to Musical America, called "Let's Ban Applause!," in which he made a statement that came to represent his view of life for the next 20 years: "The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity."

Glenn Herbert Gould was born on September 25, 1932, the only son of Russell Herbert Gould, a Toronto furrier, and Florence Greig Gould.

His apartment was a mess, every bit of space on floor or furniture piled high with books and scores and LPs. Outside his work he had no social life. Through his recordings and other contributions to the mass media, Glenn Gould has left a rich legacy of musical ideas and performances that find him, each year, the subject of new books, articles, plays, films and documentaries, which continue to challenge and inspire new generations.

Via BBC Music Magazine

Glenn Gould was one of the most celebrated and talked-about pianists of the 20th century, thanks to his groundbreaking interpretations of JS Bach and idiosyncratic personality.

He snatched it away amid gasps from onlookers: did I not know that Mr Gould had recently threatened a lawsuit against a Steinway technician who had greeted him with a friendly slap on the shoulder?

He was determined not to put his hands at risk: he’d had circulation problems since childhood and he wasn’t the only pianist who’s spent half an hour before a concert with his hands and forearms soaking in hot water.

As Nicholas Spice wrote in the London Review of Books in 1992, "[Gould] delivers the music to us as someone might place in our hands a fragile and priceless object which he loved beyond anything else."

Also composed scores for films, including Slaughterhouse Five, 1972, and The Wars, 1982.

by Joyce Harrison

Glenn Gould's Career

Pianist.

(I’m reminded of the sad fate of Michael Jackson.) Almost totally paralysed by two strokes in two days, Gould sank into a coma and was placed on life-support systems ‘but within a few days’, reported the obituary in the Canadian Churchman, ‘his family made the agonising decision to withdraw those systems’.

Did Glenn Gould ever marry?

Gould had always lived on his own.

He leapt at the chance to give himself multiple choices for the editing process. References to Gould and his work are plentiful in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts. He also arranged music for two feature films. When Karajan invited him to play Bach with the Berlin Philharmonic, the veteran critic HH Stuckenschmidt rated his playing as the best since Busoni: ‘a marvel, an incomparable delight… his technical ability borders on the fabulous; such a combination of fluency in both hands of dynamic versatility, and of range in colouring’.

Why did he stop performing public concerts?

In London he did a Beethoven concerto series with Joseph Krips and the LSO.

He visited Stockholm and Vienna and appeared every season with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein; they got on famously until 1962, when there was a very public disagreement over the stately tempo Gould had chosen for the opening movement of Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1.

An embarrassingly facetious New York Times review by Harold Schonberg suggested that Gould maybe didn’t have the technique to play the Concerto any faster.

Gould has received numerous accolades for his work including four Grammy Awards, three Juno Awards and the RIAA Lifetime Achievement Award.