[Bach] says, in effect, yes this is bound to be boring but I am going to be so masterful that you will be in awe and not care even if you will be bored.
Jeremy Denk is a great writer. See also Denk on recording and photos of Glenn Gould during the March 1955 ‘Goldberg’ recording sessions collected by The Selvedge Yard.
Glenn Gould, March 1955, at the Columbia studio in New York during the recording sessions for the Goldberg Variations. Photo by Gordon Parks for LIFE. PIANIST GLENN GOULD | REJECTING THE ‘BLOODSPORT’ CULT OF SHOWMANSHIP « The Selvedge Yard.
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould. Coming to Atlanta in November. What a character. I loved this one book about him, A Romance on Three Legs, and a buddy at work told me that Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is also very good.
A lovely little infographic from Neven Mrgan, comparing the durations of Gould two major recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations:
Here’s a little chart I made. Glenn Gould recorded two remarkably different versions of Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’. The 1955 version is fast, virtuosic, and energetic (even frenetic). The 1981 version is deliberately paced and elegant. They are both dizzying masterpieces.
Most people prefer one over the other. On an average day, I will favor the 1981, but only by about 5%. I am very glad that both of them exist.
A State of Wonder was one of my favorite albums of 2008. I’ve been meaning to go back and listen through again, but alternating between the 1955 and 1981 versions for each variation. I think I also prefer 1981 recording.
Certified genius day, today:
Birthdays of Glenn Gould, William Faulkner and Mark Rothko!
Glenn Gould, a pianist like no other, and a personality whose talent exceeded the narrow arena of the performing artist: Sep. 25, 1932 – 1982
Photo by Gordon Parks, NYC, March 1956 – LIFE
Caption: Brilliant young Canadian pianist Glenn Gould laughing as engineers let him hear how his singing spoiled his recording of the Bach Goldberg Variations after which he offered to wear a gas mask to muffle his songs, at a Columbia recordling studio.
Spoiler: Katie Hafner‘s book, A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano, is one of the most enjoyable I’ve read this year, a really nice little page-turner.
Glenn Gould was one of the great pianists of the 20th century, known as much for his personal quirks as for his musicianship. Gould’s eccentricities are pretty well documented. His increasingly reclusive, kind of paranoid personality led him to eventually abandon the concert stage in favor of the recording studio:
Gould had come to hate the risk-taking associated with live performances and grew tired of what he called the “non-take-two-ness” of the concert experience. He believed that people were just waiting for him to mess up, and he resented it. ‘To me this is heartless and ruthless and senseless. It is exactly what prompts savages like Latin Americans to go to bullfights.’
The new-to-me, perhaps even more interesting character in this book is Verne Edquist. Edquist got cataracts as a child. Surgery didn’t work and he lost most of his sight. He was sent to a school for the blind to learn a trade, where he took up piano tuning. His ears were very good, and he gradually worked his way up the ranks from basic tuning, to regulating the piano action (tweaking the mechanics), to tone regulating (tweaking the timbre and tone color across the full range of the instrument).
The third character in this book is CD 318, a Steinway concert grand piano. Gould was an extremely sensitive musician. His enviable technique and his own neuroses made it especially hard to find a decent piano. After flirting with a couple other pianos, the light, fast touch of CD 318 won him over. Edquist would become the primary tuner to understand Gould’s needs and service his instrument. The book tells their story.
Along the way, there are a couple nice digressions that lead into how pianos are made, how piano tuners work, the origins of sponsored musicians with exclusive company endorsements, and the history of Steinway & Sons (during wartime they were forced into making coffins and airplanes, among other things). And there are a couple nice tidbits like, “in the early twentieth century, piano tuners outnumbered members of any other trade in English insane asylums.”
Mark Larson 
