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Author: Leonid on July 12 2006 Viewed 3165 times. 5 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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There's this wonderful little film, or rather: wonderful collection of films called "32 short films about Glenn Gould". It's a biopic that hardly follows the standard conventions concerning these types of films. Rather than depicting the artists life from childhood to death, this film contains a series (32, just like the number of parts in Bach's Goldberg Variations) of moments or aspects of the excentric pianist's life. It mixes dramatized events with documentary insights. There's even an animated film and a performance of one of Glenn Goulds own compositions. And in each of the short films you of course get to hear one of the pieces recorded by Gould himself. If you haven't heard of it, look it up! If you haven't seen it, go do so! I was very fascinated by it.
Anyways, the reason I bring this up here is because of one of the scenes in the film called "Gould meets Gould (text by Glenn Gould". And this is just what it sounds like: a dramatized meeting between two sides of the man. The thoughts in it might be a bit fragmental, but I feel that the ideas that are being discussed have a connection to the world of electronic music and of faceless, hermetic electronic musicians. And I find the dialogue to be both humorous and insightful. The text speaks for itself, so no need for further introductions (and here's the full scene transcribed link ):
Gould1: ...As l'm sure you're aware the virtually obligatory question in regard to your career is the controversy you created by giving up live concert performance at age 32 and choosing to communicate only through the media. l do feel we must at least touch on it.
Gould2: As far as l'm concerned it primarily involves moral rather than musical considerations. ln any case be my guest.
Gould1: Now you've been quoted as saying that your involvement with recording-- with media in general indeed represents the future.
Gould2: That's correct.
Gould1: And that conversely the concert hall, the 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.
Gould2: That's true.
Gould1: l hope you'll forgive me for saying that these ideas are only partly justified. Also l feel that you Mr. Gould have forgone the privilege that is rightfully yours of communicating with an audience.
Gould2: From a power base?
Gould1: From a setting in which the naked fact of your humanity is unedited and unadorned.
Gould2: Couldn't l at least be allowed to display the tuxedoed fallacy perhaps?
Gould1: Please, Mr. Gould I don't feel we should allow this conversation to degenerate. l've tried to pose the question in all candor and--
Gould2: Well then l'll try and answer likewise. To me, the ideal audience-to-artist relationship is a one-to-zero relationship. That's the moral objection comes in.
Gould1: Run that by me again?
Gould2: First, l'm not at all happy with words like "public" and "artist". I'm not happy with 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 presumed demands of the marketplace which demands given sufficient indifference on the part of sufficient number of 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.
Gould1: And never the twain shall meet.
Gould2: No they'll make contact but on a much more meaningful level.
Gould1: Well Mr. Gould l'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 yet you conveniently forget that the artist, however, hermetic his lifestyle 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. And all your neomedieval anonymity quest on behalf of the "artist-as-zero" and all your vertical pan-culturalism on behalf of his "public" isn't going to change that.
Gould2: May l speak now?
Gould1: Of course. Sorry to get carried away. But l do feel strongly about the--
Gould2: About the artist as Superman?
Gould1: That's not quite fair Mr. Gould.
Gould2: Or about the interlocutor as controller of conversation perhaps.
Gould1: There's no need to be rude...
(hmmm... (Leonid again) I still haven't figured out the point of, or how to use, these "tags". And can you use the quote-function in blogs?)
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07/12/06
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colin
awsome - this guy forsaw bedroom em -- and justifies it :P
07/12/06
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hecanjog
 gould
this reminded me that i never asked for my gould reader back... there's a much longer version of this dialog in it, and some more musing on recording and even a little bit directly on electronic music: link
07/13/06
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Leonid
Yeah, I know I've seen a book with texts by Gould at the library. I'm definitely going to go and get it now.
edited: Jul 13 2006
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Leonid
The scene where he writes a personal ad is also wonderful:
"friendly, companionably reclusive, socially unacceptable, alcoholically abstemious, tirelessly talkative, zealously unzealous, spiritually intense, minimally turquoise, maximally ecstatic moon, seeks moth or moths with similar qualities for purposes of telephonic seduction... "
07/13/06
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flies
haven't seen the movie but some of those arguments presented in that quotation are total bollocks. I can't tell if he's being at all serious in raising this objections, but it seems to me that the 'interviewer' persona and the 'interviewee' persona share some assumptions that seem completely unfounded to me.
the artist is not an autocrat, i really don't understand what the hell he's talking about. the artist is a human being who lives in a particular historical context. I agree that the 1-0 relationship is bad, but his alternative seems to be a zero-zero relationship where no one except the artist ever sees the art.
he completely disregards the fact that art must be distributed for it to have any impact. the best artwork i've never seen has no meaning to me. the fact that art must be distributed takes power away from the artist and puts in the hands of both the distributors and, to a lesser extent, the 'consumers', so the artist is not an autocrat, although he certainly has some power.
furthermore, artists do not exist in a cultural vacuum, and i wouldn't want us to. having other art to respond to i find to be of great use for my own productive output. I suppose for a man like him who is in the public spotlight, this would be a greater concern.
overall, the main problem is that he's characterizing everything in absolute/fatalistic language, that make him sound like he has no appreciation for the complexity of the world we live in.
07/13/06
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Leonid
I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly, but to me it seems like you have misinterpreted Gould's views. The thing is, Glenn Gould gave up public perfomance at concert halls, as it says in the quoted text, and devoted himself entirely to recording music on record. That is the background to this one man debate. He is not, therefore, against the distribution of art as such, but only the form of distribution that was taking place in the concert halls. The 'autocratic' figure he is talking about is the sole 'genius' that is raised above his audience, bot literally and metaphorically speaking, and that is being admired passivly. And with these views he was hardly alone in the 60ies.
I'm not sure I agree with him, but I do sympathize with his effort.
07/14/06
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flies
i agree that he's not against distribution, but he would seem to prefer an artist who had no contact with the outside world whatsoever, which would make distribution impossible. that said, he's a cool guy and a great pianist and he has certainly identified an interesting issue that had never occured to me, that of the power relationship between classical performer on stage and the audience.
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