Vitro NasuIconoclastic Incubator
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Glenn Gould died of a stroke on October 4, 1982, and was laid to rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
“The really Important things in any biography are what someone thinks and feels and not what he has done.”
—Glenn Gould
Leonard and Igor Stravinsky
The Madness of Genius Glenn Gould (part I)
Glenn Gould and Natsume Soseki
Soseki’s novel was not only to become Gould’s favorite book (previously it had been Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel “The Magic Mountain”), but one that would obsess him for the last 15 years of his life. Despite having no particular interest in Japan, nor having ever visited, Gould ended up owning four copies of the book, two in English and, unexpectedly, two in Japanese. He owned the English translations of Soseki’s other novels and had more of the Japanese novelist’s books in his library than those of any other writer.
To his cousin, Jessie Greig — the person closest to him throughout his life — he expressed his love for “The Three-Cornered World” by reading the entire novel out to her over the telephone over the course of two evenings.
Gould was telephone friends with Bill Evans
G.G plays Paul Hindemith (youtube)
Leonard conducting Glenn Gould performing Bach (youtube)
Thanks to David Ehrenstein (who called Glenn as the gayest straight man who ever breathed) ..
Glenn Gould died of a stroke on October 4, 1982, and was laid to rest in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Interview (youtube)
Orlando Gibbons
He refused to play Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Debussy and much of the other core piano repertoire, deriding their masterpieces as empty theatrical gestures. He especially disliked Mozart, and named the obscure 17th century English composer Orlando Gibbons as his all-time favorite. (via)
On Orlando Gibbons
…”ever since my teen-age years this music … has moved me more deeply than any other sound experience I can think of.”
* The Glenn Gould Reader. p. 438. New York: Knopf.
(Thanks Richard Bohn for the above quote)
Gould’s 1957 trip to the Soviet Union, when he became, at age 24, the first North American to perform behind the Iron Curtain
(Direct link)
Describing Gould’s 1957 tour of the Soviet Union, Russian conductor and pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy recalled: “He was unbelievable… deliberately playing certain music not often heard in the Soviet Union. The [concert] hall was half empty. [Gradually] people started going to the telephones…. By the second half, the hall was filled. It was like a Martian coming to earth. In Leningrad, [they] ignored fire regulations and allowed 1,100 standees. If anyone fainted, there was nowhere to fall. They listened as if their lives depended on it.” ( A Life of Music and Love)
Glenn Herbert Gould (September 25, 1932 – October 4, 1982)
Glenn in Love?
The enigma
“I think there were a lot of misconceptions about Glenn and it was partly because he was so very private. But I assure you, he was an extremely heterosexual man. Our relationship was, among other things, quite sexual.”
(Cornelia Foss )
Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Youtube documentary)
Cornelia Foss beach painting
Glenn 
as Umbeboshi (previous post)
Glenn Gould September 25, 1932
Dimitri Shostakovich and Rameau were all born on September 25.
Young Glenn 
Glenn Gould plays J.S.Bach Piano Concerto No.7 in G minor BW
Glenn Gould talks about Art of fugue
Gould Plays Beethoven Emperor Concerto
Glenn as Umeboshi and his idea of North.
Love, Russia and the Next Glenn Gould
Good night 
“This is Glenn Gould This programme is called The Idea of North. I’ve long been intrigued by that incredible tapestry of tundra and taiga which constitutes the arctic and sub-arctic of our country….”
(From A transcript of the prologue to The Idea of North, a sound documentary by Glenn Gould.)
Glenn Gould’s birthday today (Sept 25, 1932, Glenn was a Libra/Monkey – a glib manipulator).
David Teague Interviews David Teague About Glenn Gould
Glenn plays Goldberg Variations 1-7 (youtube)
Photo collage by a Canadian poet, P.R. Pottelberg (From an ill fated project of mine called icON cOFFin – background images comprise of miniture candy bento, and nothing to do with global warming or the Penguins ).
What is Umeboshi?
Excerpt from a play “Glenn” by David Young
Prodigy The twenty-fifth of September. No Cake, No candles. No celebration. Instead this … this inconsolable longing.
Puritan It was a test. A chance to look at myself on the barren heath, so to speak.
Progidy I feel like I’m circling above my childhood, never finding a place to land except…..
(The Prodigy moves toward the phone again. Should he call?)
Puritan (gaining conviction) The idea of solitude was with me from the very beginning. Isolation was a doorway to ecstasy.
Another excerpt from the same play,
The Perfectionist I believe that all the spiritual energy that has ever been is with us now, radient and invisible. We should not confuse ourselves with these bodies. I am not this body.
I am an electromagnectic field that animates this body.
Phone Fetishist, the Glenn Gould Factor by Margie Borschke
“Phil: Was there ever any kind of relationship between Glenn Gould and John Cage?
Kevin Bazzana: Yes, in fact the intellectual relationship between Gould and Cage is the subject of an article in the next issue of GlennGould which should be published within about a month. There was a brief correspondence between Gould and Cage in the early 1970s at the time of Gould’s CBC Radio Documentary on Schoenberg and Gould interviewed Cage, who was a student of Schoenberg’s, for that documentary.” (from here)
Glenn plays Schoenberg here with Menuhin (youtube)
Love, Russia and the Next Glenn Gould
“Gould’s Solitude Trilogy is a main inspiration for my RNC Protest piece” wrote Christopher DeLaurenti a Seattle composer. (via email)
