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109-738: Some of the first recordings featuring the Columbia Symphony Orchestra were made in New York in February 1913. Felix Weingartner made five acoustic sides in New York with the soprano Lucille Marcel (the third of his five marriages) Only one take was subsequently issued, "Ave Maria" from Verdi 's Otello on Columbia US A-5482, matrix number 36622. The other unissued takes included two of Weingartner's own songs, "Vergangenheit" and "Welke Rose", Schumann 's " Die Lotosblume ", op. 25, no. 7 and Olga von Radecki's "Frisches Grun". Frank Bridge made

218-423: A movement disorder neurologist suggested in a paper that Gould had dystonia , "a problem little understood in his time." Gould periodically told interviewers he would have been a writer if he had not been a pianist. He expounded his criticism and philosophy of music and art in lectures, convocation speeches, periodicals, and CBC radio and television documentaries. Gould participated in many interviews, and had

327-584: A single unissued take was made of the Waltz from Leo Delibes ' ballet Naïla , although the conductor is unnamed. Howard D. Barlow (May 1, 1892 – January 31, 1972) made a recording of Deems Taylor 's suite Through the Looking Glass with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in New York in November 1938. Released on Columbia Masterworks set M-350. Over the decades, several noted conductors and soloists collaborated with

436-522: A certain affection for Dixieland jazz , Gould was mostly averse to popular music. He enjoyed a jazz concert with his friends as a youth, mentioned jazz in his writings, and once criticized the Beatles for "bad voice leading " —while praising Petula Clark and Barbra Streisand . Gould and jazz pianist Bill Evans were mutual admirers, and Evans made his record Conversations with Myself using Gould's Steinway model CD 318 piano. Gould's perspective on art

545-432: A child and lifelong best friend was Robert Fulford , who became a prominent journalist and essayist. In 1952, Fulford and Gould founded New Music Associates, which produced and promoted Gould's first three public performances, including Gould's debut performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations . Gould was a child prodigy and was described in adulthood as a musical phenomenon. He claimed to have almost never practiced on

654-403: A child led physicians to prescribe, usually independently, an assortment of analgesics , anxiolytics , and other drugs. Bazzana has speculated that Gould's increasing use of a variety of prescription medications over his career may have had a deleterious effect on his health. It had reached the stage, Bazzana writes, that "he was taking pills to counteract the side effects of other pills, creating

763-426: A cycle of dependency". In 1956, Gould told photojournalist Jock Carroll about "my hysteria about eating. It's getting worse all the time." In his biography, psychiatrist Peter F. Ostwald noted Gould's increasing neurosis about food in the mid-1950s, something Gould had spoken to him about. Ostwald later discussed the possibility that Gould had developed a "psychogenic eating disorder" around this time. In 1956, Gould

872-438: A day, supplemented by arrowroot biscuits and coffee. In his later years he claimed to be vegetarian, though this is not certain. Gould lived a private life. The documentary filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon said of him: "No supreme pianist has ever given of his heart and mind so overwhelmingly while showing himself so sparingly." He never married, and biographers have spent considerable time on his sexuality. Bazzana writes that "it

981-427: A degree dependent upon his collaborators' receptiveness to his sometimes unconventional readings of the music. The musicologist Michael Stegemann considered Gould's television collaboration with American violinist Yehudi Menuhin in 1965, in which they played works by Bach, Beethoven and Schoenberg, a success because "Menuhin was ready to embrace the new perspectives opened up by an unorthodox view". But Stegemann deemed

1090-482: A distant relative of the Norwegian composer and pianist Edvard Grieg ), Presbyterians of Scottish, English, and Norwegian ancestry. The family's surname was informally changed to Gould around 1939 to avoid being mistaken for Jewish, given the prevailing antisemitism of prewar Toronto. Gould had no Jewish ancestry, though he sometimes joked about it, saying, "When people ask me if I'm Jewish, I always tell them that I

1199-433: A few weeks before the sessions. Gould could play a vast repertoire of piano music, as well as a wide range of orchestral and operatic transcriptions, from memory. He could "memorize at sight" and once challenged a friend to name any piece of music that he could not "instantly play from memory". The piano, Gould said, "is not an instrument for which I have any great love as such ... [but] I have played it all my life, and it

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1308-427: A friend of Gould's, in the 1997 book Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius . There has also been speculation that he may have had bipolar disorder , because he sometimes went several days without sleep, had extreme increases in energy, drove recklessly, and in later life endured severe depressive episodes. On 27 September 1982, two days after his 50th birthday, after experiencing a severe headache, Gould had

1417-416: A great many Lieder for voice and piano, one of which, "Liebesfeier" (text: Lenau) achieved a status as his most famous short work, in effect a "hit". Weingartner's choice of verse for his songs mirrors that of his contemporary composers: Max Reger , Joseph Marx , Richard Trunk and Richard Strauss . His musical style, notably very generous, indeed rather valuable in its rather Schubertian melodic interest,

1526-429: A keyboard instrument, leading his doctor to predict that he would "be either a physician or a pianist". He learned to read music before he could read words, and it was observed that he had perfect pitch at age three. When presented with a piano, the young Gould was reported to strike single notes and listen to their long decay , a practice his father Bert noted was different from typical children. Gould's interest in

1635-509: 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." Their affair lasted until 1972, when she returned to her husband. As early as two weeks after leaving her husband, Foss noticed disturbing signs in Gould, alluding to unusual behaviour that was more than "just neurotic". Specifically, he believed that "someone

1744-491: A musical score more fully this way. Gould felt strongly that there was little point in re-recording centuries-old pieces if the performer had no new perspective to bring. For the rest of his life, he eschewed live performance, focusing instead on recording, writing, and broadcasting. Gould was widely known for his unusual habits. He often hummed or sang while he played, and his audio engineers were not always able to exclude his voice from recordings. Gould claimed that his singing

1853-642: A performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in 1966. Gould collaborated extensively with Vladimir Golschmann and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra for the Columbia Masterworks label in his recording of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1958 and several works by Bach in the 1960s, including the Keyboard Concerto No. 3 (BWV 1054) , the Keyboard Concerto No. 5 (BWV 1056) and the Keyboard Concerto No. 7 (BWV 1058) in 1967 and

1962-421: A performing version of Schubert 's Symphony No. 7 in E major , D. 729, that has received some performances and recordings; he also arranged works by a number of early Romantic masters for orchestral performance. Weingartner was early interested in the occult, astrology , and Eastern mysticism , which influenced his personal philosophy and his music to some extent. He was himself a prolific writer who published

2071-412: A pianist such as Van Cliburn , 200 concerts would have amounted to about two years' touring. One of Gould's reasons for abandoning live performance was his aesthetic preference for the recording studio, where, in his words, he developed a "love affair with the microphone". There, he could control every aspect of the final musical product by selecting parts of various takes. He felt that he could realize

2180-481: A piece of music. Yet it is not the work that has changed but its relation within the accepted narrative of music history . Similarly, Gould notes the "pathetic duplicity" in the reception of high-quality forgeries by Han van Meegeren of new paintings attributed to the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer , before and after the forgery was known. Gould preferred an ahistorical, or at least pre-Renaissance, view of art, minimizing

2289-514: A poetical drama, Golgotha , in 1908. He wrote copiously on music drama, on conducting, on the symphony since Beethoven , on the symphonies of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann as well as on art and esoteric subjects. Two collections of essays were Musikalische Walpurgisnacht (1907) and Akkorde (1912). He also published an autobiography, Lebenserinnerungen in 1923. Glenn Gould Glenn Herbert Gould ( / ɡ uː l d / ; né Gold ; 25 September 1932 – 4 October 1982)

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2398-427: A predilection for scripting them to the extent that they may be seen to be as written work as much as off-the-cuff discussions. Gould's writing style was highly articulate, but sometimes florid, indulgent, and rhetorical. This is especially evident in his (frequent) attempts at humour and irony. Bazzana writes that although some of Gould's "conversational dazzle" found its way into his prolific written output, his writing

2507-409: A recording of several popular arias by Giacomo Puccini . In the early 1960s, the composer Aaron Copland joined forces with the swing clarinetist Benny Goodman and the concert bass-baritone William Warfield to record his Clarinet Concerto along with his arrangement of " Old American Songs " in collaboration with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. From 1955 onwards, he made many recordings with

2616-431: A reference to the philosopher George Santayana 's 1935 novel of the same name . But he was progressive in many ways, promulgating the atonal composers of the early 20th century, and anticipating, through his deep involvement in the recording process, the vast changes technology had on the production and distribution of music. Mark Kingwell summarizes the paradox, never resolved by Gould nor his biographers, this way: He

2725-493: A reply to the many critical attacks on him in Vienna; the finale reaches a climax in a parody of the waltz from Johann Strauss II 's Die Fledermaus . Similarly, he managed to finish his Fifth Symphony in time for Roxo Betty's birthday, a trend in romantic attachment which may attract at least passing notice, for he was thus a very dedicated bridegroom in his deployment of manuscript paper. Weingartner edited, with Charles Malherbe ,

2834-557: A reviewer of his 1981 rerecording of the Goldberg Variations wrote that many listeners would "find the groans and croons intolerable". Gould was known for his peculiar, even theatrical, gesticulations while playing. Another oddity was his insistence on absolute control over every aspect of his environment. The temperature of the recording studio had to be precisely regulated; he invariably insisted that it be extremely warm. According to another of Gould's biographers, Otto Friedrich ,

2943-636: A single (unissued) take of Grieg 's Shepherd Boy , op. 54 with the orchestra for Columbia UK on matrix AX 268, in London on 14 December 1923. The composer and conductor Robert Hood Bowers made around 15 double-sided 78 rpm recordings with the orchestra in September 1927. During a recording session in March 1932 with Weingartner and the British Symphony Orchestra in London's Westminster Central Hall ,

3052-559: A stir at the concert of April 6, 1962 , when, just before the New York Philharmonic was to perform the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor with Gould, he informed the audience that he was assuming no responsibility for what they were about to hear. He asked the audience: "In a concerto, who is the boss – the soloist or the conductor?", to which the audience laughed. "The answer is, of course, sometimes

3161-452: A stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body. He was admitted to Toronto General Hospital and his condition rapidly deteriorated. By 4 October, there was evidence of brain damage, and Gould's father decided that his son should be taken off life support. Gould's public funeral was held in St. Paul's Anglican Church on 15 October with singing by Lois Marshall and Maureen Forrester . The service

3270-486: A technique that enabled him to choose a very fast tempo while retaining the "separateness" and clarity of each note. His extremely low position at the instrument permitted him more control over the keyboard. Gould showed considerable technical skill in performing and recording a wide repertoire including virtuosic and romantic works, such as his own arrangement of Ravel 's La valse and Liszt's transcriptions of Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. Gould worked from

3379-791: A tool in "orchestral training". He was married five times, to Marie Juillerat (in 1891), Baroness Feodora von Dreifus (1903), mezzo-soprano Lucille Marcel (1912; died in 1921), actress Roxo Betty Kalisch (1922), and Carmen Studer (1931). Despite his lifelong career as a conductor, Weingartner regarded himself as equally, if not more importantly, a composer. Besides numerous operas, Weingartner wrote seven symphonies which have all been recorded, with his other orchestral music, by cpo - classic production osnabrück , in Osnabrück , Germany. A sinfonietta, violin concerto , cello concerto , orchestral works, at least five string quartets , quintets for strings and for piano with clarinet and other pieces including

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3488-543: A young age with Guerrero on a technique known as finger-tapping : a method of training the fingers to act more independently from the arm. Gould passed his final Conservatory examination in piano at age 12, achieving the highest marks of any candidate, and thus attaining professional standing as a pianist. One year later he passed the written theory exams, qualifying for an Associate of the Toronto Conservatory of Music (ATCM) diploma. Gould's next-door neighbour as

3597-447: Is apocryphally related to the adjustable-height chair his father made shortly thereafter. Gould's mother would urge the young Gould to sit up straight at the keyboard. He used this chair for the rest of his life, taking it with him almost everywhere. The chair was designed so that Gould could sit very low and allowed him to pull down on the keys rather than striking them from above, a central technical idea of Guerrero's. Gould developed

3706-412: Is faulty?" In creating music, Gould much preferred the control and intimacy provided by the recording studio. He disliked the concert hall, which he compared to a competitive sporting arena. He gave his final public performance in 1964, and thereafter devoted his career to the studio, recording albums and several radio documentaries . He was attracted to the technical aspects of recording, and considered

3815-468: Is highly energetic and often frenetic; the later is slower and more deliberate —Gould wanted to treat the aria and its 30 variations as a cohesive whole. Gould said Bach was "first and last an architect, a constructor of sound, and what makes him so inestimably valuable to us is that he was beyond a doubt the greatest architect of sound who ever lived". He recorded most of Bach's other keyboard works, including both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier and

3924-426: Is of its time: an amalgam of late Romanticism and early Modernism, comparable with those of his contemporaries Richard Strauss , Gustav Mahler , Franz Schreker and Alexander Zemlinsky . His idiom left some marks on Erich Wolfgang Korngold , whose precocious Sinfonietta is dedicated to Weingartner, who conducted its first performance. His Third Symphony was intended both as a message of love to Lucille Marcel and

4033-405: Is often summed up by this 1962 quotation: "The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. 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." Gould repeatedly called himself "the last puritan ",

4142-472: Is so closely identified with him that it is shown in a place of honour in a glass case at Library and Archives Canada . Conductors had mixed responses to Gould and his playing habits. George Szell , who led Gould in 1957 with the Cleveland Orchestra , remarked to his assistant, "That nut's a genius." Bernstein said, "There is nobody quite like him, and I just love playing with him." Bernstein created

4251-435: Is tempting to assume that Gould was asexual, an image that certainly fits his aesthetic and the persona he sought to convey, and one can read the whole Gould literature and be convinced that he died a virgin"—but he also mentions that evidence points to "a number of relationships with women that may or may not have been platonic and ultimately became complicated and were ended". One piece of evidence arrived in 2007. When Gould

4360-430: Is the best vehicle I have to express my ideas." In the case of Bach, Gould noted, "[I] fixed the action in some of the instruments I play on—and the piano I use for all recordings is now so fixed—so that it is a shallower and more responsive action than the standard. It tends to have a mechanism which is rather like an automobile without power steering: you are in control and not it; it doesn't drive you, you drive it. This

4469-633: Is the secret of doing Bach on the piano at all. You must have that immediacy of response, that control over fine definitions of things." As a teenager, Gould was significantly influenced by Artur Schnabel and Rosalyn Tureck 's recordings of Bach (which he called "upright, with a sense of repose and positiveness"), and the conductor Leopold Stokowski . Gould was known for his vivid imagination. Listeners regarded his interpretations as ranging from brilliantly creative to outright eccentric. His pianism had great clarity and erudition, particularly in contrapuntal passages, and extraordinary control. Gould believed

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4578-500: The Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 during the 1950s. Alexander Schneider paired with Rudolf Serkin and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra during the 1950s in a recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 's: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467 and Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major, K. 595 . Igor Stravinsky made many recordings of his own compositions with an incarnation of this orchestra, mainly musicians from

4687-557: The Premier nocturne ), Richard Strauss (the Piano Sonata, the Five Pieces, and Enoch Arden with Claude Rains ), and Hindemith (the three piano sonatas and the sonatas for brass and piano). He also made recordings of Schoenberg's complete piano works. In early September 1982, Gould made his final recording: Strauss's Piano Sonata in B minor . The success of Gould's collaborations was to

4796-771: The Symphony in E flat ; the Symphony in Three Movements and the Violin Concerto ; as well as several shorter pieces. In 1977, a recording of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra playing the "Sacrificial Dance" from The Rite of Spring , conducted by Stravinsky, was selected by NASA to be included on the Voyager Golden Record , a gold-plated copper record that was sent into space on the Voyager space craft . The record contained sounds and images which had been selected as examples of

4905-469: The conductor Bruno Walter , who recorded interpretations of Beethoven , Brahms , Bruckner , Mahler and Mozart symphonies. With this orchestra, Walter made his only stereo recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 9 , which he had conducted at its world premiere. The term Columbia Symphony Orchestra was also used when, for contractual reasons, another orchestra could not appear under its own name. Many Los Angeles Philharmonic musicians also played under

5014-403: The partitas , French Suites , English Suites , inventions and sinfonias , keyboard concertos, and a number of toccatas (which interested him least, being less polyphonic). For his only recording at the organ, he recorded some of The Art of Fugue , which was also released posthumously on piano. As for Beethoven, Gould preferred the composer's early and late periods. He recorded all five of

5123-509: The piano concertos , 23 of the piano sonatas , and numerous bagatelles and variations. Gould was the first pianist to record any of Liszt's piano transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies (beginning with the Fifth Symphony, in 1967, with the Sixth released in 1969). Gould also recorded works by Brahms, Mozart, and many other prominent piano composers, though he was outspoken in his criticism of

5232-536: The three sonatas for viola da gamba and keyboard with Leonard Rose . Claude Rains narrated their recording of Strauss's melodrama Enoch Arden . Gould also collaborated with members of the New York Philharmonic, the flutist Julius Baker and the violinist Rafael Druian , in a recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, and with Leopold Stokowski and the American Symphony Orchestra in

5341-656: The "actual playing" of them, Gould said he disliked Mozart's later works. He was fond of a number of lesser-known composers such as Orlando Gibbons , whose Anthems he had heard as a teenager, and whose music he felt a "spiritual attachment" to. He recorded a number of Gibbons's keyboard works, and called him his favourite composer, despite his better-known admiration for Bach. He made recordings of piano music by Jean Sibelius (the Sonatines and Kyllikki ), Georges Bizet (the Variations Chromatiques de Concert and

5450-475: The 1966 collaboration with soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf , recording Strauss's Ophelia Lieder , an "outright fiasco". Schwarzkopf believed in "total fidelity" to the score, and objected to the temperature: The studio was incredibly overheated, which may be good for a pianist but not for a singer: a dry throat is the end as far as singing is concerned. But we persevered nonetheless. It wasn't easy for me. Gould began by improvising something Straussian—we thought he

5559-632: The Air and The Campbell Playhouse programs presented by Orson Welles . In addition, CBS' Columbia Concert Orchestra recorded both classical and popular music for Columbia Masterworks in the 1920s-1950s. Live concerts by the orchestra were also broadcast throughout the United States and to South America via shortwave radio over the International Radio Station WCBX in New York City and

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5668-667: The Business Men's Bible Class in Uxbridge, Ontario , in front of a congregation of about 2,000. In 1945, at 13, he made his first appearance with an orchestra in a performance of the first movement of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with the Toronto Symphony . His first solo concert followed in 1947, and his first recital on radio was with the CBC in 1950. This was the beginning of Gould's long association with radio and recording. He founded

5777-787: The CSO, in CBS-projects that were intended to record the Second Viennese School for the first time integrally. In this period, Robert Craft also produced most of the Varèse works with the Columbia Ensemble. Vladimir Golschmann also collaborated with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in several historic recordings with the young pianist Glenn Gould . Included among their collaborations were recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach 's Keyboard Concerti : No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, No. 5 & No. 7, as well as

5886-496: The Columbia Symphony Orchestra including: From 1941 until 1971 Alfredo Antonini also served as a principal conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra while collaborating with noted soloists including Richard Tucker . In 1972 he was cited with an Emmy Award for conducting the orchestra in the television premier of Ezra Laderman 's opera And David Wept. in the later part of the 1930s, Howard Barlow joined forces with

5995-607: The Columbia Symphony name, and some reports mention that the entire Philharmonic frequently played as the Columbia Symphony when recorded on the west coast. There was also the Columbia Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, sometimes called the CBS Symphony Orchestra . This group was formed to perform on CBS Radio broadcasts and also made 78-rpm recordings for Columbia Records during the 1940s. It

6104-561: The Conservatory in 1883 and studying in Weimar as one of Franz Liszt 's last pupils. Liszt helped produce the world premiere of Weingartner's opera Sakuntala in 1884 with the Weimar orchestra. According to Liszt biographer Alan Walker , however, the Weimar orchestra of the 1880s was far from its peak of a few decades earlier and the performance ended up poorly, with the orchestra going one way and

6213-575: The Festival Trio chamber group in 1953 with cellist Isaac Mamott and violinist Albert Pratz . Gould made his American debut on 2 January 1955, in Washington, D.C. at The Phillips Collection . The music critic Paul Hume wrote in the Washington Post , "January 2 is early for predictions, but it is unlikely that the year 1955 will bring us a finer piano recital than that played yesterday afternoon in

6322-523: The Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds. On 10 April 1964, he gave his last public performance, at Los Angeles's Wilshire Ebell Theater . Among the pieces he performed were Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30 , selections from Bach's The Art of Fugue , and Hindemith's Piano Sonata No. 3. Gould performed fewer than 200 concerts, of which fewer than 40 were outside Canada. For

6431-658: The International Radio Station WCAB in Philadelphia from 1939-1940 during World War II. Included among the noted collaborators were such operatic luminaries as: Eileen Farrell , Lily Pons , Paul Robeson and Richard Tucker under the direction of several conductors including: Alfredo Antonini , Emanuel Balaban , Howard Barlow, Bernard Herrmann , Andre Kostelanetz , Charles Lichter and Alexander Semmler. Felix Weingartner Paul Felix Weingartner , Edler von Münzberg (2 June 1863 – 7 May 1942)

6540-490: The Los Angeles Festival Orchestra founded by Franz Waxman . Among the works in which Stravinsky conducted the orchestra are Apollon musagète ; Le baiser de la fée ; The Firebird – suite and complete ballet; Mass ; Mavra ; Les noces ; Orpheus ; Perséphone ; Petrushka – suite and complete ballet; Pulcinella – suite and complete ballet; The Rake's Progress ; The Rite of Spring ;

6649-557: The Phillips Gallery. We shall be lucky if it brings us others of equal beauty and significance." A performance at The Town Hall in New York City followed on 11 January. Gould's reputation quickly grew. In 1957, he undertook a tour of the Soviet Union, becoming the first North American to play there since World War II. His concerts featured Bach, Beethoven, and the serial music of Schoenberg and Berg , which had been suppressed in

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6758-577: The Romantic era as a whole. He was extremely critical of Chopin. When asked whether he found himself wanting to play Chopin, he replied: "No, I don't. I play it in a weak moment—maybe once a year or twice a year for myself. But it doesn't convince me." But in 1970, he played Chopin's B minor sonata for the CBC and said he liked some of the miniatures and "sort of liked the first movement of the B minor". Although he recorded all of Mozart's sonatas and admitted enjoying

6867-524: The Soviet Union during the era of Socialist Realism . Gould debuted in Boston in 1958, playing for the Peabody Mason Concert Series. On 31 January 1960, Gould first appeared on American television on CBS's Ford Presents series, performing Bach's Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor (BWV 1052) with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Gould believed that the institution of

6976-428: The air-conditioning engineer had to work just as hard as the recording engineers. The piano had to be set at a certain height and would be raised on wooden blocks if necessary. A rug would sometimes be required for his feet. He had to sit exactly 14 inches (360 mm) above the floor, and would play concerts only with the chair his father had made. He used this chair even when the seat was completely worn. His chair

7085-572: The best-known are the German musicologist Karlheinz Klopweisser, the English conductor Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite, and the American critic Theodore Slutz. These facets of Gould, whether interpreted as neurosis or "play", have provided ample material for psychobiography . Gould was a teetotaller and did not smoke. He did not cook; instead he often ate at restaurants and relied on room service. He ate one meal

7194-806: The chorus another. Walker got this account from Weingartner's autobiography, published in Zürich and Leipzig in 1928–1929. The same year, 1884, he assumed the directorship of the Königsberg Opera. From 1885 to 1887 he was Kapellmeister in Danzig , then in Hamburg until 1889, and in Mannheim until 1891. Starting that year, he was Kapellmeister of the Royal Opera and conductor of symphony concerts in Berlin. He eventually resigned from

7303-510: The complete works of Hector Berlioz (he once called Berlioz the "creator of the modern orchestra") as well as the operas Joseph by Méhul and Oberon by Weber , and individual works of Gluck , Wagner and others. He also made orchestral versions of piano works such as Beethoven 's Hammerklavier Sonata , Weber's Invitation to the Dance , and Bizet 's Variations chromatiques . Before Brian Newbould 's more recent work, in 1934, he made

7412-422: The diversity of life and culture on Earth. In the 1960s George Szell also joined forces with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra and Robert Casadesus for a recording of several piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart including: Concerto No. 22 in E flat major, K. 482 and Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488 for Columbia Masterworks (ML5594, 1960). Among the best-known recordings the orchestra made were with

7521-401: The emergence of a cult of showmanship and gratuitous virtuosity on the concert platform in the 19th century and later. The institution of the public concert, he felt, degenerated into the "blood sport" with which he struggled, and which he ultimately rejected. On 5 June 1938, at age five, Gould played in public for the first time, joining his family on stage to play piano at a church service at

7630-463: The experience: It was Hofmann . It was, I think, his last performance in Toronto, and it was a staggering impression. The only thing I can really remember is that, when I was being brought home in a car, I was in that wonderful state of half-awakeness in which you hear all sorts of incredible sounds going through your mind. They were all orchestral sounds, but I was playing them all, and suddenly I

7739-438: The fugue's expositions from one take and its episodes from another. Gould's first commercial recording (of Berg's Piano sonata, Op. 1 ) came in 1953 on the short-lived Canadian Hallmark label. He soon signed with Columbia Records' classical music division and, in 1955, recorded Bach: The Goldberg Variations , his breakthrough work. Although there was some controversy at Columbia about the appropriateness of this "debut" piece,

7848-416: The identity of the artist and the attendant historical context in evaluating the artwork: "What gives us the right to assume that in the work of art we must receive a direct communication with the historical attitudes of another period? ... moreover, what makes us assume that the situation of the man who wrote it accurately or faithfully reflects the situation of his time? ... What if the composer, as historian,

7957-539: The lecture and essay "Forgery and Imitation in the Creative Process", one of his most significant texts, Gould makes explicit his views on authenticity and creativity. He asks why the epoch in which a work is received influences its reception as "art", postulating a sonata of his own composition that sounds so like one of Haydn 's that it is received as such. If, instead, the sonata had been attributed to an earlier or later composer, it becomes more or less interesting as

8066-425: The manipulation of tape to be another part of the creative process. Although Gould's recording studio producers have testified that "he needed splicing less than most performers", Gould used the process to give himself total artistic control over the recording process. He recounted his recording of the A minor fugue from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier and how it was spliced together from two takes, with

8175-534: The mid-1920s and his last recording session with the London Symphony, including Brahms Second Symphony to complete the historic Beethoven-Brahms symphony cycle he began in the 1920s (see below), on February 29, 1940. He gave his last concert in London that year and died in Winterthur , Switzerland two years later. Weingartner was the first conductor to make commercial recordings of all nine Beethoven symphonies, and

8284-407: The one and sometimes the other, depending on the people involved." Specifically, Bernstein was referring to their rehearsals, with Gould's insistence that the entire first movement be played at half the indicated tempo. The speech was interpreted by Harold C. Schonberg , music critic for The New York Times , as an abdication of responsibility and an attack on Gould. Plans for a studio recording of

8393-715: The opera post while continuing to conduct the symphony concerts, and then settled in Munich , where he incurred the enmity of pundits like Rudolf Louis and Ludwig Thuille . In 1902, at the Mainz Festival, Weingartner conducted all nine Beethoven symphonies. From 1907 to 1910 he was the Director of the Vienna Hofoper , succeeding Gustav Mahler ; he retained the conductorship of the Vienna Philharmonic until 1927. From 1912 he

8502-459: The orchestra in collaboration with Glenn Gould in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven 's Piano Concerto No. 2 in B Flat Major, Op. 19 and Johann Sebastian Bach 's Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052 for Columbia Masterworks in 1957 During his tenure at the Metropolitan Opera in 1959, Fausto Cleva led the Columbia Symphony Orchestra and the noted tenor Richard Tucker in

8611-464: The orchestra included: Franz Schubert 's Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, D. 125 and selections from Engelbert Humperdinck 's Hansel und Gretel Suite . In 1949, Sir Thomas Beecham made a series of recordings in Columbia Records' 30th Street Studios in New York City with a completely different pickup group, which was also called the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Later reissued by Sony on CD,

8720-647: The orchestra which was known at the time as the CBS Symphony Orchestra within the Columbia Broadcasting System . Together, they recorded Deems Taylor 's "Through the Looking Glass Suite", Op. 12. By 1940, they joined forces once again in a recording of Bach's Air on the G String from the Suite No. 3 for Orchestra and the Bouree from Bach 's Suite No. 3 for Unaccompanied Cello . Additional recordings with

8829-563: The performance came to nothing. The live radio broadcast was subsequently released on CD, Bernstein's disclaimer included. Gould was averse to cold and wore heavy clothing (including gloves) even in warm places. He was once arrested, possibly being mistaken for a vagrant, while sitting on a park bench in Sarasota, Florida , dressed in his standard all-climate attire of coat, hat and mittens. He also disliked social functions. He hated being touched, and in later life limited personal contact, relying on

8938-406: The piano itself, preferring to study repertoire by reading, another technique he had learned from Guerrero. He may have spoken ironically about his practising, though, as there is evidence that, on occasion, he did practise quite hard, sometimes using his own drills and techniques. He seemed able to practise mentally, once preparing for a recording of Brahms 's piano works without playing them until

9047-611: The piano to be "a contrapuntal instrument" and his whole approach to music was centered in the Baroque . Much of the homophony that followed he felt belongs to a less serious and less spiritual period of art. Gould had a pronounced aversion to what he termed "hedonistic" approaches to piano repertoire, performance, and music generally. For him, "hedonism" in this sense denoted a superficial theatricality, something to which he felt Mozart, for example, became increasingly susceptible later in his career. He associated this drift toward hedonism with

9156-475: The piano was concomitant with an interest in composition. He played his pieces for family, friends, and sometimes large gatherings—including, in 1938, a performance at the Emmanuel Presbyterian Church (a few blocks from the Gould family home) of one of his compositions. Gould first heard a live musical performance by a celebrated soloist at age six. This profoundly affected him. He later described

9265-626: The printed scores; while Weingartner was more like Arturo Toscanini in insisting on playing as written. His 1935 recording of Beethoven 's Symphony No. 9 , for instance, sounds much more like Toscanini's 1936, 1938, 1939 and 1952 renditions (only the last of which was recorded in a studio rather than at a concert) than Furtwängler's far more expansive readings. He taught conducting to students as eminent as Paul Sacher , Charles Houdret , Georg Tintner and Josef Krips . He experimented with films of himself conducting (such as in his only recorded performance of Weber's overture to Der Freischütz ) as

9374-477: The public concert was an anachronism and a "force of evil", leading to his early retirement from concert performance. He argued that public performance devolved into a sort of competition, with a non-empathetic audience mostly attendant to the possibility of the performer erring or failing critical expectation; and that such performances produced unexceptional interpretations because of the limitations of live music. He set forth this doctrine, half in jest, in "GPAADAK",

9483-444: The record received extraordinary praise and was among the best-selling classical music albums of its era. Gould became closely associated with the piece, playing it in full or in part at many recitals. A new recording of the Goldberg Variations , in 1981, was among his last albums; the piece was one of a few he recorded twice in the studio. The 1981 release was one of CBS Masterworks' first digital recordings . The 1955 interpretation

9592-404: The recording of music should be different. He went so far as to conduct an experiment with musicians, sound engineers, and laypeople in which they were to listen to a recording and determine where the splices occurred. Each group chose different points, but none was wholly successful. While the test was hardly scientific, Gould remarked, "The tape does lie, and nearly always gets away with it". In

9701-702: The recordings include Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli , the overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor by Otto Nicolai , Carmen Suite by Georges Bizet , and Capriccio Italien by Peter Tchaikovsky . Leonard Bernstein conducted the orchestra and also played the piano solos, in Maurice Ravel 's Piano Concerto in G and George Gershwin 's Rhapsody in Blue . These were released by Columbia in stereo on LP and later reissued by Sony on CD. In addition, Bernstein also joined forces with

9810-469: The second (to Leopold Stokowski in Philadelphia) to record all four Brahms symphonies. In 1935 he conducted the world premiere of Georges Bizet 's long-lost Symphony in C . His crisp classical conducting style contrasted with the romantic approach of many of his contemporaries such as Wilhelm Furtwängler , whose conducting is now considered "subjective" on the basis of tempo fluctuations not called for in

9919-424: The telephone and letters for communication. On a visit to Steinway Hall in New York City in 1959, the chief piano technician at the time, William Hupfer, greeted Gould with a slap on the back. Gould was shocked by this, and complained of aching, lack of coordination, and fatigue because of it. He went on to explore the possibility of litigation against Steinway & Sons if his apparent injuries were permanent. He

10028-448: Was "at best uneven [and] at worst awful". While offering "brilliant insights" and "provocative theses", Gould's writing is often marred by "long, tortuous sentences" and a "false formality", Bazzana writes. In his writing, Gould praised certain composers and rejected what he deemed banal in music composition and its consumption by the public, and also gave analyses of the music of Richard Strauss , Alban Berg and Anton Webern . Despite

10137-406: Was Hofmann. I was enchanted. At age 10, he began attending the Toronto Conservatory of Music in Toronto (known since 1947 as The Royal Conservatory of Music ). He studied music theory with Leo Smith , organ with Frederick C. Silvester , and piano with Alberto Guerrero . Around the same time, he injured his back as a result of a fall from a boat ramp on the shore of Lake Simcoe . This incident

10246-421: Was Jewish during the war." Gould's interest in music and his talent as a pianist were evident very early. Both parents were musical; his mother, especially, encouraged his musical development from infancy. Hoping he would become a successful musician, she exposed him to music during her pregnancy. She taught him the piano and as a baby, he reportedly hummed instead of crying, and wiggled his fingers as if playing

10355-809: Was a Canadian classical pianist. He was among the most famous and celebrated pianists of the 20th century, renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach . His playing was distinguished by remarkable technical proficiency and a capacity to articulate the contrapuntal texture of Bach's music. Gould rejected most of the Romantic piano literature by Chopin , Liszt , Rachmaninoff , and others, in favour of Bach and Beethoven mainly, along with some late-Romantic and modernist composers. Gould also recorded works by Mozart , Haydn , Scriabin , and Brahms ; pre-Baroque composers such as Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck , William Byrd , and Orlando Gibbons ; and 20th-century composers including Paul Hindemith , Arnold Schoenberg , and Richard Strauss . Gould

10464-841: Was again Kapellmeister in Hamburg, but resigned in 1914 and went to Darmstadt as general music director while also often conducting in the U.S. for the Boston Opera Company between 1912 and 1914. In 1919–20, he was chief conductor of the Vienna Volksoper . In 1920, he became a professor at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest . From 1927 to 1934 he was music director of the Basel symphony orchestra. He made many outstanding Beethoven and Brahms symphony recordings in Vienna and London between

10573-500: Was also a writer and broadcaster, and dabbled in composing and conducting. He produced television programmes about classical music, in which he would speak and perform, or interact with an interviewer in a scripted manner. He made three musique concrète radio documentaries, collectively the Solitude Trilogy , about isolated areas of Canada. He was a prolific contributor to music journals, in which he discussed music theory. Gould

10682-411: Was also taking Thorazine , an anti-psychotic medication, and reserpine , another anti-psychotic, which can also be used to lower blood pressure. Cornelia Foss has said that Gould took many antidepressants , which she blamed for his deteriorating mental state. Whether Gould's behaviour fell within the autism spectrum has been debated. The diagnosis was first suggested by psychiatrist Peter Ostwald,

10791-529: Was an Austrian conductor , composer and pianist . Weingartner was born in Zara , Dalmatia , Austrian Empire (now Zadar , Croatia ), to Austrian parents. The family moved to Graz in 1868, and his father died later that year. He studied with Wilhelm Mayer (who published his own compositions under the pseudonym of W. A. Rémy and also taught Ferruccio Busoni ). In 1881 he went to Leipzig to study philosophy, but soon devoted himself entirely to music, entering

10900-423: Was and was not a man of his time. The issue of "authenticity" in relation to an approach like Gould's has been greatly debated (although less so by the end of the 20th century): is a recording less authentic or "direct" for having been highly refined by technical means in the studio? Gould likened his process to that of a film director —one knows that a two-hour film was not made in two hours—and implicitly asked why

11009-604: Was attended by over 3,000 people and was broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . He is buried next to his parents in Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery (section 38, lot 1050). The first few bars of the Goldberg Variations are carved on his grave marker. An animal lover, Gould left half his estate to the Toronto Humane Society ; the other half went to the Salvation Army . In 2000,

11118-506: Was frequently conducted by Howard Barlow, who later became the music director of " The Voice of Firestone " radio and television programs. One of the Columbia Records releases by the CBS Symphony with Barlow conducting was the " Indian Suites " by Edward MacDowell , recorded on May 15, 1939; this recording can be heard on YouTube . The composer Bernard Herrmann conducted the orchestra for some broadcasts, especially The Mercury Theatre on

11227-459: Was in Los Angeles in 1956, he met Cornelia Foss , an art instructor, and her husband Lukas , a conductor. After several years, she and Gould became lovers. In 1967, she left her husband for Gould, taking her two children with her to Toronto. She purchased a house near Gould's apartment. In 2007, Foss confirmed that she and Gould had had a love affair for several years. According to her, "There were

11336-444: Was known for cancelling performances at the last minute, which is why Bernstein's aforementioned public disclaimer opened with, "Don't be frightened, Mr. Gould is here ... [he] will appear in a moment." In his liner notes and broadcasts, Gould created more than two dozen alter egos for satirical, humorous, and didactic purposes, permitting him to write hostile reviews or incomprehensible commentaries on his own performances. Probably

11445-506: Was known for his eccentricities, ranging from his unorthodox musical interpretations and mannerisms at the keyboard to aspects of his lifestyle and behaviour. He disliked public performance, and stopped giving concerts at age 31 to concentrate on studio recording and media. Glenn Gould was born at home at 32 Southwood Drive in The Beaches, Toronto , on September 25, 1932, the only child of Russell Herbert Gold and Florence Emma Gold (born Greig,

11554-470: Was progressive and anti-progressive at once, and likewise at once both a critic of the Zeitgeist and its most interesting expression. He was, in effect, stranded on a beachhead of his own thinking between past and future. That he was not able, by himself, to fashion a bridge between them is neither surprising, nor, in the end, disappointing. We should see this failure, rather, as an aspect of his genius. He both

11663-415: Was simply warming up, but no, he continued to play like that throughout the actual recordings, as though Strauss's notes were just a pretext that allowed him to improvise freely. Gould recorded Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Ernst Krenek with numerous vocalists, including Donald Gramm and Ellen Faull . He also recorded Bach's six sonatas for violin and harpsichord ( BWV 1014–1019) with Jaime Laredo , and

11772-440: Was spying on him", according to Foss's son. Though an admitted hypochondriac, Gould had many pains and ailments, but his autopsy revealed few underlying problems in areas that often troubled him. He worried about everything from high blood pressure (which in his later years he recorded in diary form) to the safety of his hands. (Gould rarely shook people's hands, and habitually wore gloves.) The spine injury he experienced as

11881-483: Was unconscious and increased in proportion to his inability to produce his intended interpretation on a given piano. It is likely that the habit originated in his having been taught by his mother to "sing everything that he played", as his biographer Kevin Bazzana wrote. This became "an unbreakable (and notorious) habit". Some of Gould's recordings were severely criticised because of this background "vocalising". For example,

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