Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Hardcover)

by Kevin Bazzana (Author) "He grew up in a small country-physically vast, rich, imposing, but a small country nonetheless..." (more)
Key Phrases: contrapuntal radio, concert life, private recordings, New York, Glenn Gould, John Roberts (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
More than two decades after his death at the age of 50, Glenn Gould remains one of the most famous (and in some circles controversial) pianists of the 20th century. Bazzana, who previously wrote a musicological study of Gould's technique, broadens his focus to encompass the performer's brief life in an engaging biography that will captivate classical music lovers and casual listeners alike. Nimble analysis explores the influences of various composers on Gould's playing style while avoiding technical jargon. More importantly Bazzana portrays Gould as a vivid, engaging personality-no mean feat considering his subject withdrew from the concert stage in 1964 and spent the following 18 years addressing the public only through studio recordings and other electronic media. Bazzana confronts all the major clichés that have built up around Gould's history and then makes a persuasive argument against considering them as an indication of mental illness, suggesting that eccentricities like refusing to shake hands and sitting in a custom-designed piano chair were for the most part no more unusual than the habits adopted by any dedicated artist. He also provides ample evidence that the most widely spread stories obscure how resolutely normal Gould was (and, one repeatedly discovers, utterly and charmingly Canadian). For those who already love Gould's performances with all his extraneous noises, this biography provides welcome and equal insight into his life and music, while anyone new to the subject may not even want to wait until finishing the book to run out and buy their first CD.
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From The New Yorker
Opinion on the eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould is polarized between idolatry and detestation. Bazzana's portrait—the most balanced yet—ingeniously provides contexts for Gould's behavior, situating his hermeticism in the dour Anglo world of mid-century Toronto. A keen deflater of myths, Bazzana shows that Gould, often assumed to be asexual or gay, had a number of quasi-girlfriends, though his need for solitude always came first. Similarly, although it's true that he sued Steinway, alleging injury from an employee's effusive greeting, among friends handshakes were common. Still, those for whom the eccentricities are half the fun will find endless delight in the meticulous accounts of Gould's diet, hypochondria, and near-suicidal driving. "It's true that I've driven through a number of red lights on occasion," he once said, "but on the other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 558 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195174402
• ISBN-13: 978-0195174403
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #83,191 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Idea of Glenn Gould, September 19, 2004

By	The Sanity Inspector (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

With this book, Otto Friedrich's biography of Glenn Gould is finally surpassed. Kevin Bazzana was able to get more people to talk about their memories of Gould, and the result is this very readable biography. The author brings back the impact that Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations had on the music world. One record executive said that it was as if there had been a big run on a new printing of the Enneads of Plotinus. Throughout, Gould's career and life is told in satisfying detail and insight. He tries hard to explain Gould's musical contrariness, as in his mauling of Mozart's sonatas, but often has to simply yield and accept Gould's contrariness as such (though he intriguingly suggests that Gould may have been a musical forerunner of the postmodernists). And of course there is ample celebration of Gould's genius and his enduring cult.

According to Bazzana, he's a regular Victor Borge in the humor department. But on this score as on so many others, Bazzana must largely concur with the received legend, while offering scattered counter-examples. On balance, Gould was an excruciatingly unfunny humorist, a clotted, unreadable essayist, but also an entertaining raconteur, an unaffected star, and a proud Canadian.

Bazzana's biography of Gould succeeds, but I was left wanting more. For example, there doesn't seem to be any discussion of Gould's mysterious failure to record the crown jewel of Bach's oeuvre, The Art of the Fugue. His organ rendition doesn't count, and may be seen as Gould's way of side-stepping the issue. He could certainly play the fugues: they appear in any number of his concerts, and I especially treasure those that appear in his Russian lecture/concert on a Harmonia Mundi disc I own. Fugue no. 1 sounds like the dawning of some grand insight. Yet Gould never committed the whole thing to record on piano, and disappointingly, Bazzana doesn't offer any insight on why.

There are some very minor errors of fact here and there. For example, Bazzana apparently didn't realize that the Last Letters From Stalingrad, for which Gould wrote vocal sketches, were later proven to be forgeries.

It is very good to have a mini-biography of Gould's teacher, Alberto Guerrero. It's a shame that he made no commercial recordings, so that we could assess his influence on his famous pupil.

Bazzana seeks to explain the oft-rumored Canadian Identity to his readers, as it applies to Gould. Marshal McLuhan and Stephen Leacock are presented as exemplars of the Canadian spirit in communications technology and understated humor, respectively. Like McLuhan, Gould's ideas about communications were ahead of their time. Indeed, even with satellite communications and the technological miracles of the Internet Age, we may doubt that we have caught up with him yet. Oscar Wilde would have been a natural on TV chat shows; maybe Gould would have fit right in sometime in the future, after a few more revolutions in technology. It's as if he was a natural born genius at some field of endeavor that hadn't been invented yet, and so had to settle for realizing his visions by splicing magnetic tape. And playing piano, of course.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Worthy Biography, March 19, 2007

By	David Carlin (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Paperback)

I can't exactly put a nail on why I have read so many biographies on Gould, but I dare say the story of his reclusiveness, isolation and his pursuit of his art has always intrigued me. Up to this point my favorite biography on Gould had been the Otto Fredrick "A Life in Variations", so I had a pre-conceived notion that this book may just have been be a re-telling of all the stories and interviews I heard in the past.

Bazzana appears to set himself apart here in that he was not asked to write a biography on Gould as he described in the book. There are many snippits of things I've allready knew about Gould here, but Bazzana also tries to put another angle on some of the eccentricities most have heard or read about prior. He encapsulates many different views of Gould, so much so that I feel that I have a bit more insite here. Also, Bazzana appears to set some of the record straight for other biographical sources such as Andrew Kazdin's work called "Glenn Gould At Work, Creative Lying" which is another book I gained knowledge from and did enjoy. It may not be entirely possible to have a true biographical account of Gould, but I still appreciate this additional account of his life although I am only giving it 4 stars because I feel there will never be a complete biography of an individual due to different sources and views, but this one is generally well researched. It does re-hash some of the other interview material, sources etc, but within the book there does appear to be an attempt here to rationalize his behaviour and give a better look beyond the stereotype.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Enduring Fascination of Gould, February 17, 2007

By	Peter Baklava (Charles City, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Paperback)

What is it about Glenn Gould? He's been the subject of books, dvds, and one odd movie made up of a mosaic of short films. Gould's life and music has captured the attention and imagination of people who otherwise would not venture anywhere near classical performers.

"Wondrous Strange" doesn't delve deeply into opinions, or really attempt to explain why people were (and are) so affected by Gould--it simply lays out Gould's life in block-like sections, marking his attitudes and approaches to both music and life. The result is a thick book full of Gouldian lore, with many fascinating passages, that doesn't cohere quite as well as it could have. Bazzana develops themes, drops them, and then revisits them a few chapters on. Pages could have been trimmed where Bazzana is busy repeating himself. It's as if the book were trying to envelope Gould, like an octopus settling on a lobster.

Does it succeed? Mostly, yes. With repeated gleanings, Gould emerges to the reader as something of a "mutant"--a person slightly ahead of his time. He was a reclusive person, who came to hate concert limelight, and found great comfort in the controlled technology of the studio. He (probably correctly) discerned that an artist usually communicates better, and certainly more intimately, through recordings than through concerts.

Gould's belief in the classical music performer's right to interpret and reimagine great works of music put him at odds with many critics, as did his tendency to "sing" wordlessly as he played. These things only served to reinforce Gould's singularity, and mark him as a modernist. Like James Dean, or the Beatles, Gould transcended his time. He was a dreamer who continues to captivate and to inspire dreams in his legion of followers.