GOULD STANDARD
Doc explores legendary pianist’s life
A recent BBC radio documentary about Glenn Gould has renewed speculation that the legendary Canadian pianist suffered from Asperger syndrome.
“I think it’s very likely that Glenn had it,” says American music critic Tim Page, who himself suffers from Asperger — also known as autistic spectrum disorder. “I think it’s responsible for his extraordinary genius, but also his loneliness. This is a man who never had a particularly long love affair in his life. He liked to have control of things. He liked to have things done just so; he was anxious about being touched; he did not like to be overstimulated.”
Page, who also discussed Gould’s psychological condition in a 2016 article in The New York Times, tells his BBC interviewer about his own struggle with the disorder. But he stresses that there are “a tremendous amount of things that I have done” and suggests this is because of “the kind of intense concentration” the condition makes possible.
Gould achieved international celebrity at 23 when his recording of Bach’s ferociously difficult Goldberg Variations was released. He quickly developed a reputation for eccentricity, performing concerts on a chair with sawed-off legs and singing along with the music.
Gould hated the life of a concert pianist but was fascinated by technology. That led him to quit public performances in 1964 to concentrate on the recording studio — an action that sparked widespread controversy at the time.
The BBC documentary, part of a Canada 150 series commissioned by the British broadcaster, is hosted by London pianist James Rhodes — a self-confessed “Gould geek.” Rhodes travelled to Toronto to interview friends and colleagues of the driven genius, who died in 1982.
Rhodes also talks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who hails Gould’s early readiness to embrace technology.
“He was someone who focused on challenging his listeners, challenging the community he was part of,” Trudeau says. “I think the idea of accepting and embracing disruption in something as comfortable as classical music is a great example of what we’re trying to do — what we have to do — as a country and as a world, in looking at new ways of doing things.”
Trudeau also cites Gould’s historical significance in achieving fame at a time when Canadians craved to make “a cultural imprint on the world ...
“We tend to need validation outside our borders before we recognize our great artists, It’s always been that way, (but) it’s getting better now.”
The broadcast reveals a musical genius — and a complicated man.
“In many respects, Glenn was a little boy,” says one former friend. “He never grew up.”
What also emerges is a portrait of a man of such enormous ego that you quickly learned not to criticize him. He was also capable of dropping friends and colleagues in the blink of an eye.
“That really hurt,” admits one sudden victim of his indifference. “But he was Glenn Gould.”
The program features the voice of Gould himself — at one moment indulging in comic buffoonery and at the next talking eloquently about contrapuntal technique.
Always, however, the quirks and eccentricities keep surfacing, Among the glimpses of the real Gould:
Even in the middle of a steaming Toronto summer, he would show up for a meeting dressed in winter coat, hat, gloves, scarf and galoshes.
Asked to prepare a 7,500-word television script for a program he was hosting about the City of Toronto, he responded with 75,000 unusable words that included an intricate analysis of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.
Gould loved dogs, but the insurance policy on his hands wouldn’t allow him to own one.
He could tolerate Toronto but said he would “crack up” if forced to live in New York or Rome.
He learned new repertoire not by practicing it on the piano, but in his head.
He was a 2 a.m. fixture at Fran’s, an all-night diner in Toronto, and always placed the same order — scrambled eggs, white toast and weak tea.
A notorious hypochondriac, he had the habit of calling acquaintances in the middle of the night and subjecting them to an interminable monologue at 4 a.m. One friend tells the BBC that he had a surefire way of terminating the call: “You only had to sneeze to get him off the phone.”
So what about Gould’s mental state?
“I’m not going to diagnose Glenn Gould, but I honestly think one of the reasons we became friends was that we were very much like each other,” says Page.
However, University of Toronto psychiatrist David Goldbloom is cautious in his comments to the BBC, although he finds Gould’s “style of social interaction was statistically abnormal at least — and personally abnormal for most people I know who had spoken with him, that includes problems maintaining and sustaining relationships.”
Goldbloom says Gould’s perception of other people’s needs “was not within the norm of empathy and reciprocity ... Gould would be like a needle stuck in a groove around certain themes, and the symptoms normally cause some impairment in their social or occupational function.”
So was Gould impaired?
“It depends how you define impairment,” Goldbloom says. “Did it impair him from being a concert artist? It certainly sounds like it, but it was profoundly enhancing for him as a recording artist.
“The difference is how much it’s debilitating you, that’s really the dividing line. Everybody loves some measure of order, but if it interferes with your ability to function … then it spills over into the direction of disorder.”
Then, Goldbloom adds a rider to his views: “The reality is that none of us looks good under a microscope.”