Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work: A Study in Performance Practice [Hardcover]

This book is divided into two parts. In the first part, Premisses, Bazzana examines Gould's approach towards music and performance as an artist. An example here is his argument on why Gould published the complete sonatas by Mozart but not those by Haydn despite the known fact that Gould appreciated Haydn's music much more than Mozart's. In the second part, Practices, he analyses Gould's performance in depth. He rationalizes why Gould chose to play a particular piece in a specific manner. For example, Bazzana points out Gould's usage of a peculiar arpeggio, which he calls "bordered" arpeggio, in certain pieces, and explains what effects it gives to the entire piece. I had noticed that Gould often arpeggiates instead of playing a chord as written, but did not realize how it is integrated into the structure of the music. This book enlightened me in many ways and helped me enjoy/appreciate Gould's music even more.

This book is derived from Bazzana's Ph.D. thesis, which is based on enormous research and thorough listening to Gould's recordings. The accompanying CD shows points of analyses made by the author.

This book may not be for everyone due to its highly specialized subject. But I strongly recommend this book to pianists at all levels and every Gould fan, especially if he/she listens to his music with the music score in hand.

He sets out his position early on, when he states that "I do not write book-length studies of artists I do not greatly admire". There's no doubt that Bazzana knows Gould's recordings and writings as well as anyone, and he's passionately enthusiastic about the more convincing aspects of Gould's genius. (I personally am a huge Gould fan as well, even though I have, shall we say, a bone to pick with Gould's preference for Petula Clark over The Beatles.) A fair amount of the book is taken up with fairly (but not too) technical analyses of Gould performances, pointing out where Gould ignored score markings if he felt that they were irrelevant to his own interpretation of the music, etc., but Bazzana also makes a good case for Gould's decisions in this regard; when the music in question was something that Gould actually admired, the practical results of his theoretically questionable decisions are often hard to argue with. When it was something he didn't especially admire, such as the Mozart piano sonatas, the results tend to make sense only in terms of Gould's aesthetic. (On the enclosed CD, Bazzana includes the third movement from the C Major sonata to prove his point; Gould takes it at a preposterously fast lick, and while the result is frankly hilarious, making Mozart sound like speeded-up cartoon music, it's not exactly what we imagine Mozart intended the piece to mean.)

Bazzana is at his most critical about Gould's writings, which he considers to be the work of a brilliant but irresponsible amateur (bit of academic snobbery here, perhaps). He tries to defend them on the grounds that composers - and artists generally - are entitled to have perverse likes and dislikes in order to bolster up their own self-confidence (Wagner hated Brahms' work, and it was fairly mutual), but you can tell that he wishes that Gould-the-writer had been a bit less facetious and a bit more good-mannered. It's a tough argument to answer, but I quite like Gould's sillier flights of verbal fancy, even if I know in my heart that they aren't on the same level as his recording of the Contrapunctus XV from Art of the Fugue (to name but one example).

The book is also very good about the relationship between creative and interpretative artists in general. In fact, it's a superb demonstration of why Gould is much more than just a brilliant oddball. Artists in any field can learn a lot from it. The free CD is not just a bonus but essential to Bazzana's thesis. A monograph on classical music for people who don't normally like monographs on classical music.