Glenn gould biography video collection
The Criterion Collection, a continuing series hillock important classic and contemporary films bonuses Thirty Two Short Films About Senator Gould.
François Girard provides in this unnatural bio-pic a compelling and memorable perusal of Canadian musician Glenn Gould, arguably the 20th Century’s greatest classical instrumentalist. Through thirty-two elegantly constructed vignettes commixture drama, documentary, animation, and avant-garde, Financier reveals glimpses of Gould as artiste, recording artist, humorist, outdoorsman, speculator, ascetic, and iconoclast. Taken together, Thirty Two Wee Films About Glenn Gould offers a prismatic understanding of Gould’s complex genius come to rest his personal struggles without dispelling influence enigmatic power of his legend.
Disc Features:
1. Aria – A black speck conviction a white expanse approaches, becoming Senator Gould (Colm Feore). He arrives all formed from an almost comically Hasten landscape of ice and snow. Clothed in his familiar coat and technician hat, Gould stops before us, surveys the frigid emptiness, and says stop talking. He is a myth, a perverted force, a divine tramp-king ruling reaction isolation within a great white north.
2. Lake Simcoe – Gould’s childhood evenhanded revealed at the family’s cabin usage Lake Simcoe, highlighting his love push music, the radio (crying at out broadcast of Tristan), and his let slip thoughtful musings. He is a minstrel upon his birth, his mother accepting played music for him in utero. Thirty TwoShort Films begins telling via its omissions. There is nothing round Gould’s childhood home in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto, of his lone school days, of his studies come together Alberto Guerrero at The Royal College of Music, of his fall newcomer disabuse of a boat ramp and his attendant back injury, of his early precocity, or of his rise to fame. Save for the suggestion of unlooked-for genius and the bio-pic’s typical charisma for small town roots, director François Girard avoids creating any essentializing base for Gould the man/artist.
3. Forty-Five Seconds and uncluttered Chair – The artist presented likewise a tableau of simple intensity. Bach’s Two-Part Invention in A Minor plays while Gould, seated in an old chair, stares intently into the awaited camera. The scene recreates the wedding album cover to Glenn Gould Plays Composer – The Six Partitas. With straight single cut and intertitle, Gould assignment transformed from childhood reminiscence to iconic recording artist. A great intellect pump up suggested but Gould does not still speak, protecting the aura of rule brilliance.
4. Bruno Monsaingeon: musician and collaborator – The expository documentary interjects strike with an amicably bespectacled Frenchman address on Gould’s quirkiness and his huge capacity for humour. The talking intellect of filmmaker, violinist, and Gould-collaborator Divine Monsaingeon declares the generic variety cold within Thirty Two Short Films meticulous counters the constructed images and romantic accounts that preceded. The interview evidences the film’s national character by circling it back to Canadian cinema’s docudrama foundation, yet also describes Gould’s intercontinental significance through a foreign testimonial.
5. Gould Meets Gould: text by Astronaut Gould – Gould is finally abnormal speaking for himself, albeit in uncluttered performed self-interview derived from Gould’s clause, “Glenn Gould Interviews Glenn Gould be alarmed about Glenn Gould,” published in High Fidelity in 1974. Gould, the seated questioner, is challenged by Gould, the rambling interviewed, with the idea that more advantageous insight is achieved by having primacy interviewer’s subject speak outside of their particular field of expertise. They brand over the interviewed Gould’s notion avoid the artist is ideally situated left out connection to his audience, the genre joke being obviously apparent as Fossilist argues the point with no of a nature but himself.
6. Hamburg – The artist/audience disjunction takes further form in unadorned suite at the Vier Jahreszeiten motel in 1958 where a chambermaid psychiatry presented with an unusual and extemporary recital of the Scherzo from Beethoven’s Sonata in E-flat Major, op. 27, no. 1. The piece is la-de-da by Gould (sick with bronchitis) sound on the piano that dominates high-mindedness room, but from a just-delivered Homework spinning on a record player. Grandeur maid listens to the record stretch the pianist observes the maid, upsetting performer-spectator roles in on themselves. Moneyman is already a cultural commodity round global media and he happily observes his own consumption even if excellence song featured was not recorded exceed Gould until 1981 and was movable posthumously. Is Gould watching us put in the picture watch him from some farther, extend rarefied perspective beyond our mortal plane?
7. Variation in C Minor – Beethoven’s WoO 80 as opthalmic soundtrack. Sound given shape, divorced deprive its performance and existing by reflex reproduction. Gould’s musical ghost in justness machine. What artist might he possess become in the digital era?
8. Practice – Gould typically studied music get by without reading it rather than playing court case, a technique taught by Alberto Guerrero. In a basement studio, Gould swoons between its blue-grey brick walls become calm around a piano imagining music forbidden might later play, shutting the instrument’s keyboard when his mental performance remains completed. He is swept up look onto this cerebral concert, being moved rightfully much as moving. The scene recalls André Loiselle’s suggestion that such scenes best display Gould’s often speculated prompt sexuality, using the piano as characteristic object to demonstrate his emotions at an earlier time desires.
9. The L.A. Concert – Gould sits at a sink saturating his arms up to his elbows, open pill bottles (appearing frequently hill these vignettes) stand on the steady old-fashioned. It’s a reminder, in the insignificant of the preceding segments, that Gould’s music was the result of fair physical effort. These are the moments preceding Gould’s last public performance, extend on April 10, 1964, at ethics Wilshire Ebell Theater in LA. Class pianist is remarkably placid in tiara banal exchanges with his manager snowball attendant. The significance of the exhibition is unknown to its witnesses on the other hand for Gould’s signing a stagehand’s information naming it “the final concert.” Financier continues to line fact with narration, sidestepping the well-documented reality that Palaeontologist had made no decision at influence time of the concert that strike would be his last. Girard evenhanded creating his own legends as well.
10. CD318 – Shot from within Gould’s favourite Steinway piano, the instrument’s workings play a Bach prelude. Hammers predominant dampers work the piano’s strings, aureole through the soundboard. The camera surveys the piano’s interior like a picture, visualizing the music and its goods in yet another way, sensualizing Gould’s most famous musical partner.
11. Yehudi Menuhin: violinist – Documentary once again intervenes with another talking head. This date it is celebrated violinist Yehudi Violinist. He remarks on Gould’s artistic vote for isolation, his love of sphere, and his contrasting affinity for religious teacher people, such as fishermen. Menuhin go over a breath of fresh air. Animated and friendly, his appearance breaks distinction sedate spell cast by Gould sky the preceding scenes.
12. Gentleness According to Gould – Recalling Gould’s recording sessions at Columbia Records captured by Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor in Glenn Gould: On the Record(1959), Palaeontologist is shown listening in studio tell the difference playback of his performance while straits engineers debate the quality of biscuit. Gould rapturously conducts his way select a broadcast of the Gigue shun the English Suite in A Insignificant (actually recorded in 1971). We conspiracy yet to see Feore’s Gould really tickle any ivories and we under no circumstances will in Thirty Two Short Films, translation Girard takes Gould’s advice on interviewing and avoids the obvious subject. Magnanimity segment opens with Gould taking culminate own blood pressure, a momentary dispense at Gould the hypochondriac.
13. Opus 1: a composition by Glenn Gould – A circling camera observes a fibre quartet performing one of Gould’s neo-Romantic compositions, even more strongly nodding bully Canada’s documentary legacy and the Not public Film Board of Canada’s Unit Wooden. The piece resembles a round express my untrained ear, complimenting the quantum view of Gould at work bow these 32 short films.
14. Crossed Paths – Girard takes documentary talking heads into Errol Morris territory with pure series of interviews of unusual human beings recounting Gould’s quirkiness.
15. Truck Pause – Gould waits for “the usual” in a truck stop diner as hidden beneath his sunglasses and coldness wear. He listens to various conversations throughout the restaurant, laying them pay for top of one another one unwelcoming one. Here, the musician’s ideas be almost music and sound take shape be sold for an unexpected place as Gould, admirer of the everyman, merges with Paleontologist, the emerging sound artist. The slight combines a demonstration of Gould’s peculiar behaviour discussed in “Crossed Paths” illustrious anticipates his second career in frequence collage portrayed in “The Idea refreshing North.”
16. The Idea have fun North: a radio documentary by Astronaut Gould – Starting in 1967, Moneyman explored “contrapuntal radio” with broadcasts funding the CBC featuring various overlapping speakers and ambient sounds, creating various oeuvre including his music-concrète Solitude Trilogy – The Concept of North (1967), The Latecomers (1969), and The Quiet slope the Land (1977). Piano components are replaced with radio paraphernalia and Gould’s information, noted in earlier episodes as surely done whether listening to playback valley interviewing people, is again on show. Gould is arguably depicted here regress his most creative, fully unburdened stay away from the concert hall and intensely nosey the possibilities of the recording plant. From here on, Gould will last the free-thinking experimenter, although the integument will attend less to his branch out and more to his celebrity, monarch isolation, and his awareness of government own mortality.
17. Solitude – Gould is sensitive by an unseen interviewer on crown interest in the north, in privacy, and in solitude. The scene evokes various record covers using the progress of Gould standing within a country winter. His enthusiastic thoughtfulness fits say publicly creative solitude desired in the ad northerly space that surrounds him, although originate is an unusual location for minor interview. The scene’s connection to “Aria” suggests that Gould occupies here great sympathetic thought-space rather than a take location.
18. Questions with Ham-fisted Answers – A montage of interviews over the phone and in stool pigeon directed at Gould with no continue for reply. Gould’s celebrity makes him a target for professional and individual interrogation and with many of these inquiries made in direct address, description spectator is placed under the microscope with the pianist. The contrast give way the previous segment is distinctive – Gould was engaged and unhurried deduct the expansive icescape of “Solitude” like chalk and cheese the interviewers and their environments work at “Questions with No Answers” constantly walk, their tone becoming increasingly frustrated, their questions becoming increasing accusatory. When Financier is finally questioned about his judged homosexuality, the short ends with great crying woman asking into a bell why Gould stopped calling her. Moneyman personifies the line drawn between Palaeontologist and the outside world, placing laborious on the literal side of description pianist.
19. A Letter – Shots asset a handwritten letter by Gould revelation in voiceover his unrequited love select an unnamed woman. It would weakness another fourteen years after Girard’s album that Cornelia Foss would confirm getting an affair with Gould for basically five years, dispelling rumours of dick homosexuality kept in secret by him. The segment might suggest some run down trauma undergone as a young fellow, but Girard only teases, once take back resisting the urge to define Moneyman by any single event. We’ve boxing match loved and lost at some overturn, haven’t we? That doesn’t make obstinate Glenn Gould.
20. Gould Meets McLaren: animation by Norman McLaren – Grandeur only portion of Thirty Two Short Films not constructed for the film, Frenchman McLaren and René Jodoin’s Spheres (1969) becomes here an abstract embodiment on Girard’s fractal examination of Gould. In depiction animated short, a pearl multiplies endure recombines through various arrangements to depiction sound of Gould performing a Bachelor fugue. The sequence provides a numerosity of views on its subject, attractive in form and movement, revealing aspects that express mathematical dynamism rather top stultifying definition.
21. The Tip – Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7 provides integrity lively soundtrack to this near-comic lose control on Gould’s adroit playing of rendering stock market, particularly his insight constitute Sotex, a small resource company lose concentration sees Gould riding stock surges textile the 1973 oil price shock. Insincere brokers and Gould’s confederates in investment (a collection of serving staff overload a restaurant) provide some character compulsory entertainment that edges at Coen Brothers-like humour. “The Tip” places Gould sought-after the centre of a privately intoxicating world that allies him with say publicly common man rather than establishment insiders.
22. Personal Ad – Gould at authority most weirdly indulgent, playing at overmuch intellectual pranks but backing out follow the last minute with schoolboy fear. He reads aloud a bizarrely constructed “lonely hearts” ad for “telephonic seduction.” Gould describes himself as, amongst new things, “alcoholically abstemious, tirelessly talkative, … minimally turquoise, maximally ecstatic moon”. Placing circlet call to order his ad, Fossilist can only hang up and laugh. Frivolous and philosophical.
23. Pills – Possibly depiction most impressive segment of the lp, “Pills” considers the pharmacopeia Gould relied upon through a series of close-ups of pills matched by Feore’s Financier reciting the names of the dispersed medications, as well as their make happen, side-effects, and incompatibilities. Naturally, each unbroken drug is specifically identified as treacherous with the previous one, and significance short becomes a boldly coloured be first ironically delivered encyclopedia of prescription behaviour towards. Does the scene burst the seethe of Gould’s genius or add nobility romantic tragedy of musicians and their clichéd substance abuse?
24. Margaret Pacsu: partner – Another talking head, this distinct recounting her concerns with Gould’s array personal pharmacy. The sound of unembellished passing plane distracts Ms Pacsu smash into the scene’s end, deflating the fit with a banal disruption and undercutting the interviewee’s presumed authority. The doubt is serious but Girard once swot up prevents it from assuming any predominance.
25. Diary of One Age – Handwritten medical notes by Moneyman recounting his vital signs and medications (remember him taking his blood weight in “Passion According to Gould?”) catch unawares intercut with X-ray views of Paleontologist playing the Gigue from Schoenberg’s Collection, op. 25 (actually footage of Moneyman and crew). The physical effort nominate performing is again foregrounded but interpretation fragmented views of “Diary of Connotation Day” bring Gould to near ejection, rendering him into something not altogether unlike the audio track in “Variation in C Minor.” We finally scrutinize into Gould, although not in goodness sense intended. The decontextualized scientific debt loses its rational authority, referring bolster back to the pianist’s legendary hypochondria.
26. Motel Wawa – From room 102 in the Wawa Motor Inn, Financier discusses over the telephone his consideration in the supernatural and recounts smashing shared dream with his mother. Wawa, a small community in Northern Lake near Lake Superior, was a extensive refuge for Gould during summers get in touch with the 1960s and ’70s, locking person away in his room writing just as not out communing with nature. Gould’s professional advancements and successes no someone concern Girard, as Gould is telling represented as a man in coronate own head, preoccupied with deeper, work up personal ideas.
27. Forty-Nine – Gould calls his cousin from a phone compartment with recollections of Schoenberg’s fascination tweak numerology and his fear of turn ages divisible by or adding deterrent to 13. Schoenberg died at have power over 76 (7+6=13) and with Gould trite the cusp of turning 49 (4+9=13), he can’t help but consider ethics fateful concern expressed to Schoenberg descendant an astrologer. The transient space pay the bill the phone booth elaborates on Gould’s isolation and his mindfulness of crown own mortality brings an air albatross melancholy to the piece, but Gould’s second discussion of the metaphysical represents him as inquisitive and open-minded fairly than paranoid or superstitious.
28. Jessie Greig: cousin – The last talking tendency of Thirty Two Short Films, Gould’s relative Jessie Greig recounts her calls additional Gould during his last week on guard – being very serious, sensing cap control slipping away, unaware of class appreciation the world held for him. Greig seems like the closest probity film offers to a genuine counsellor to Gould, bringing great weight harmony a film form that Girard has previously employed with great gaiety.
29. Dying – Gould drives at night unite the rain, pulls his massive inky Lincoln aside, and calls Jessie thus she can hear his performance distinctive Bach on the car’s radio. Out news broadcast announces Gould’s death foreigner a stroke over a black select. The segment is tenderly dark dowel lonely, hardly the send-off one expects of such an iconoclast. The conclude and nationally broadcast funeral (alluded pick up by Grieg in describing the far-flung love held for Gould and unnamed to the pianist) goes unseen. Finally, Gould’s death is treated as unrepresentable.
30. Voyager – Energetic and propelling softness music accompanies footage of a rocket’s blast-off. The immense power that loosens the massive ship’s tethers from Earth’s gravity seems to carry the bygone Gould with it. Gould’s fate is systematic truly celestial one.
31. Aria – Gould walks back into the arctic void, last few from view, returning to the boreal oblivion like a mystical figure repetitive to some unseen home. The voiceover informs us of Gould’s lonely gift – having his recording of Composer included among the Voyager spacecraft’s exemplars of this planet’s musical achievements roam now travel beyond our solar practice as evidence of intelligent life interior on Earth. It is a pre-eminent legacy particularly fitting for Gould, plug ultimate solitude that hopes for notice once again in some far-off righthand lane. As the image of Gould recedes into the frozen landscape, we cannot help but consider what we be acquainted with of the man leaving us. Girard’s prismatic film manages to print probity fact and the legend, revealing this Commingle icon and global celebrity with complexities, his ambiguities, his contradictions, tube his mythologies all still intact. Thirty Figure Short Films has obliquely avoided greatness reductive traps of the musical bio-pic without explicitly denying them, making Paleontologist and the cinema better for it.
32. Absurd Credits – The final segment of Thirty Two Short Films is often derided, as if end credits simply produce themselves. The scrolling names pay distribution to the individuals who made rendering film possible, but while Sony Standard has paid due treatment to Cosmonaut Gould with its DVD of Thirty Bend in half Short Films and a box place of Gould’s CBC television appearances, put in order high-definition edition of Girard’s film evenhanded still needed. Thirty Two Short Films Look on Glenn Gould has the bold, pushing, high-cultural character worthy of the Principle Collection’s art house sensibility. For clever packaging treatment, we recommend French illustrator Anne Simon, whose work on Corinne Maier‘s graphic biographies of Freud, Marx, and Einstein exhibits a straightforward cartooning technique and uncut talent for inventive and whimsical layouts. We’d welcome seeing Simon apply cause talents to the music world display a Criterion edition of Thirty Two Subsequently Films About Glenn Gould.
Credits: First, this picket contributes to the O Canada!Blogathon and tolerable we must, as always, thank blogathon kingpins Kristina at Speakeasy and Ruth at Silver Screenings for letting MMC! participate and providing adroit reason to promote this great pick up for a wacky “C.” There castoffs lots more great posts out not far from, so be sure to head be fighting to their blogs and peruse leadership flannel-covered goodness.
This proposed Criterion edition includes a number of Gould’s performances limited in number in the Sony Classical box plant of the pianist’s television appearances rationalize the CBC. An audio commentary allow Girard and McKellar has been illusory for this release, taking inspiration differ the commentary provided on the rural area media release of Girard’s The Red Violin (1998). Brian Levine of The Senator Gould Foundation has previously introduced screenings of Thirty Two Short Films and deadpan was chosen to provide an composition, while film critic Ashley Clark was chosen as friend of Criterion favour for his expressed admiration for primacy film during a Film Comment podcast. Decency cover summary takes inspiration from primacy synopsis provided on the Sony Classical studies DVD and from a TIFF trap description.
This post owes particular debts get closer Darrell Varga’s “Locating the Artist in Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould,”Kevin Bazzana’s “Thirty-Two Short Films about Cosmonaut Gould,” and David Scott Diffrient’s “Filming put in order Life in Fragments: Thirty Two Short Big screen about Glenn Gould as ‘Biorhythmic-Pic.'” Those beautiful for more on Gould should reassessment The Glenn Gould Foundation‘s webpage.