Goldberg Variations

The defining moment of Glenn Gould's career came in 1964 when, at the age of 31, he withdrew from all public performance. The move was viewed by audiences and critics as willful and bewildering, and was seen as evidence that despite his demonstrably supreme artistry he was, in the argot of the common man, a nut.

But, as George Szell once said of him, "That nut [was] a genius." In his short international career, which spanned only 24 years, Glenn Gould changed the way the music world thought about performance practice, recording, and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Glenn Gould was born to comfortable middle-class parents in Toronto in 1932. A pampered only child, Gould demonstrated his remarkable talents quite early and in 1943 entered the Toronto Conservatory of Music, where he quickly came to the attention of its director, Sir Ernest MacMillan. On MacMillan's recommendation, Gould was taken on as a student by the Chilean-born pedagogue Alberto Guerrero, whose own style was partly the basis for Gould's own sensitive touch. Gould once described Guerrero's keyboard technique as not so much striking the keys as "pulling them down." The other influence on Gould's technique was his experience playing the organ, wherein the tracker action is particularly responsive to variations in finger pressure.

Gould made his debut at the age of 16, playing Beethoven's fourth piano concerto in Toronto. He followed this triumph with tours across Canada and frequent broadcast performances over the CBC, introducing him to the studio enviroment which would remain a focus of his life thereafter. Gould leaped into international acclaim, in fact, through a studio production: his now-legendary 1955 Columbia Masterworks recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. This recording, which has never been out of print in the 50 years since its first release, established Gould as a performer who combined penetrating insight (his Goldberg Variations was nothing short of a complete rethinking of the piece) and artistic daring with daunting technical prowess.

Gould's immediate fame brought international demand, and he responded with worldwide concert appearances; he met these with considerable reluctance, however, and quickly gained a reputation for last-minute cancellations. His dislike of performing in public, of being "looked at" by audiences, allowed a natural tendency of hypochondria to blossom (it was a convenient cancellation excuse), and he soon became the habitue of specialists ranging from chiropractors to psychiatrists. Long before quitting the stage forever, Gould had made frequent threats to do so, so that his 1964 decision was no surprise to those who knew him.

Following his withdrawal, Gould threw himself into a frenzy of recording, writing, and radio documentary production. His method of splicing together single performances from dozens of takes was initially viewed as something of an artistic fraud, though the technique was eventually adopted, in less exhaustive form, by the recording industry in subsequent years. His radio documentaries were less successful: a trilogy about life in Canada's northern territories combined multiple interviews in contrapuntal ways, an interesting idea that nevertheless rendered the sense of what was being said more or less unintelligible.

Though plagued by many imaginary maladies, Gould suffered from a very real hypertension that eventually led to a massive stroke, which he suffered in 1982, and from which he never recovered. He died in Toronto General Hospital, one week after being stricken, on October 4, 1982, at age 50.

If there is a piece of music most associated with one performer, then surely it is Bach's Goldberg Variations, and Glenn Gould. Gould made the Goldberg Variations, and the Goldberg Variations certainly made Glenn Gould.

Gould had made his concert debut at age 16. Then, while known in Canada through his concert appearances, he burst onto the international stage with his first recording, the now-legendary 1955 version of the Goldberg Variations.

The young, headstrong Gould had completely rejected the common romantic interpretations of Bach as performed by Wanda Landowska. He brought an ice-down-the-back-of-the-shirt clarity to Bach's neglected keyboard masterpiece, and turned it into a best-seller, and himself into a star. In fact, the recording has never been out of print in the almost 50 years since it was recorded.

Landowska's famous statement to a pianist "You play Bach your way, and I'll play him his way" becomes ironic after you've heard Glenn Gould bring out every nuance of counterpoint in these works, revealing their full complexity. Glenn Gould's performances are usually described with words such as cold, crystalline, icey, sharp, intellectual, impeccable, eccentric and arrogant. Not all complimentary words. After hearing this version of the Goldbergs I must add to this list lighthearted, free, friendly, delicate, witty and fulfilling.

Bach's Goldberg Variations are one of those rare works in classical music that have instant appeal to beginners, but also a richness and complexity that gratifies the expert. The more you look, the more you find, and it is impossible to tire of them.

Tradition has it that Bach was commissioned by the insomniac Count Keyserlingk to write the pieces for his court musician Johann Gottlieb Goldberg to play to help him sleep. As Gould says in his liner notes to the 1955 recording, this is a charming story and difficult to disprove.

But there remains much scepticism: Goldberg was just 14 years old when it was published, and his keyboard skills may not have been adequate for the task, there is no dedication on the title page (as was customary), and there is no evidence of the golden chalice that Keyserlingk was supposed to have paid Bach for the music.

For those interested in Bach's almost mathematical structures, the Goldberg Variations will fascinate. The Aria, a Saraband, appears like two pillars at either end of the work. In between are 30 variations, grouped into 10 groups of three. Each set of 3 pieces is a free variation, a variation in duet and a canon. Thus every third piece is a canon, starting with a canon in unison (ie the canonic parts are in the same key) followed by ever increasing intervals until the 27th variation, a canon in ninth.

As a musical joke, the 30th variation is not a canon at all, but a quodlibet, music where two independent melodies are played together. Here Bach uses two low-brow folk melodies, "I long have been away from you" and "Cabbage and turnips have driven me away, Had my mother cooked meat, I'd have chosen to stay".

Glenn Gould The Goldbergs are a showpiece of keyboard virtuosity and variety. Glenn Gould brings out the flavours of them all. The pensive Aria, the cheeky 5th variation and the deeply introspective 25th Variation, that Landowska called the Black Pearl. And yes, if you turn the volume up, you can clearly hear Gould singing along, obviously enjoying himself.

As a final irony, Gould re-recorded the Goldbergs in 1981, despite rarely doubling up in recordings throughout his career. It was the same Gould, but a completely different set of Goldbergs. Slower (much slower), less fireworks but deeper and more meditative. He died from a massive stroke soon after, the two Goldberg Variation recordings pillars at each end of his creative life.