Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould - Softcover

Bazzana, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195182464 ISBN 13: 9780195182460

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2005

Synopsis

When Mikhail Baryshnikov defected in Toronto in 1974, he admitted that he knew only three things about Canada: It had great hockey teams, a lot of wheatfields, and Glenn Gould.
In Wondrous Strange, Kevin Bazzana vividly recaptures the life of Glenn Gould, one of the most celebrated pianists of our time. Drawing on twenty years of intensive research, including unrestricted access to Gould's private papers and interviews with scores of friends and colleagues, many of them never interviewed before, Bazzana sheds new light on such topics as Gould's family history, his secretive sexual life, and the mysterious problems that afflicted his hands in his later years. The author places Gould's distinctive traits--his eccentric interpretations, his garish onstage demeanor, his resistance to convention--against the backdrop of his religious, upper- middle-class Canadian childhood, illuminating the influence of Gould's mother as well as the lasting impact of the only piano teacher Gould ever had. Bazzana offers a fresh appreciation of Gould's concert career--his high-profile but illness-plagued international tours, his adventurous work for Canadian music festivals, his musical and legal problems with Steinway & Sons. In 1964, Gould made the extraordinary decision to perform only for records, radio, television, and film, a turning point that the author examines with unprecedented thoroughness (discussing, for example, his far-seeing interest in new recording technology). Here, too, are Gould's interests away from the piano, from his ambitious but failed effort to be a composer to his innovative brand of "contrapuntal radio."
Richly illustrated with rare photographs, Wondrous Strange is a superbly written account of one of the most memorable and accomplished musicians of our times.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The first major biography of Glenn Gould to stress the critical influence of the Canadian context on his life and art

Glenn Gould was not, as has previously been suggested, an isolated and self-taught eccentric who burst out of nowhere onto the international musical scene in the mid-1950s. He was, says Kevin Bazzana in this fascinating new full-scale biography, very much a product of his time and place ? and his entire life and diverse work reflect his Canadian heritage.

Bazzana, editor of the international Glenn Gould magazine, throws fresh light on this and many other aspects of Gould?s celebrated life as a pianist, writer, broadcaster, and composer. He portrays Gould?s upbringing in Toronto?s neighbourhood of The Beach in the 1930s, revealing the area?s influence as a distinct social, religious, and cultural milieu. He looks at the impact of Canadian radio on the young musician, his relations with the ?new music? crowd in Toronto, and the ways in which his career was furthered by the extraordinary growth of Canada?s cultural institutions in the 1950s. He examines Gould?s place within the CBC ?culture? of the 1960s and ?70s, and his distinctly Canadian sense of humour.

Bazanna also reveals new information on Gould?s famous eccentricities, his sometimes bizarre stage manner, his highly selective repertoire, his control mania, his private and sexual life, his hypochondria, his romanticism, and his abrupt retirement from concert performance to communicate solely through electronic and print media. And finally, he takes a detailed look at the extraordinary phenomenon of the posthumous ?life? that Gould and his work have enjoyed.

From the Back Cover:

“Kevin Bazzana, a leading authority on the art of Glenn Gould, has now undertaken to give us the biography we have been waiting for – the life and times of a most unusual man, told with passion, intelligence, wit, and fair-mindedness.”
–Tim Page (Pulitzer Prize winner), Washington Post

“Well researched, well-written, intelligent and fair, Kevin Bazzana’s Wondrous Strange will be seen as the definitive mainstream biography of Glenn Gould.”
–Nicholas Spice, Publisher, London Review of Books

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0195182464
• ISBN 13: 9780195182460
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560