Glenn Gould and the importance of ecstatic experience

Glenn Gould - the musician - has been a significant person in my life since I discovered his piano playing in the autumn of 1978; indeed, he became an important role model at various points - despite the vast dissimilarity in our temperaments and talents.


I bought my first Glenn Gould - the double LP set of Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier, primarily because I wanted to explore Bach on piano, and secondarily because I was intrigued by the poor reviews he invariably got from the Penguin Stereo Record Guide (the nature of the criticisms made me feel that I would like what he did).

Extremely rapidly, I began to develop an interest in Gould the Man as well as the musician; or rather, something about the way he played, when supplemented by a few scraps of knowledge of his biography and opinions, was enough to convince me that here was a fellow spirit.

I first managed to glean an impression from the liner notes on the (relatively few) LPs I could buy in England, a couple of journalistic pieces; and then, on a family visit to Toronto, I bought a precious (and expensive copy) of the first biography: Geoffrey Payzant's Glenn Gould: Music and Mind.

This crystallised what it was that magnetically-attracted me to Gould: the importance of Ecstatic Experience.


In the best of Gould's performances (a lot of them) there is an intensity of absorption which is ecstatic, and which induces a similar ecstatic absorption in me. While a student I can recall listening to a short piece - a prelude for example - at lunchtime, and feeling a swirling ecstasy, at the 'top' of my mind as I walked and worked, which lasted for some hours afterwards - and which seemed to enhance my experience of life.

This fitted with an already existing idea about the aim for my life to be lived 'at concert pitch' - a phrase which doesn't literally mean what I meant by it, and which I got from a passing comment of Hendrick Willem van Loon. In 1978 I was spending more time in solitude than ever before, and I began to realise that - as Gould said  - Solitude is the pre-requisite of ecstatic experience; and which I made the central theme of my radio programme Solitude, Exile and Ecstasy -

http://solitude-exile-ecstasy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/solitude-exile-and-ecstasy.html


My central problem was that Gould's basis for ecstasy was a genius level of creative musical performance - whereas I had no basis for any such creativity. Now, it provoked in me a (rather feeble but sustained) search for some such ability - a search variously looking at music and acting, but mostly exploring writing: poetry, prose, drama and essays and also simply writing journals.

But as an immature young man I was too easily convinced of other similarities between Gould and myself; and in particular the notion that Gould's life - as I very partially understood it at that time, which was a very idealised and abstracted version of the real thing. Gould, it is now known, spent a vast proportion of time interacting with other people - more than I do, in fact; including various romantic and sexual relationships with women.

Nonetheless ecstatic solitude, in the state of total absorption during playing and creative composition, was perhaps Gould's essential reality.


In particular, I tried to believe that a solitary life of technological interaction with 'the world' would be an ideal for me, if only I had the strength of will to embrace it - yet whenever I got anywhere near this state, I found myself extremely discouraged, lapsing into an idle and disaffected and despairing condition.

Gould never gave live performances, was an expert on recording methods, lived alone, seldom went out, and was almost constantly in the presence of mass media - TV or radio were switched-on most of the time (even during sleep), newspapers were devoured, telephone bills amounted to several average person's salaries per year.

Yet/and Gould was very productive of recordings, broadcasts, writings - he was an international figure, much discussed; and a considerable influence on ideas.

The modern world now has many people who live in what is broadly the kind of way pioneered and advocated by Glenn Gould - a world in which technology is primary and human communication is primarily mediated by technology.

But now it is here, it doesn't seem much like Gould's world - in particular ecstasy, in the sense Gould meant it, seems extremely rare.


The obvious reason is that the mass of modern people are not Glenn Gould! - and the fact is that a self-created environment in which Gould thrived, and which he found conducive to creative ecstasy; is when scaled-up and applied at a population level leads the mass of Men merely into passivity, into inattentive dissipation.

What Gould thought were general principles about the world and Men, turned-out to be at most distinctive to a like-minded minority; and were perhaps even unique to him.

Thus are geniuses often poor guides to life and living! What a genius wants - and indeed needs - may be poison to people in general.



Glenn Gould's 'Solitude Trilogy' of radio programmes are well worth detailed consideration. The Idea of North is the most famous - but the Latecomers and Quiet in the Land are both considerably better. It is worth noting that despite the name these programmes are not actually about solitude- they are about life in isolated communities (Canadian far north, Newfoundland, Mennonites) that are - to some extent- cut-off from the modern Zeitgeist.  

Desert Island Discs - Record Four - JS Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Book One, played by Glenn Gould

*

When I attended a comedy revue and Hamlet parody called Hamalongayorick at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1978, I enjoyed the interval music in which a jazz piano trio played Bach - and soon afterwards I bought an LP of Jaques Loussier's jazz trio (which was presumably being emulated); but also Glenn Gould playing Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Book One. 

Buying this double album was a double act of rebellion, since until then I had been a purist who insisted on Bach on harpsichord (and who indeed indeed was mildly hostile to the piano); and a rebel also in buying Glenn Gould's performance since the British musical establishment were barely aware of him, but when his performances were reviewed in The Gramophone they were usually given only two stars (out of five) due to their many eccentricities.

Insofar as the British establishment knew of Gould, they were hostile- and focused only on spiteful gossip. For example there was a false rumour that the fugues on his recording of the Bach 48 Preludes and Fugues had been recorded multi-tracked, with Gould playing one voice at a time. Of course, this was inadvertently very high praise of his ability to perform counterpoint!

But Gould and Bach's keyboard work provided my first serious, long term, and still-enduring instrumental obsession in classical music. I will listen to these pieces by Bach performedby many artists, on many instruments and combinations. And as for Glenn Gould... there were periods over the next few years when Gould - both his performances, and his example, became almost a life-line to me: a model of how I hoped, ideally, to live.

I have many memories of solitary times in various places (including Toronto - Gould's home city) listening to Gould and Bach with a luminous note-by-note intensity; projecting myself into that musical world as a place of detailed meaning and exalted inspiration.

At first I had to mail order Gould's LPs because they were not stocked by British shops, I bought some more on trips to the USA and Canada - but by the time he died four year later Gould had become almost a household name - and his star has continued to rise for many years. I even contributed a small piece to the edifice of his posthumous fame:

http://solitude-exile-ecstasy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/solitude-exile-and-ecstasy.html

I find Bach's pieces, and especially (most of) Gould's performances, are just about the only music that never stales for me, no matter how many repetations - probably because its appeal is rather subtle and deep, so I never feel close to plumbing the depths.

Its appeal is also ascetic, monastic; and this is the best music for the enjoyment of solitude - even if that solitude was a moment grabbed from an over busy life, in a tiny room in a tower block in a city... Gould and Bach can make it as deserted as an island.

*

On encountering Glenn Gould playing Bach's Partitas - 1978 to 2024

 

A boxed set of Glenn Gould playing JS Bach's Partitas, obtained by mail order (uniquely for me) seared itself into memory as a key event in my life. 

This came near the beginning of my discovery of Glenn Gould, at a time when he was regarded with almost uniform hostility in Britain (insofar as he was known at all) - and most of his records were (to me) impossible to obtain (I got most of them when working or on holidays abroad - in the USA, Canada, Paris). 

The Partitas are associated with the long, hard winter of 1978-9; which I experienced in an unheated, drafty, seedy flat. But the association is a good one! It is of lying in bed cocooned inside a sleeping bag, inside another sleeping bag; with blanket and sheet below and four blankets above - listening to the first of these Partitas (and my favourite) the B-flat Major. 

And really listening - with total concentration, so that I was inside the music, following the mind of the musician note for note. 

The intensity with which I listened to my small collection (building to about eight LPs by the end of the year) Gould's Bach recordings at this time was something seldom matched throughout the rest of my life. 

What did I get from it? That's what intrigues me now. To some extent it was simply time spent sampling a higher world, and thus an enjoyably ecstatic experience in its own right. Yet the music also pointed beyond itself in a way that was partly inspiring, but partly frustrating. 

I might briefly return home at lunchtime to collects stuff for for, and listening to some Bach - maybe one of these Partitas, some of the Golberg Variations, or a prelude and fugue from "the 48" - and then I had to return to my lectures, practical classes, and dissections at medical school. 

But it wasn't just the problem of sublime aspirations versus worldly practicalities; it was much deeper - because, even with time, energy and opportunity to do whatever I wanted... Just what was it that I wanted to do, in consequence of listening to Gould play Bach? 

It was like having an answer, but not the question! 

All of this fitted with the general direction of my life; in that this was when I began reading Colin Wilson's The Outsider series and other manifestations of the 1950s movements, James Joyce's Ulysses and other works, discovering Jung; as well as performing (as a singer) and generally exploring classical music - including the late Romantics such as Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Mahler. 

It was a very "existentialist" period in my life!

I desired and sought the kind of life that I imagined Glenn Gould lived; one in which (as I supposed) intensity and ecstasy were normal and continuous.

Of course this was not really true. At least not in a qualitative sense. Gould surely lived that way more often and more completely than most people - but he did not inhabit a higher form of consciousness. 

Gould did not solve the core problem of this mortal life: nobody ever has, because it is impossible to do so! 

It took a long time, several decades, before I recognized that. 

Sometimes the obvious is the hardest thing of all to recognize - at least for modern Men. 

All of this, and more, was brought to memory in a kind of flashback, when I found the above YouTube posting of Gould's Partitas, began to listen with half-attention to the B-flat major; then found that I could not stop listening nor do anything else, until it had ended!

Ecstatic experience of music: Re-reading Wondrous Strange: the life and art of Glenn Gould, by Kevan Bazzana

I'm about 100 pages into this re-read, and it so far confirms my original impression that this is the best of the biographies of, and books about, Glenn Gould that I've seen (although several of them are very good).

For me, there is no doubt that Gould is something more than one of the great pianists: Bazzana states that after Gould's first professional recital aged fifteen, his father got a letter from a stranger reporting that her young adult son had been present; and said that although the son had never previously believed in 'a hereafter and a life eternal' - having heard Gould play, the son reported: "Now I know".

Bazzana puts it well:  

For all the uncritical idolatry in Gould's reception, those who profess to hear 'something' in his playing are not crazy; often, in fact, they are hearing precisely what Gould intended to communicate. He considered his performances to be not just readings of pieces of music but documents of his world view... He thought that artists had a 'moral mission' and that art had enormous potential for the betterment of human life; as a performer he aimed not only to play well but to do good. The unity of theory and practice does come across in his recordings...

I picked all this up for myself from listening to Gould playing Bach, on a tinny record player, in the solitude of a freezing cold and sordid flat in 1978; at a time when I had not heard a single good word about Gould (the British Establishment critics loathed him); but instead a mass of falsehoods and misrepresentations that implied he couldn't really play (he cheated by having his piano adapted to lighten the action, the recordings of fugues were faked-together from separately played voices etc.).

It is easy to be distracted by the supreme pianistic technique, and the powerful musical intelligence; but what sets Gould apart from any other musician of the recorded era is the spiritual quality; and this is a consequence of Gould's deeply contemplative and Romantic personality, and the ecstatic concentration of his playing which lift it from performance to co-creation.

In fact, I would nowadays characterise what is going-on in terms of Final Participation and Primary Thinking. What we have - in material terms - is at the level of (mere) communication: a recording of a performance, and that recording created in a studio by piecing together of several or many performances - I then listen on imperfect devices, with all my incapacities and preconceptions... and at the end of the day it seems impossible to be sure that what I experience has anything to do with Bach or with Gould.

Thus considered, it seems a trivial or delusional activity; and something which 'we shouldn't take too seriously'; and yet, that has not been my experience over a span of more than forty years.

The way I would prefer to characterise it is in terms Not of communication by of direct knowing. When I am really experiencing the music (in that state termed ecstasy); at that time Bach, Gould, other people, and myself are all - as actual living Beings, here-and-now, experiencing the same 'thinking' - in real time. If it is real knowing, then it is an experience to which we all contribute, actively.

It is an act of creating; going on within the primary ongoing context of divine creation. And presumably all such experiences shape the thinking.

I do Not regard the real music as an unchanging Platonic ideal outside of space and time - that we might take from a library and replay; instead I think that this music exists in the consciousnesses of actual Beings, in their living thinking; and the shared experiences of this thinking.

What makes specifically Gould's Bach (sometimes) real, and my experience of it as real, is that the music was written, performed and listened-to in this state of ecstasy. Only if and when 'we' are all experiencing this ecstatic state (which is Primary Thinking) does direct knowing 'happen'.

The 'communications', the musical score, the piano, recording media, the sound reproduction... all these are acting something like pointers to the real thing - or perhaps something more. As methods for inducing states of intuitive sympathetic resonance between the minds involved (Bach's, Gould's mine etc.).

I suppose this applies to all communications and media; including conversations and social interactions as well as arts. They are ideally (although seldom in practice) means to that end of direct co-creative thinking.

Glenn Gould - art and life, and life as art

*

I recently watched the documentary movie The Inner Life of Glenn Gould; which is perhaps the best thing of its kind I have seen.

There is no doubt that Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-82) has has a much larger influence on me than any other musician.

I first began to listen to his work in 1978 (the 48 preludes and fugues); because I wanted to get some Bach played on piano, and because I was intrigued by the uniformly hostile reviews of Gould in the Penguin Stereo Record Guide (two out of five possible stars, as I recall) and the Gramophone magazine.

I sensed that the dislike of the British music establishment critics (whose judgment I generally disagreed-with) might be an indication of his special qualities. I was, of course, correct.

*

In those days it was difficult for me to get hold of Gould's recordings. In the UK I needed to order some as imports, I bought some on a visit to Boston USA, and some more in Paris. I bought the first biography of Gould (by Geoffrey Payzant) in Toronto itself - his home town.

*

Listening to Gould's Bach (over and over again) became an almost essential part of my psychological harmony - I recall an especially bleak night 'on call' as a hospital doctor, being sustained by it. Then shortly afterwards he died.

Gradually, over the years, his fame grew.

My 1987-written venture into radio drama had Gould as a character and providing the music -

http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/solitude.html

*

What I particularly valued about Gould was not only the playing but the whole package - the intensity and concentration with which he seemed to tackle everything.

And part of this was that he seemed to have his life the way he wanted it: a life that had fame - but at a distance; and a high degree of control and autonomy. He portrayed his life as one of solitude in the city.

This was, indeed, an ideal for me: something about which I daydreamed.

To find a comfortable but stimulating niche.

*

Gould described his life as Thoreauvian - and so it was; but not in the way that I understood the term at that time.

*

It now turns out, from recent biographical work, that although Gould was indeed highly eccentric and unusual as a person - the life of solitude and autonomy which he described and which I believed and regarded as an ideal - was pretty much a work of art. Not a description of the reality of his life.

*

Gould had a one-sided but compulsive need for society - or at least for listeners (whether by telephone or in person) - he needed this for many hours per day. Indeed it must have interefred with his work.

He had a marriage like relationship (with step children) for several year in his forties.

And he did not really seem to be happy with things - seems to have been pretty deeply lonely and frustrated with himself.

*

In this respect he was similar to Thoreau - whose life was not one of solitary autonomy (living in a hut by a pond, away from people) as portrayed in Walden; but instead one of sociality albeit semi-detached - mostly living at home or with Emerson's family.

*

I have found this disillusionment again and again as I read biographies of people whose lives I admire and at times wished to emulate.

The idea of life as an art form - Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said he put his genius into his life but only his talent into his art - seems to me essentially false.

Deceptive. A con.

*

Those who claim (usually implicitly) that their life is a work of art - something aesthetic, controlled, autonomous - are invariably being untruthful.

(There may indeed be some people who do achieve this ideal - but if so, we hear nothing about it. They are not famous. These people - if indeed they exist - are not in the public eye: are not major artists, poets, writers, musicians).

*

But the desire to make one's life something akin to a work of creative art - although alluring - is an error in itself: an error born of despair, it now seems to me.

An error deriving from the unsatisfactoriness of 'the world'; and attempting to combat meaninglessness, purposelessness and alienation by self-created meaning.

*

Yet if meaning depends on the self - that is, if the project succeeds - then it fails: because self-created meaning is not meaning but merely a delusion: a dominating autonomous personal belief immune to influence.

Even if others are drawn into the delusion and support it (as sometimes happens with artist-guru types, - Like Jung, or Robert Graves) then there is the background awareness that all this is contingent upon a perpetual act of will.

The extreme act of will required is itself probably evil - probably an extreme form of pride, an expression of power desiring to shape the world to one's own desires.

*

Anyway, Gould remains a beacon to me; nowadays for rather different reasons than he used to be a beacon - yet still I value above all else his combination of supreme technique, analytic musicality, ability, inspiration and intensity.

Gouldian levels of intensity are almost an escape from self-consciousness, indeed from consciousness itself; a complete absorption in the 'flow' of working and shaping.

So they are not really an answer, more of an escape; the ability to attain this absorption probably declines with age; and the 're-entry problem' must be exceptionally difficult - to come-down from the heights to the mundane; to fee concentration opening-out into diffuse dissipation.

*

But a continually fascinating personality.

And, maybe surprisingly, one who was very much and very widely loved - despite his autonomy, demandingness, self-obsessive qualities.

Much loved, and - even now - much missed.

*

Belief in the Hereafter: Glenn Gould

This passage is  quoted in 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould - and also Glenn Gould. Hereafter.

ELYSE MACH: I’d like to ask: Do you believe in the afterlife? 

Glenn Gould: Well, I was brought up as a Presbyterian, though I did stop being a church goer, ohh, about the age of 18 … but I always have had a tremendously strong sense that there is, indeed, a hereafter … that we all must reckon with, and lead our lives according to, this belief that there is, inevitably, a transformation of the spirit. As a consequence, I find all ‘here-and-now’ philosophies quite repellent … lax, if you will. I do recognize, however, that it is a great temptation to try and formulate a comfortable theory of eternal life, so as to reconcile oneself to the inevitability of death. But I’d like to think that’s not what I’m doing—I honestly don’t think that I’m creating a deliberate self-reassuring process. For me, it intuitively seems right … I’ve never had to work at convincing myself of a life hereafter. After all, don’t you think it seems infinitely more plausible than its opposite … oblivion?

 

There is surely a direct relationship between Gould's conviction of the reality of a personal afterlife, and the extraordinary and unique spiritual dimension he brought to the best of his life and performances. 

When I am able to grasp the fact of it; I am absolutely staggered at the perfection of the gift of Jesus: I mean resurrected eternal life in Heaven. It is so absolutely and exactly what I would most have wanted!

Yet most people, most of the time (almost everybody, almost always) are utterly insensible to this extraordinary thing. I know, because for most of my life I was one of them. 

I know how - in the particular and peculiar environment of this modern era - it seems natural (as well as adult and intelligent) to adopt a flippant attitude to this most important of all questions. I know the arguments - from the inside - about how eternal life, resurrection, Heaven etc - don't really make any difference to the wise Man of true values; how these are childish panderings to the weakness and vanity of... etc. etc...

Consequently we do not allow ourselves even to begin to grasp what is actually on offer; and oscillate back and forth between regarding the astonishing gift of Jesus as too-good-to-be-true, and then of-no-interest at all - or (somehow) hold both beliefs at the same time...

One common, and stunningly wrong, attitude is that the reality of eternal life makes no difference to this life! I have felt this myself. It is so incredibly, stupidly and obviously wrong, that such an attitude is itself a key to much of the pathology of modern thinking. I mean; the fact that I and others can and do think this way, is a revelation of a profound (i.e. deep rooted) incapacity to reason that is near universal.

I realise that Jesus's offer does not appeal to everyone. Which is presumably why only Christianity (and only some understandings of Christianity) 'offer' this destination after death. But I think there are plenty who, like me, want nothing different from what Jesus offers - and it ought to be a simple matter for us to get past the first step of acknowledging "Yes, that's what I most want"; and (but only) then move on to the question: "Is it true?"

Step one: do we want what Jesus offers? Step two: is the offer true? 

And, as Gould said, evaluating the truth of Jesus's offer is a matter of intuition. 

No 'evidence' is of relevance. But intuition must have something to intuit! An idea must be grasped with the fullness of imaginative understanding before it can be tested by intuition. 

And that is exactly where most modern people go so fatally wrong: they/we cannot imaginatively grasp the reality of resurrected, eternal Heavenly life (or, we do not allow ourselves to do this); therefore we cannot intuitively evaluate its truth. 

We cannot get past step one. 

Note: This post seems significant to me. It is re-blogged from September of 2020, at which it passed without apparent notice. 

The intensity of Glenn Gould

I just today came across a 2005 movie about Glenn Gould, which I hadn't seen before:

And it made me reflect yet again on the part that this musician has played in my own life - arriving, as he did, when I was aged 19; and just as I began to become more-and-more alienated (more cut-off in my-self, and from perception and memory) - from getting older, being away from family, living a more superficial life, spending time alone, in a city, and moving towards a round-hole that I did not fit...

For me Gould represented intensity. The ideal of living with such intensity - of living in intensity - that all problems were solved. Intensity of living (whether in listening to Gould play Bach, or some other musician or music of similar intensity) - or in personal relationships (but not very often)... did indeed solve the problem of alienation, while on-going.

But I never, over several years of trying, integrated this with my 'working' life - I was too feeble of will, got lonely too easily - or bored; plus of course it was impossible...

Gould himself experienced intensity more often and more powerfully than most people - but still very intermittently: much of his life was dissipation, time-filling (just like mine).

In the end, being a musicia of genius and having near-complete control over his life was grossly-insufficient, because he was up-against the limits of the human being, and of the human condition.

This did not mean that Gould was as adrift as my young adult self; because, I was unaware that Gould was a religious man with a profound conviction of life everlasting. For me, mortal life was everything, and when (not if) we failed to live well then that was It; but for Gould this life was a prelude leading on to wondrous and eternal fugues!...

Do you believe in the afterlife, Glenn Gould?

As cited in Glenn Gould. Hereafter.

ELYSE MACH: I’d like to ask: Do you believe in the afterlife? 

Glenn Gould: Well, I was brought up as a Presbyterian, though I did stop being a church goer, ohh, about the age of 18 … but I always have had a tremendously strong sense that there is, indeed, a hereafter … that we all must reckon with, and lead our lives according to, this belief that there is, inevitably, a transformation of the spirit. As a consequence, I find all ‘here-and-now’ philosophies quite repellent … lax, if you will. I do recognize, however, that it is a great temptation to try and formulate a comfortable theory of eternal life, so as to reconcile oneself to the inevitability of death. But I’d like to think that’s not what I’m doing—I honestly don’t think that I’m creating a deliberate self-reassuring process. For me, it intuitively seems right … I’ve never had to work at convincing myself of a life hereafter. After all, don’t you think it seems infinitely more plausible than its opposite … oblivion?

 

There is surely a direct relationship between Gould's conviction of the reality of a personal afterlife, and the extraordinary and unique spiritual dimension he brought to the best of his life and performances. 

When I am able to grasp the fact of it; I am absolutely staggered at the perfection of the gift of Jesus: I mean resurrected eternal life in Heaven. It is so absolutely and exactly what I would most have wanted!

Yet most people, most of the time (almost everybody, almost always) are utterly insensible to this extraordinary thing. I know, because for most of my life I was one of them. 

I know how - in the particular and peculiar environment of this modern era - it seems natural (as well as adult and intelligent) to adopt a flippant attitude to this most important of all questions. I know the arguments - from the inside - about how eternal life, resurrection, Heaven etc - don't really make any difference to the wise Man of true values; how these are childish panderings to the weakness and vanity of... etc. etc...

Consequently we do not allow ourselves even to begin to grasp what is actually on offer; and oscillate back and forth between regarding the astonishing gift of Jesus as too-good-to-be-true, and then of-no-interest at all - or (somehow) hold both beliefs at the same time...

One common, and stunningly wrong, attitude is that the reality of eternal life makes no difference to this life! I have felt this myself. It is so incredibly, stupidly and obviously wrong, that such an attitude is itself a key to much of the pathology of modern thinking. I mean; the fact that I and others can and do think this way, is a revelation of a profound (i.e. deep rooted) incapacity to reason that is near universal.

I realise that Jesus's offer does not appeal to everyone. Which is presumably why only Christianity (and only some understandings of Christianity) 'offer' this destination after death. But I think there are plenty who, like me, want nothing different from what Jesus offers - and it ought to be a simple matter for us to get past the first step of acknowledging "Yes, that's what I most want"; and (but only) then move on to the question: "Is it true?"

Step one: do we want what Jesus offers? Step two: is the offer true? 

And, as Gould said, evaluating the truth of Jesus's offer is a matter of intuition. No 'evidence' is of relevance. But intuition must have something to intuit! An idea must be grasped with the fullness of imaginative understanding before it can be tested by intuition. 

And that is exactly where most modern people go so fatally wrong: they/we cannot imaginatively grasp the reality of resurrected, eternal Heavenly life (or, we do not allow ourselves to do this); therefore we cannot intuitively evaluate its truth. We cannot get past step one. 

Creative artist envy is a mistake

This is the creativity of ecstatic engagement - 

which is valid regardless of its communication or appreciation 

I have been re-engaging with the work and person of Glenn Gould recently - a recurrent activity in my life ever since I discovered him in autumn 1978. 

Something that crops-up is that Gould, in some sense, "wanted to be a composer"... but never quite got around to it (producing a small handful of apprentice or light pieces merely); despite circling around this idea for some thirty-off years, and despite being par excellence somebody who did what he wanted the way he wanted.

And despite "re-composing" many of the pieces he played; at least in the sense of sometimes ignoring performing traditions and composers markings (e.g. for tempo and dynamics) alike.  

This could be regarded as an example of "composer envy" - a condition that afflicts many of the more thoughtful performing musicians - including the greatest conductors; who perhaps get nearest to composition without actually doing it. 

There is, it is often assumed, a scale of creative activity, in music that has the great composer at the top (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven etc); great conductors next (e.g. Toscanini, Stokowski, von Karajan); and then the great performers of the various instruments - with piano pre-eminent. 

But this is the top-end of another common assumption among those who appreciate the arts; that to be any kind of creative artists is intrinsically "more creative" than... anything else. 

So that being a musician is intrinsically a creative activity - as is novelist, poet, painter or another of the arts. 

So there is an "artist envy" among those who are not artists - on the basis that artists are more creative than non-artists. 

However, none of this is really true at the individual level. 

By my judgment; Gould was actually a far more creative person than any of the classical composers of his era. Great Classical music was not being composed in the second half of the twentieth century, nor since (although there has been a fair bit of good and worthwhile classical music.). 

I mean that the actual, recognized and prestigious, classical music composers from the 1950s onward, do not succeed in their creating to anything like the extent of Gould himself. 

Creatively-speaking; Gould really had nothing to envy among his contemporaries among composers. 

A similar situation exists with respect to poetry. I think there still exists a kind of "poet envy" among writers - I mean the idea that "everybody really wants to be a poet"... 

(Or, if not a poet, then a novelist or playwright.)

And yet, the actuality is that there has not been (IMO) a great poet in our Anglophone Western culture in the past half century and more (and very little real poetry of any kind or quality) - so what is there to envy? ... 

Nothing; except an unearned reputation for creativity in poets. 

To circle back to Gould; what his example teaches me is that our greatest creativity is found by pursuing our personal gifts and motivations - and not by trying to fulfil society-wide notions of creative activity. 

Gould succeeded in leading an exceptionally creative life- - mainly as a performer, but also there was a mosaic of other and complementary creativity in his radio documentaries, his rhapsodic essayistic writings - and even in his interviews. 

That is one thing. 

Secondarily; Gould was able to communicate his ecstatic states, insights and perspectives to a very high degree. That is why he the fascinating figure that he is; among those in sympathy with his nature and ideals.

This ability to communicate was rooted in Gould's exceptional abilities as a pianist, which were both technical-pianistic, and also expressive of a very high aptitude as "a musician". 

By saying that Gould was "a musician" at a high level; I refer to Gould's capacity to understand music - as contrasted with the ability to play it. 

It is possible, indeed usual, to have the one without the other - and to have both musicianship and performing technique at a high level, is very rare

The lesson from this secondary aspect of creativity is that high aptitude is not generalizable (almost by definition). 

That is: we can learn from Gould's primary creativity, because there are aspects of unique and valuable creativity in everybody - but we cannot learn from Gould's rare gifts of deep musicality and technical accomplishment, which are those aspects that made him a great communicator.   

The capacity to communicate primary creativity - to share one's own creativity with others - is something that cannot be depended-on: or, more accurately, something that we ought not to build our creative endeavours around.  

In other words: is not a matter of particular activities, jobs or roles; but instead something that is an aspect of our real selves. 

Everybody ought to be creative, ought to live-creatively - and creativity is a reality. 

Creativity is, ultimately, to live from-oneself in harmony with divine creation. 

It is a matter of contributing the consequences of our uniqueness of nature to divine creation.

What that actually means - for you and me, in actual practice - should be calibrated inwardly. 

Half-baked - yet pervasive - notions of artist-envy must be seen-through and set-aside; because creativity is not a social role; 

To be-creative is not (or, not for many people, and only for a few people) to be one or other kind of socially-recognized artist or other creative type. And even within creative types (musician, writer, visual artist) there is no objective hierarchy.

And we need to realize that the whole business of "living creatively" is often, I would say usually, muddied and corrupted by conflating it with the business of being appreciated and recognized by other people. 

In sum: We can and should all aspire to be creative, which all can do; but only a very few can ever be - or should ever be - publicly acknowledged as a creative artist that can communicate his vision.   

In the Western civilization now and for several generations; to be a recognized and prestigious "artist" of some kind, is close to being a guarantee of low-level or utterly-absent creativity of living; when creativity is correctly understood. 

Real-inner creativity and acknowledged-outer creativity are almost wholly dissociated: one exists usually in the absence of the other. 

The psychology of "creativity" is distinct from the sociology: the private from the public. 

This fact needs to be recognized if we are each to live as well as we might. 

  

NOTE ADDED: On reflection: This post doesn't seem to make its point very lucidly! I suppose what I'm trying to say is that in pursuing creativity, we ought not to be guided by cultural ideas of what constitute legitimate creative activities. Nor should we aim-at or push-for public recognition for whatever creative stuff we decide to do. Insofar as this happens naturally - fine. But the more we are trying to promote the product of our creative work, the less here-and-now creative we will become. In other words; what really mattes is active and aware creativity today (in whatever domain we intuit to be destined) - not praise and accolades for some-thing we feel to have been insufficiently-appreciated (a picture, poem, novel, performance - or whatever) that we did last week/ month/ year, or in our youth. And we should strive to be pleasing to our deepest selves and to God - or a handful of people we respect; rather than to focus on hopes of material or cultural rewards. 

Review of Glenn Gould's 'Solitude Trilogy' of radio documentaries

*
I have recently re-listened to the three programmes of Glenn Gould's 'Solitude' trilogy. The are The Idea of North; The Late Comers and The Quiet in the Land.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitude_Trilogy

All comprise adapted interviews in what purports to be a documentary style, but which in fact uses the interviews as raw material to create monologues, dialogues and simultaneous speaking passages which are modeled on various musical forms - for example, some multi-voice sections have fugue-like aspects.

My impression this time is that none of the programmes are really successful, although all are interesting and worthwhile; also none of them are about solitude - but almost the opposite: they are about living in small, closely-knit and (in some sense) isolated communities - in the Canadian far north, Newfoundland and as a Mennonite (a group of Anabaptists who began as akin to the Amish).

The Idea of North is technically the crudest - and has long documentary like passages which are quite mundane; but it has the best overall dramatic structure, with a somewhat climactic ending featuring a background of Sibelius.

The Late Comers is probably the most interesting, with the best set of 'characters' having some accessible and relevant debates and discussions. The 'basso continuo' of ocean surf sounds throughout, binds it all together. But the programme lacks dramatic shape and just fizzles-out at the end.

The Quiet in the Land has some of the best, most moving passages - featuring a background of church bells, choirs, a sermon and an effective refrain discussing  'in the world, but not of the world' - but has too much argumentativeness, and discussion about disagreements and the dissenters among Mennonites; and not enough about the classic conditions of isolated, self-sufficient, self-confident Mennonite life. And again the whole thing fizzles-out inconclusively.

*

What strikes me about the actual theme of these programmes is that:

1. Gould stated clearly that these three radio programmes were the nearest he ever attained (or aspired) to a personal statement of his innermost beliefs - that they were a symbolic spiritual autobiography of some kind. Yet...

2. The actual structure and content of the three programmes (including the choice of people interviewed and their sampled words) seems to indicate that Gould yearned for a technologically simple communal life, with common sense, down-to-earth people.

3. This starkly contradicts Gould's many other explicit pronouncements that he loved most solitude, the cocooning (distancing, safe) effects of technology,  and the in general highly individual and eccentric life of a recognized genius musician.

 4. In conclusion, the so-called 'Solitude' trilogy indicate that either Gould was a more conflicted and contradictory man than is usually acknowledged - that his world view does not 'hang together' at even the most basic level; or, less radically, that his deepest yearnings contradicted his public persona - and that what he most deeply wanted in his soul, he was prevented from having by the very different nature of his more superficial personality and intellect.

*

This last interpretation is plausible to me, since it is the human condition that we as mortals wake-up to 'find-ourselves' (that is, we become-aware-of our deepest, our primary selves) as-it-were dwelling inside not just a body but also a 'personality' - and the soul and 'personality' are not integrated.

(At least, they are not integrated during this mortal incarnate life on earth.)

Our souls peep-out through a personality and set of abilities and habits which are, to some extent, arbitrary and alien - and what this superficial self wants and what it does can be (and can become) very different indeed from what the innermost soul aspires to.

Perhaps that is the coded message that Gould left behind in these 'Solitude' programmes - that his genius required the eccentric life of high-tech isolation for which is is a famous advocate'; but that genius is not the deepest level of a man - inside the genius is a soul who usually sees things very differently and wants very different things.

*

Intensity in literature, music and elsewhere (c1978-81)

Intensity (my own term for it) was what I sought above all in my late teens, early twenties - epitomised for me by the composer JS Bach as performed by the pianist Glenn Gould.

Interestingly, initially I knew of Gould's intense engagement with Bach only via LP recordings, and liner notes - later by a few journalistic pieces. But I never had seen the video recordings which actually show Gould's intensity of absorption in the work.

[Note if you go to five minutes, you will see some of Gould's trademark syncopated (or triplet) trills in the right hand - which apparently enabled him to phrase the trill rather than just letting it provide a drone.]

Gould's engagement is 100 percent from beginning to end - almost exhausting to behold - and it makes you realise how seldom this happens - even among the greats of the concert hall.

So there was my word intensity, and then there was the word 'inspired' which I got from a musical friend - if a performance was judged to be inspired, then that was all that needed to be said in its favour; and if it was not then blah... Inspiration was what was sought - accurate mechanical reproduction was just a waste of time.

Intensity in literature and life as in music - but it was so hard to find and so hard to keep: so hard as to be impossible in practise, as I later discovered from the life of Glenn Gould (which involved such dissipation as hours long rambling telephone conversations, and hours long random drives around the city... filling in time, not intense).

In literature, intensity for me peaked in Hamlet; but not in the whole play - I regarded most of it as padding, and liked best the shortened movie version starring Nicol Williamson, because it was almost all intensity.

Among people, intensity of the kind I craved was in short supply - with most people it never happened at all. I would travel the length of the country to converse with a friend if I thought we might have a really intense talk.

In retrospect, there was something noble in this aspiration for intensity; but also something profoundly misguided. Because when intensity was achieved, for seconds or sometimes minutes, then the self was lost - so it was either the self or intensity but not both; and if intensity is achieved in the absence of the self then, well, it wasn't achieved by me - it was almost like being asleep.

So life was brief flashes of intensity then brooding on them, trying to honour them, recapture them or at least remember them (memory itself difficult and rare or absent, when completely absorbed - I would remember that I had been intensely absorbed, but not anything of what went on during it).

Also, as soon as the intensity was over then I was back to square one; because the fact that I had had an intense experience in the past was no use if I was not intense now. So life was an endless seeking after that which was of supposedly infinite value while it happened, yet no value at all when it was not happening...

And how to achieve it, anyway? Was there a 'method' to it? My only notion was artistic - performance or the actual business of creation; and I lacked the ability in either realm (or, at least, sufficient ability). So intensity was - conversation with rare people aside - a passive engagement with the work of others; which seemed like intensity-at-second-hand - almost parasitic; certainly second rate (yet, as I said above, this was in fact the case for everyone, even those who seemed best at being intense).

And how could I earn a living from being intense? Especially in medicine - where it was either unwanted or a positive hazard!

So what was I doing or aiming at? I was trying to find meaning and purpose while denying, metaphysically, the possibility of meaning or purpose - by being alert but 'lost' in meaning and purpose-full art. Yet art was a creation of Man, which meant that its meaning and purpose was a segment of a Man's life - the life of a Man being, (according to my metaphysics) itself meaningless and purposeless.

(Although Gould and Bach would have disagreed - both believing that reality has meaning and purpose as a consequence of deity; yet, apparently irrationally, I readily assumed that they were both self-deluded about this primary fact, despite that I was pinning my own life on their creativity...)

So intensity was a kind of evasion or confusion - but it did sustain in me an engagement with music and literature which has never been surpassed and seldom equalled in my life.

Even geniuses have fantasies about doing something they can't and don't

Reading Kevin Bazzana's biography of Glenn Gould; it was clear that, despite being a musician of genius, Glenn Gould was prone to the same kind of unrealistic fantasies as the rest of us.

In his case it was being a composer. From the beginning of his career (aged about 15) through to the end of his life, Gould would talk about his intention of composing - yet he finished only one piece - a string quartet, written in his twenties.

Over a span of 35 years, nothing else substantive got further than announcements, concepts and sketches - despite that for 18 of these years he had retired from concert life, ostensibly in order to have time and energy for composition.


I emphasise 'being' a composer - because it was pretty clear that it was more this that Gould wanted than the actual business of writing music. He wanted to 'be' a composer, rather than 'doing' composing.

Bazzana, through his analysis of the string quartet and the sketches, is convinced that Gould lacked the ability to be a significant composer*. On the one hand he lacked the creative drive in that direction, as evidenced by his inertia; and on the other hand he lacked sufficient compositional technique for writing the kind of complex contrapuntal music he was most drawn to, and did nothing to acquire it - he did not study or take lessons.

Yet, somehow, Gould didn't want to give-up on this fantasy - and kept-on, even in later life, implying that a compositional breakthrough was just around the corner...


I find this interesting; and it happens a lot - including at the lower levels of ordinary non-genius folk including myself and my friends and colleagues. Many people have a tendency to undervalue what they can do and hanker after what they cannot; and many of these take the hankering no further than vague aspiration, yet fail to draw the conclusion that their daydream is thereby invalidated.

This can, in some people, have serious consequences - such as a wasted life. It is, I believe, a deep fault of character; which ought to be recognised and repented - because it is a species of avoidance by self-dishonesty.

It amounts to living a lie.

*On the other hand, Bazzana demonstrates that Gould was genuinely compositional - and in a musical way - in his radio 'documentaries'. If you do not know these, I would strongly recommend the 'Solitude Trilogy'. For this blog's readers, perhaps the third would be the best to start-with: The Quiet in the Land (1977) is about the Mennonites in 'modern' Canada. I was later inspired to attempt this genre myself.   

Canonical Gouldberg

Here is a video of Glenn Gould (in 1964) playing (live) the Aria and Canons from Bach's Goldberg Variations; without repeats and performed as a continuous concert piece:

https://vimeo.com/268671712

This is tough, intense, inspired music; and although I have listened to this piece hundreds of times over the past 39 years (various version by Gould and by many other interpreters), I haven't ever reached the bottom of it, or anything like - nor have I become fed-up with it.

As so often when Gould plays Bach, he shares the compositional credit in the sense that he recreates the music afresh (and differently from his album recordings). It is fascinating to watch him as he rocks his body and hums ('stimming' - for self-stimulating - as it is termed in Asperger's syndrome) yet without interfering with his hand control.

And look at those hands moving! They seem like weirdly shaped alien creatures; each pursuing its own independent agenda - and indeed each finger seems almost detached and autonomous of the hands.

The precision of playing is unsurpassed - and perhaps unequalled; and is especially evident in that Gould shapes each individual note, with as much attention to the note's ending as to its beginning - yet holds the musical idea with only the rarest and minor lapse in the sustained lines.

Gould's live playing is more accurate than any other great pianist I have ever seen; I only spotted one small actual mistake in the Aria and Canons (just about 9:50). Significantly, this is towards the end; and then there are a few mistakes in the separate Quodlibet - showing, I think, that Gould was becoming fatigued or losing the ecstatic state of concentration.

Gould is (in)famous for being the first great musician to eschew live performance - in his later career; and I think here we have the clues why. The way he played was so accurate, so exposed, and yet he made so remarkably few errors when playing well - that his standards were (even) higher than other greats, and even harder to maintain.

But such perfection was not attainable in live perfomance due to the need for sheer stamina: the exhausting travelling, setting up, socialising; the logistics of performance (new instruments, auditoria etc); the length of time he needed to play without a break. And Gould himself was so prone-to/ affected-by ailments and illnesses... That, in sum, I imagine it was excruciating for Gould (of all musicians) to be forced into playing suboptimally - to an external timescale; forced into 'faking it' for the audience.

Gould was subject to a great deal of ill-informed gossip (at least in the UK) about his technique - and some thought that he recorded exclusively because his pianism was faulty, and his playing needed to be patched-up by retakes and editing in order to pass muster.

In fact, almost the opposite was the case...

Gouldian spiritual possibilities from technology

 

 

Back in the 1960s and 70s, Glenn Gould used to write and speak about the insulating effects of technology; and the ways in which it could (and did, for him) protect against The World - the way in which technology could surround someone in an ambience of music (and other arts and media); even as it created a supportive physical environment (nourishment, warmth, dryness, security). Technology protected against the threats of nature - or, it could... 

This idea of the kind, even 'charitable', nature of technology is one of those ideas that worked - for some people, for a while; but which has turned out very differently from how it was hoped. For Gould himself - at least for a couple of decades, technology really did all this; and sustained an extraordinary intensity of ecstatic spiritual life which came through in his musical performances, writings, and the 'Solitude Trilogy' of radio documentaries.  

In the first place, recording technology enabled Gould to stop performing - which he hated. Telephones enabled him to sustain friendships and creative collaborations without excessive human contact (which he also disliked). The capabilities of recording enabled him to produce a closer-to-ideal performance than could be attained under the constraints of 'one take' live music making. Recording in segments (combined with an extraordinary memory) also enabled him to maintain 100% focus even during the creation of long piano works - whereas this is simply not possible in live performance.  

And he commented on how much he enjoyed the womb-like (and time-suspended) environment of the recording studio, especially the editing process; where he would display almost superhuman powers of concentration combined with endurance (driving his collaborators to exhaustion and beyond).  And in leisure times Gould would maintain a continuous 'wallpaper' of surrounding music (and perhaps spoken word - news etc) from often several simultaneous sources in his house and while travelling by car.

For Gould, technology allowed a special form of solitude; and he regarded solitude as the pre-requisite of ecstatic experience - and ecstasy as a creative state. 

 

Something similar used to be asserted about the possibilities of the internet - especially in the later 1990s; the way it could facilitate all kinds of good things... It seemed like such a liberation that people forgot (for a while) that the effects of any liberation (freedom-from some constraint) depend upon the strength and direction of motivation (what exactly it is that one wants to do).  

Indeed, that state of media wallpaper, surrounding and enveloping technology must sound familiar - albeit ominously familiar - to most modern people; who are never without their 'smart' phones, watches, tablets; ear buds inserted or headphones applied - who are bathed in an increasingly intense electromagnetic medium from wi-fi, 3/4/5G... 

And everywhere, omni-present, is technological surveillance, monitoring, propaganda, manipulation of psychology.

The outcome has been something very far removed from Gouldian solitude, intensity, creative ecstasy and other-worldy spirituality. The technology might, it is true, have been used for all kinds of benign purposes; as modelled by Gould and expounded by him. But the fact is - it wasn't.

So, all this promise has of technology came to a situation extremely different, almost the opposite, from that hoped by Gould and others. Something very horrible to behold - especially in the form of social media addiction and compulsion; and the correspondingly soul-denying, materialist, docile and obedient, unthinking and incoherent shells-of-persons who are in the overwhelming majority throughout the most technological parts of the world. 

 

Gould hoped that technology would free Men from stress and toil to liberate the soul for a higher and more refined evolution of consciousness. He wanted most of all a (divine) state of ecstasy in contemplation and creation. 

By technology many Men were indeed liberated for a good while and to a significant degree, although now the means of liberation have become the mechanism of enslavement. Because Men used this liberation in almost entirely negative directions. 

Constraints are much less significant than motivations. What technology can do is overwhelmed by what people actually want to do with it. 

When Men are corrupt and desire evil; every-thing that facilitates the achievement of their desires will (obviously!) do greatly more harm than good. And that is precisely what happened with technology, going right back to the beginnings of the industrial revolution.

Improved means are lethal when ends have been inverted. 

 

(If you respond to it) Glenn Gould's Bach depicts the *detail* of Heaven

*
I see now that when I was (or am) responding to Glenn Gould's playing of Bach, it is a depiction of Heaven in a very detailed sense. I can (sometimes) feel this moment by moment, each tiny decision, nuance; the lines, tones, harmonies asif happening for the first time with surprising inevitability.

I am able to re-experience Gould's ecstatic absorption in his playing, and in the music as Bach composed it - and my condition in Heaven (when I want it) will be to play like Gould and compose like Bach but in my own (unique) way; because if I can respond to it on earth, then I can do it in Heaven.

Primarily, Heaven is a place of love and relationships; but/and Heaven is a place of creativity - the creativity of making and of performance. (It is a place of all positive Goods.)

Each person's creative ability and urge is different, and changed and expanded by experience and in combination. There is no repetition; and the creating can go on for as long as wanted.

*

Some of my Glenn Gould-esque retirements

Glenn Gould famously announced in 1964 that he was retiring from live performances to focus on recorded and broadcast music-making - and kept his vow for the next 18 years until he died.

This ceasing of public appearances created considerable international criticism and debate; since Gould was one of the most famous and successful solo pianists of his (or any) era; and no-one of his stature had ever previously done anything like this. But Gould had his reasons.

I too have, at times, made vows about retiring from activities - and stuck by them, mostly - but I, of course, did not announce my resolutions, nor would anyone have been interested if I had!


Probably the first was back when I was an Anatomy lecturer at Glasgow University, doing research on the human adrenal gland and its nerve supply; when I resolved not to apply for any more research grants. And I never did.

My reason was that I had failed to get several grants in the previous year, yet wasted considerable time and energy (and morale) applying for them - until it became clear and undeniable that the adrenal was too 'unfashionable'. To get funding, I would need again to do 'neuroscience', as I had for my doctorate - when I had not failed at getting grants.

But I had some work I wanted to 'finish' on the adrenal; and did not want my research to be controlled by the grant-awarding authorities - so I made this resolution.  I would do the addrenal research as best I could without external funding - using whatever resources I could muster.

Clearly, by never getting any research funding, I paid a price in terms of career progression. But it was the correct decision for me - since it enabled the subject matter of my scholarship, and therefore my 'life', to be 'free' for a further couple of decades; while nearly all my colleagues and contemporaries became, what seemed to me, self-deluded technicians and project managers.


Another retiral (to use the Scottish term) was from laboratory work specifically, and empirical science more generally. This was not a strict rule, nor was it done on moral grounds; it was simply based upon the recognition that because I was merely adequate at laboratory work (and not very interested by it), I could and should focus instead upon theory - which was both my aptitude, and the mode of work in which I was most spontaneously motivated.

I did not stick to this completely - because in the middle 2000s I got so interested in 'scientometrics' (the numerical measurement of scientific work) that I did, and published, some statistical analyses. Much of the heavy statistical work was done by a computer scientist colleague, but I did some of my own - such as looking at trends in Nobel prizes and other awards.

But my concentration on theory was regarded as making me 'research inactive' in the eyes of the UK academic bureaucrats (despite a prolific publication record) because only empirical publication (of 'new' data) was regarded as 'real' (and because grant income was what defined 'real' research). Also, the scientometrics (which had had a pretty high impact) 'did not count', because it was outwith the official boundaries of the psychology category.

So, this retirement also took its toll on my career.


After I was sacked from editing Medical Hypotheses - on the specific technical grounds of my refusal to introduce Peer Review (albeit with a real background in issues of political correctness); I vowed not to participate in peer review in any fashion from that point.

This meant that I did not publish any peer reviewed articles, and I stopped peer reviewing for journals, grant applications and the like.

Building on this, I soon realised that all forms of voting were immoral - including in the many and various meetings of institutional life; so in recent years I vowed not to attend formal meetings or to be otherwise involved in voting; or, indeed, in surveys.

This resolution was quite difficult to stick-to, and had potential to cause serious trouble, but in the event it did not prove catastrophic - although it certainly would have done, sooner or later.


Looking back across these retirements - it is easy enough to see that they were all related to personal autonomy; and the fact that I did not acknowledge the authority of others to control my scholarship and research.

There was a price to pay, in terms of diminished resources and status (and income) but it was a worthwhile price for so long as I could retain my traditional academic autonomy.

But nowadays that autonomy has become institutionally impossible, and has in practice disappeared - at least among younger generations (there are probably a very small and diminishing number of old, employed, still-autonomous academics - living on borrowed time...).


Science, and all other forms of research and academic scholarship are - in their strategic elements - now wholly externally controlled by linked managerial and bureaucratic structures - so the 'job' of an academic or scholar is now merely concerned with the detailed implementation of already-prescribed agendas.

Partial retirements no longer suffice to maintain autonomy: the future belongs to the amateur outside of the system and independent of all funding, salary, status, honours, terms and conditions.

To the amateur; or to nobody.

Glenn Gould - slow trills, syncopated trills

*

Glenn Gould seemed to phrase trills more than any other pianist I have encountered.

In the finale Gigue movement of Bach's French Suite number 4 in E-flat Major he uses slow trills.

(This is one of the most joyous pieces of music I have ever heard - especially the repeat of the first section):

7:09 minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2OGhZ8fbAs

(BTW: it sounds even better on vinyl - as per usual.)

In the Prelude in G minor from Book 1 of Well Tempered Clavier Gould uses an accelerating trill in the high part (rather faint in this recording - it sounds like only one stereo channel) at the opening and repeated variously in other voices; which accelerates in a stepwise fashion and at one point is syncopated, in triplets - I have always loved the way he played it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qefBKP6M6CQ

*

Forty years ago... William Arkle/ Colin Wilson/ Glenn Gould/ Michael Tippett

In the summer and autumn of 1978, I discovered several people and themes that have remained with me over the past four decades; and which have interacted in some of my deepest and most intense concerns.

Perhaps the first was coming-across the composer Michael Tippett's volume of essays called Moving into Aquarius, which I found in an English bookshop in Athens. This really fascinated me, and I read and re-read it - eventually writing a fan letter to the author, to which I received a nice reply from his assistant.

Tippett's writing (and, of course, some of his music - especially the oratorios and operas) was about the division between science and technics on the one hand, and the imagination and art on the other - he classical 'Romantic' problem, in other words. I had already been primed for this, both from my own experiences as a scientist/ medical student who was also active in music and drama; and from reading RM Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in August 1976.

Over the summer vacation I made another discovery of William Arkle's Geography of Consciousness in the Edinburgh city library, with its introduction by Colin Wilson - leading onto my first reading of CW's The Outsider. Again the Romantic theme; but this time addressed in terms of the states of consciousness. The idea was that we actually solve the Romantic problem - albeit intermittently and for short periods of time - when we attain to certain, higher states of consciousness. And, of course, this has remained central to my thinking ever since.

During the Edinburgh Festival Fringe of that year, I attended a comedy review during which some intermission music was provided by a pianist and double bassist playing Bach, slightly 'jazzed'. This led first to Jacques Loussier, and then to Bach played 'straight' on piano; that is, to Glenn Gould - initially his LPs of The Well-Tempered Clavier, then to the Goldberg variations and the Partitas. Over the next months; I found a few articles and interviews on Gould and recognised that he was a player of exceptional intensity and inspiration: that he played-in and communicated that same state of 'ecstatic' consciousness which was discussed by Arkle and Wilson.

So I began to brood on these matters, and on the way of life of these living geniuses; and tried to move my own life in the same direction - in my leisure from a pretty intensive course of study at Medical School. I began to think along mystical lines, including notions such as special times of magical being, the possibility of remote empathic contact, and the 'touching' of minds - these being another kind of that 'alienation-healing' consciousness.

Of course much else was happening during this eventful era; but this Romantic theme (which nowadays makes up the bulk of my blogging) was firmly established at that time.

Raise your consciousness level - Glenn Gould plays Beethoven

This is truly incredible, transcendent piano playing and interpretation - especially in the last section when he 'offsets' the right and left hand; it is perhaps my very favourite of the 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould (1993) - which is itself one of my very favourite movies.

Bach, Gould - the A-flat major prelude from Well-Tempered Clavier Volume 1

Bach's Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered (i.e. equally-divided-octave tuning) Clavier (keyboard instrument) comprise two volumes (each of 24 pieces) of a prelude and a fugue in each of the twelve major and minor keys. 

The first volume of WTC is generally fresher, more varied in style and substance, and more spontaneously-fluent than the second - and I prefer it. 

The above prelude is an example of why I love WTC Volume 1. It is a short, simple, two-part 'invention'; making considerable use of 'perpetual motion' semi-quavers in the bass, to drive a melodic line that transcends its typically baroque-era use of sequences to combine (or alternate) joy and yearning-pathos in a deliciously bittersweet fashion. 

It also represents very lucidly what is special about Glenn Gould, because this two-part texture lets the listener hear everything that is going-on; in terms of the crisply-detached separation yet subtle phrasing of each individual note - even the decorative flourishes; and the over-arching shape and mood that Gould creates. 

In other hands, this tiny piece can seem merely pleasant - even trite; but Gould's musical concentration and insight raises it to a level that has given me repeated happiness for the past 44 years, and counting.