Forty-five years ago this week, the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould stepped off the stage of the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and became the prophet of a new technology.
Gould's act was an act of omission, not commission. That April 10, 1964, recital in the Los Angeles hall was the last concert he ever gave -- a forsaking of the tradition of public performance that was unprecedented for such a young (31) and eminent interpreter of Bach and Beethoven.
I thought this milestone of Southern California cultural history worth revisiting not only because Glenn Gould happens to be one of my personal heroes, but also because his vision of music and the music business has been so thoroughly validated over the years.
For Gould's withdrawal from the concert stage did not mean his withdrawal from the music world. Rather, it enhanced his stature in that world, making him an inspiration for the digital recording era.
Over the following two decades, until his untimely death in 1982 at the age of 50, he released scores of albums, in some cases exploring a repertoire he would never have dared to present onstage -- modern atonal and pre-Baroque music alike. He developed recording and performance styles aimed at an audience granted unprecedented control over what it heard and how it listened.
The public recital, he predicted, would fade away, supplanted by a purely individual interaction between listener and artist -- an outcome he welcomed. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gould saw recording not simply as a means to document performances, but also as a way to fashion new interpretations.
He foresaw how listeners would be able to compile their own programs via technology and even alter existing performances. “Dial twiddling," he held, is “an interpretive act."
As he wrote in 1966, “forty years ago the listener had the option of flicking a switch inscribed 'on' and 'off.' . . . Today, the variety of controls made available to him requires analytical judgment."
Those controls were only a hint of the future he imagined.
Someday, he wrote, a listener would be able to alter the tempo of a performance without affecting pitch, or vice versa. If you preferred Bruno Walter's interpretation of section of Beethoven's Fifth but Otto Klemperer's version of another, nothing would prevent you from splicing them together for an “ideal performance."
