Re: [xmca] G. Gould

We have to make a choice between the two gould's? What a
shame. I so admired them both.
mike

On Nov 15, 2007 2:32 AM, E. Knutsson <eikn6681@student.su.se> wrote:

> For those who think that Glenn Gould is more interesting than S.J.Gould:
>
> "Glenn Gould was a quintessential 'McLuhanesque' figure, living as though
> technology was an 'extension' of himself. [...] Gould claimed that at
> night the
> hourly news sometimes provided the material for his dreams. Gould was also
> able
> to make use of his radio environment, to put it to work for him. His
> constant
> audio input, sometimes provided by more than one audio source, supplied
> Gould
> with a means of dividing his areas of concentration. 'Quite mysteriously,
> I
> discovered that I could better learn Schoenberg's difficult piano score,
> Opus
> 23, if I listened to them both at once, the FM to hear music and the AM to
> hear
> the news.' On another occasion Gould described how he began to master a
> particularly difficult passage in a Beethoven sonata by placing a radio
> and a
> television next to his piano and turning them up 'full blast.' 'The fact
> that
> you couldn't hear yourself, that there wasn't audible evidence of your
> failure
> was already a step in the right direction.' Gould's ability to divide his
> various levels of consciousness through the manipulation of his audio
> environment resembles the type of simultaneous awareness that McLuhan
> spoke of
> in relation to the 'field' experience of the 'oral-aural' person. ...
> Gould's
> notorious irrepressible habit of singing while playing the piano, which is
> clearly audible in many of his recordings, is perhaps another indication
> that,
> more than most musicians, Gould was indeed McLuhan's 'oral-audial' man -
> incapable of remaining silent, totally involved in an activity that
> required 'the participation of the whole body and the whole mind.'"
>
> (Paul Théberge, "Counterpoint: Glenn Gould & Marshall McLuhan"; Genosko,
> G.
> (ed.).Marshall McLuhan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory. Vol. II.
> London & New York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 49-50).
>
>
>
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Received on Thu Nov 15 08:08 PST 2007