Wondrous Strange – The Life and Art of Glenn Gould - Hardcover

Bazzana, Kevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300103743 ISBN 13: 9780300103748

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2004

Synopsis

In this absorbing and entertaining biography, Kevin Bazzana distils twenty years' research on Glenn Gould's celebrated life as a pianist, writer, broadcaster, and composer. Looking beyond the legend of the self-taught and emotionally damaged recluse who burst onto the international musical scene in the mid-1950s but was dead at fifty, he presents a balanced portrait of a complex figure who, while uniquely gifted and genuinely eccentric, was also the product of his upbringing and surroundings. Bazzana explores the lasting effects on Gould of his sheltered middle-class Toronto upbringing, his unusual musical education, his brief but colourful concert career and his relations with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Columbia Records and Steinway and Sons. Drawing on candid recollections by Gould's friends and colleagues as well as newly available private papers, he provides fresh insights into Gould's famous eccentricities, his sometimes bizarre stage manner, his highly selective repertoire, his control mania, his private and sexual life, his hypochondria, and his abrupt retirement from concert performance to communicate solely through recorded performance and print.

About this title

About the Author

Kevin Bazzana has a PhD in Music History and Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the editor of Glenn Gould magazine and has served as editor of The Beethoven Journal. His previous book, Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work (1997) was described as 'an outstandingly original book' and 'a model of clarity'.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300103743
• ISBN 13: 9780300103748
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 536