Glenn Gould: Viisi näkökulmaa pianistin muusikkouteen ja kulttuuriseen reseptioon

Abstract

Tutkin väitöskirjassani yhden 1900-luvun pianismin suurnimen, Glenn Gouldin (1932-1982) musiikillista ja eettistä ajattelua hänen kirjoitustensa pohjalta. Gouldin musiikkia ja sen tulkintaa koskevaa ajattelua tarkastelen ympäröivän kulttuurin ja taidemusiikin tradition konteksteissa sekä osana musiikin esteettisen ajattelun historiaa. Gouldin musiikkiteknologiaa koskevia ajatuksia yritän työssäni hahmottaa osana 1960- ja 1970-luvuilla Kanadassa ja Yhdysvalloissa käytyä informaatioteknologian potentiaalia ja merkitystä pohtinutta keskustelua.

Gouldista paljastuu työssäni uusia puolia - häntä ei tule tarkastella pelkästään muusikkona vaan intellektuellina, joka argumentoi musiikista soittonsa ja kirjoitustensa kautta. Gould on myös yksi harvoista länsimaisen taidemusiikin muusikoista, joka on löytänyt tiensä niin kirjallisuuden kuin populaarikulttuurinkin merkityskenttään ja kuvastoon. Tekijä tarkastelee Gouldin levytysten ja ja kiehtovan hahmon vastaanottoa niin elokuvassa, kirjallisuudessa kuin kuvataiteessakin.

Laajempi teoreettinen ja metodologinen päämäärä työssäni on argumentoida sellaisen musiikkinäkemyksen puolesta, jossa muusikkous nähdään aktiivisena ja parhaimmillaan kriittisen intellektuaalisena musiikillisen maailmassaolemisen muotona - ei siis vain säveltäjän teoksilleen antamien merkitysten välittämisenä. Tällaisesta muusikkoudesta esimerkki on juuri Gould: kiistanalainen, provokatiivisia mutta usein myös briljanssissaan ylittämättömiä tulkintoja toteuttanut taiteilija, joka ei koskaan väsynyt etsimään musiikin merkitystä uusista näkökulmista.

The topic of my doctoral thesis is the musical thought of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982). My interest in Gould is twofold: on one hand, I have been interested in finding out what values, norms, and ideals Gould s musical worldview consists of. On the other hand, my aim has been to scrutinize these three aspects against larger historical and cultural horizons.

In other words, my goal has been to produce a historically and culturally informed reading of Gould s ideas about music and musical interpretation. I regard the historical and cultural frameworks as hermeneutic and methodological tools through which it becomes possible to gain a wider and more thorough perspective on one of the most significant musicians of 20th-century art music.

Of all the various potential perspectives on Gould, I have chosen three. First, I discuss Gould s ideas on music technology within the context of the larger North American discourse on the potential of electronic technology in modern life. This discourse was particularly lively in the 1960s and 1970s, and intellectuals such as Marshall McLuhan, Gould s personal friend, were much involved in it. Second, I analyze Gould s ideas regarding the ontology of music and musical interpretation against the backdrop of 19th-century aesthetics as exemplified by writings of Eduard Hanslick and Friedrich Nietzsche. Third, I compare Gould s arguments on behalf of the recording of music with those of three 20th-century intellectuals who wrote a great deal on the technical reproduction of art: Walter Benjamin (1892­1940), Theodor W. Adorno (1903­1969), and Gianni Vattimo (1936­).

As far as the first of the aforementioned perspectives goes, I am interested in how Gould s views on recording as the primary means of interpreting music fit in with McLuhan s notion that technology changes the ways in which we experience the world outside. These two men, in their different mediums, put forth basically the same argument: information technology is not only the medium but also the message ­ the technological mediation of music, in and of itself, changes music and our experience of it. Since Gould was well versed in McLuhan s writings, a McLuhanesque reading of Gould s ideas not only seems appropriate but also has the effect of adding a whole new perspective onto Gould s technological vision ­ a perspective onto a mind very much embedded in the intellectual world outside and well up on what was in the air at the time.

Another important Canadian influence on Gould s technological thought was the media philosopher and theologian Jean Le Moyne. Gould seems to have adopted Le Moyne s idea of the charity of the machine almost too well: whereas Le Moyne s philosophy emphasizes the progress that technology has brought about throughout history, Gould simplifies Le Moyne s thought and interprets it as arguing for the overall goodness of technology itself. Gould cites Le Moyne s ideas out of their larger context to support his untenable argument on, for instance, the immorality of live concerts (it also seems that technology, for Gould, was about distance: concerts and other collective forms of experiencing art were, in Gould s mind, immoral since an objective, balanced,and distanced position was lacking).

As regards the intellectual history of art music, I contrast Gould s views on the ontology of music and musical interpretation with the norms embedded in the 19th-century idea of Wertreue ­ an idea which emphasizes the view of a musical work as an autonomous aesthetic object, the interpretation of which is bound by the composer s intentions. One of Gould s strongest aesthetic tenets, on the contrary, is the view of interpreting music by literally recomposing it. This unwavering conviction of Gould s was entangled with other ideas that he held dear: for instance, his vision of technologically enhanced creative listening ­ a future mode of listening in which the listener, enabled by technology, is able to radically modify, remix, and even recompose the music he or she is listening to. It is obvious that these kinds of visions were simply utopian in Gould s days but have since become reality for millions of listeners through the development of mp3-technology and the spread of the world wide web. In this context, I have brought some of Gould s ideas into the present moment. The Italian media philosopher Gianni Vattimo s concept of homeless artworks ­ the very electronic and polymorphous mediation rendering them homeless through making them lose their ties to any particular time, place, and author ­ also captures very well Gould s ideas regarding the potential of technology for the future of music.

My third larger hermeneutic framework creates a discourse between Gould s ideas and those of three cultural critics active in the 20th century, all of whom have discussed the reproduction of art throughout their writings. Walter Benjamin wrote as early as the 1930s about the aura, the here-and-now aspect of art, and about the ontological changes that the mechanical reproduction of artworks brings to our conceptions and ideas about art. The notion of aura, in particular, is useful in conceptualizing Gould s ideas theoretically, in spite of the fact that Benjamin was writing about visual arts and cinema, not music. I make the argument that it is the aura of musical works that Gould wanted to get rid of with the help of technology ­ that is, the historicity of musical works, the real-time nature of musical interpretation in concert situations, and the personification of musical works as belonging to a particular author and his/her biographical context. A belief in the democratizing potential of technology for art, its potential for disseminating art to a large public without respect to levels of affluence or social position, is also something that both Gould and Benjamin shared.

Adorno s philosophy, in its turn, provides a hermeneutical window onto Gould s musical interpretation as criticism ­ as an intellectual undertaking that is not only about bringing about a sonic realization of the score, but also about making an analytical judgment on it. I propose a view of Gould s musical interpretation as pianistic criticism, which was, at times, motivated by primarily intellectual rather than aesthetic goals. Such is the case in Gould s controversial recordings of Mozart s sonatas. I also view Gould s rejection of the institution of public concerts in the context of Adorno s concept of the culture industry, which also aptly covers the criticisms that Gould wielded towards art music culture in his writings.

I also touch on the reception given Gould and his music in Canadian literature and two Hollywood movies. The Canadian aspect of Gould is also something that I focus on more generally: I am interested in Gould s national iconicity as it is constructed in biographical writings on Gould. I am also interested in the idea of north which Gould wrote about in many of his writings and which also has a long history in the cultural history of Canada. I also try to grasp, supported by Richard Dyer s, Lawrence Kramer s and Janne Mäkelä s writings, Gould s stardom theoretically, as a phenomenon more commonly associated with pop culture.

The primary research material in my work consists of almost all the writing Gould ever published: articles, essays, interviews, and liner notes for his recordings. In addition to this, I have had at my disposal 350 pages of unpublished material from the Gould archive in Ottawa, Canada. The methods of my study are those commonly employed in other scholarship in the humanities: in a nutshell, through a close reading of Gould s writings, followed by a contextualizing interpretation, my goal here is to gain a more thorough understanding of Gould s musical thought and its cultural and historical afffinities.

Another goal of my thesis has been to bring fresh perspectives onto Gould s exceptional musicianship and his significance to 20th-century musical performance history. It has also been my aim to contribute to future musicology by producing a theoretical and methodological model through which musicianship can become a more common research topic in musicological scholarship.