Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and editor of the CAML
Review.

I was disappointed that in this exhaustive account of Glenn Gould,
exactly one paragraph (which fails to make the index) is accorded to the
possibility that he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome. A late-onset
form of autism, AS has also been linked to other geniuses, such as
Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michelangelo. Bazzana, however, says he is not
persuaded such a diagnosis is needed to understand Gould’s life or
art.

But Bazzana is not persuasive either. As he traces Gould’s story, he
tries to have it both ways. On the one hand, he ransacks the psychiatric
vocabulary (neurotic, obsessive, controlling, schizoid, hypochondriac,
etc.) to explain the eccentricities that, during Gould’s day, drew as
much commentary as his extraordinary gifts. Yet he concludes that Gould
was essentially a happy, regular guy. Somehow the circle does not quite
square. It made me wonder if the keepers of the flame at the Glenn Gould
Foundation, of whom Bazzana is one, have trouble accepting the notion
that their hero struggled with a malady.

Bazzana echoes the conventional view that Gould was a failed composer
whose early String Quartet was his only significant work. But he also
produces enough evidence and analysis to suggest that Gould found his
compositional voice in his “contrapuntal” pieces for radio. The Idea
of North, for instance, has a musical construction that integrates
elements of narrative and drama; it is not a “documentary.”

Bazzana deserves credit for the elegant and incisive way he weaves back
and forth between talking about the man and the times. His description
of Gould’s Toronto childhood superbly blends social history with
family background. Similarly, Bazzana delves into Gould’s relationship
with the CBC and Columbia Records, which resulted in a stream of studio
and broadcast recordings as well as radio and television programs.

Ultimately, the strength of Wondrous Strange lies in its multi-faceted
appreciation of all the dimensions of Gould’s achievement, which also
extended to conducting and writing. It is a worthy companion to
Bazzana’s earlier Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work (1997).