Not once does Glenn Gould play the piano on this boxed set. It’s not about him, but the five documentary programs he compiled for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Are they strikingly original? Yes. Are they successful? Mostly. The set begins with The Idea of North (1967), a documentary about people who live in northern Canada. It begins with a woman narrating a journey she was taking. She speaks of the beauty of the lakes and is soon joined by a male voice talking about another aspect of northern life. Soon multiple voices are talking at once and for the first three minutes, you try to separate what each is saying. You can’t quite do it, at least not on first listen. Suddenly you realize that the work is structured musically. The different voices, each with its own timbre, are fugal. Get used to it.
The first three documentaries rely on this technique from time to time. In The Idea of North, individuals speak alone a lot of the time, some with the sound of a train in the background. And most of the time their observations are acute and even wondrously astute. One talks about the train ride north, and about the difficulty people have establishing contact with others, an act they find they have to do eventually on an “interminable” train ride. Gould inserts only one musical selection and it is spot on: the last movement of Karajan’s recording of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5. It is accompanied by a terrific quote from a particularly glib interviewee. The second documentary, The Latecomers (1969), concerns the province of Newfoundland. To the sound of rushing seawater, interviewees speak about the modernization of their island, how it robs them of their solitude and meditation, and so on. Gould himself does not speak, even in the introduction – in fact there is none. The fugal voices continue, even expressing contrary views, but Gould has become more skillful at fade-outs and fade-ins. The third documentary, The Quiet in the Land (1977), is a portrait of Mennonite life at Red River, near Winnipeg, Manitoba. The speakers discuss the influence of contemporary society on traditional Mennonite values. At one point, as two discuss their changing society, Gould overlays the Mennonite Children’s Choir with Janis Joplin singing “Oh Lord won’t you please bring me a Mercedes Benz.” The fourth and fifth documentaries are portraits of cellist Pablo Casals and conductor Leopold Stokowski.
How do the five documentaries hold up thirty years later? Surprisingly well. Others since have attempted programs of this sort, but few have probed their subjects as thoroughly. Some of the stories sound scripted. Indeed, much of The Quiet in the Land was written by Gould and he’s been criticized for not letting the subjects truly speak for themselves. The two portraits are intriguing peeks inside two of twentieth century music’s more complex figures. Of the two, the Casals interview is more successful, partly because Gould lets others speak as well, such as the articulate biographer Alfred E. Kahn. Stokowski, known among other achievements for conducting the music in Disney’s Fantasia, is a moderately interesting subject. His musical anecdotes can be charming, but his philosophy and weltanschauung are prosaic and banal. So is Gould a compelling “radio artist?” Yes, generally. His intriguing structure and riveting subjects compel you listen to every word. Was he as great at this as he was at playing the piano? No, but perhaps he could have been if he’d kept at it.
[OK, so he was the world’s greatest pianist and only the second-greatest radio producer…Gould even found a way to get comments about the pros and cons of 12-tone music into the Mennonite documentary, amazingly. Headphones can help sort out the contrapuntal voices and sounds. The set is on sale currently for around $5 per CD…Ed.]
CD List:
The Idea of North
The Latecomers
The Quiet in the Land
Casals: A Portrait for Radio
Stokowski: A Portrait for Radio
– Peter Bates
