This Glenn Gould is a plain old mess
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
You mean Glenn Gould, the composer? Well, he was always too big a personality to fit in a pair of pianist socks. In his teens, the Canadian genius tried his hand at various small scores, none of them satisfying his restless self.
The first composition to warrant an opus number…
Read on here.
And here.
There are of course other Gould compositions out there; his jokey “So You Want to Write a Fugue” and the interesting cadenzas for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
I haven’t listened to that fugue probably since the 1980s but still remember the part where the vocalists very pompously sing one of the later fugue subjects with the words, “Never be clever for the sake of being clever.” Very funny in a Gouldian sort of way.
Had he continued composing, he would certainly have found a voice.