Glenn Gould

A most peculiar hummingbird

‘I’ve always had a sort of intuition that for every hour you spend with other human beings, you need X number of hours alone.’

When I was young and merry and still living in the wonderful city of Ghent, my beloved coaxed me along to the Ghent Film Festival, to see a documentary about Glenn Gould, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.

Having never heard about the eccentric Canadian pianist before, I wasn’t prepared to experience what turned out to be a mind-blowing epiphany. Bach. The Goldberg Variations and the Well-tempered Clavier. The world had become a better place on the spot. Owing to my melomaniacal father, I was acquainted with opera, symphonic music and the great composers of the 19th century, but I never heard anything coming close to that purity, that energy, that celestial before. Touched to the core, dazed, my soul hummed, soared, danced. Starting with the 1981 recording of the Goldberg Variations by Gould, Bach’s music since then has been an ever true companion, from his keyboard music to his violin partitas and concerto’s, some cantatas and the Passion oratorios.

I still feel an immense gratitude towards Glenn Gould for opening Bach’s world to me, and it was a delight to meet him again in this gorgeous graphic novel by Sandrine Revel.

Glenn Gould (1932-1982) was not only considered a musical genius but was also notorious for his eccentricity and hypochondria, swallowing enormous amounts of pills like sweets and making weird body movements while playing the piano. Few musicians I know actually appreciate his unorthodox, non-historical and highly personal interpretations of the piano repertoire, and abhor the background humming and groaning on his recordings. A professional concert pianist at 15, he quit public performing at 31 and gave his last concert in 1964, confining himself to the recording studio for the rest of his short life. He expounded his musical philosophy in many articles, lectures and documentaries.

Do not expect a neat, chronological biography or a linear storyline. Revel explores Gould’s life and work in a rather impressionistic, fragmentary way, drawing poetical vignettes out of key moments, habits and character peculiarities, like his stroke paralysing the left side of his body at 50, his Russian tour in 1957, his stern youth as a child prodigy, his love for animals. By creating an inventive amalgam out of dreamlike and surreal scenes germinating from Gould’s stroke-affected mind, the abundant documentary material about him, his own writings and testimonials from fellow musicians and people near to him, Revel subtly and respectfully illuminates his complex, fragile and passionate personality.

‘I always assumed everybody shared my love for overcast skies. It came as a shock to find out that some people prefer sunshine.’

Revel’s atmospheric drawing style and tender colours reminded me of the Spanish illustrator’s Pablo Auladell in his graphic novel Paradise Lost by John Milton. She recurrently fills pages with pictures of Gould’s hands. Hands, hands, hands dancing all over the piano like floating birds in the sky, almost evoking the ephemerality of the music he is playing.

With this superbly illustrated, non-judgemental biography on Glenn Gould, French illustrator and artist Sandrine Revel has created a beauteous homage to the man and his music. It is hard to tell whether this artful biopic will speak strongly to readers not familiar with the sound of Gould, but I have high hopes it will incite a new audience to listen to Gould’s music.

The graphic novel was published in French in 2015 and won the prix Artémisia 2016. I got a digital ARC of the English translation of the book through NetGalley.