farewell, f_minor

[Elaine Parks]

Hi Karl and Mary Jo and everyone,

Thanks for running this group for so long. I was late coming to this list and late becoming a classical music and Gould fan. I can't remember if I ever wrote in to you about actually seeing him. Anyway, forgive me if this is me repeating myself. 

I have lived in Toronto since 1970. I knew of Gould of course from the times he'd appear on TV and there were occasional articles about him in the local paper (in court for traffic tickets, etc!). At one point I lived not too far from his apartment building, and I often ate at Fran's, a 24-hour diner. I used to go to a beautiful old bookstore midtown that he (I later found out) used to visit. One spring or summer day in 1980 I walked to said bookstore to peruse the shelves. I was the only one in there apart from the clerk and he asked me to let him know if I needed help finding something. Then a tall fellow in a coat came in the door, carrying large messy folders/files in both arms. The clerk rushed over to help him get in the door, and fussed over him, and totally forgot about me, which was okay, as I was just doing what we do in bookstores...Anyway I thought to myself this fellow is obviously very important, I wonder who he is? I tried to get closer to see what he was looking at. He had put on huge reading glasses and was engrossed in some book he'd found. He asked the clerk if a book he'd ordered had come in yet (about Schoenberg, who in my ignorance I thought maybe was a philosopher!) I stayed and stayed, wanting to find out who this important bloke was. After about 15 minutes he went to the desk and was paying for something, and the clerk asked him, "What are you working on these days?" The tall man said he'd just got back from New York. There was also something about redoing the Goldberg Variations, as he "wasn't satisfied with the original recording". (I was no music expert but knew of the Goldbergs as I had attended an Anton Kuerti performance of them at my university a few years previously.) He paid for his purchase, and I still remember him fishing around in his pants pockets for change. The clerk rushed to help him out the door with his books and folders, leaving me totally alone in the store while they went out (to his car? to get a cab? I couldn't see as they were out of my vision). A good 5, 10 minutes passed...I could have robbed the till!!! The clerk came back, got on the store phone right away, and called someone, perhaps the owner, and I overheard him say "Gould was just here." I paid for my book and didn't want to appear uncool to the clerk by asking who that man was, and left, still thinking, I don't know who that guy was, but I got the impression he was very important, and very busy. Years later, I realized, Oh! that was GLENN Gould! If the clerk had said both names, it would have clicked. I didn't know then of Glenn's association with the Goldbergs, or much about his music, really, at that point in my life, and the G.G. I knew from TV of course looked much younger. When I became a fan years later you can imagine how I felt about missing an opportunity to chat with the master! D'oh!!!

'Bye, everyone.

Elaine




     On Tuesday, May 14, 2024 at 05:22:17 p.m. EDT, Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org> wrote:  
 
 Hello f_minor - well, it's been a long run since Mary Jo started this
mailing list in 1996, but it's time to bid a fond adieu. (Barring some
other volunteer coming forward to host it.)  I'm moving my material to a
new server, and it's become too painful to again set up the mailing list
software. So this list will no longer exist in a few days.

I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to keep the archives online. If I do,
there be a link on glenngould.org, at least for a while.

Yours for GG,
Karl

  
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