Musicking Gould
A tour through this museum hopefully serves to provide some insight into Glenn Gould’s approach to “musicking”, understood to mean musical performance in a broad sense. It may be most striking that an explication of it cannot be reduced to any single element, but must instead draw upon a constellation of heterogenous but overlapping artefacts, places, and social identities. In Gould's case, this in the least includes technological devices, the recording studio, the audience, and his own identity as a performer.
There are a number of ways in which one could reconcile Gould's approach to music with the various strands of historically informed performance practices. Gould may be seen as an example of a musical artist who embodied the “other authenticity” (to use Dani’s/Kivy’s terms), insofar as he appeared to often privileged his own prerogatives as a performer over the purported intentions of the composer. At the same time, it is evident that Gould was extremely well-versed in a multitude of composers, and that his knowledge of their intentions and historical contexts did to some extent inform his interpretative approach—even if it is to defy certain historically-grounded arguments for how one "ought to" play a piece.
In the box to the right of this text are links to external websites where you may observe Gould engaged in various forms of musicking. Witness him play at the piano, work in the studio, and discuss his views on matters to do with music and musicking.
