by Peter Cates

Glenn Gould

(1932-1982)

Glenn Gould would have been 87 this past September 25 if he had not died of a stroke October 4, 1982, at the age of 50. A world-fa­mous pianist at a rarely achieved level of success as was Vladimir Horowitz, Artur Rubinstein and Sviatoslav Richter, and still Yuga Wang, Martha Argerich and Murray Peraiha, he was also a man of other gifts – writer, TV personality, documentary film maker, and a character in the truest sense of the word.

My knowledge of him began nearly 60 years ago through a sampler of recently released classical records. It contained Brahms’s very tender 2nd Intermezzo from his Opus 118 set. I have heard other fine performances of this piece but Gould played it with extraordinary dynamics of softness, a sense of structure and of sheer beauty. And it can be heard on youtube.

Gould recorded Bach’s Goldberg Variations for Columbia Masterworks in 1956 and it has sold several million copies, becoming one of the 10 or 20 greatest classical recordings of the 20th century; it has similar qualities to the Brahms Intermezzo mentioned earlier in its brilliance. Other favorites of mine would include his recordings of the Beethoven five Piano Concertos and the broadcast from 1962 of the Brahms First Piano Concerto.

Glenn Gould’s interests were very intriguing, both in their limitations and broad-mindedness. When it came to composers, he recorded his favorite Mozart Piano Sonatas but felt that the composer died much too late at 35. He wavered between love and hate of certain works and rejected many of the 19th century composers, especially Chopin.

He disliked most pop music yet loved singers Petula Clark and Barbra Streisand. During the 1960s, he wrote an essay about listening to Petula Clark on pop radio while driving through the Canadian countryside .

As for Streisand, Gould reviewed her LP, Classical Barbara, for the now-extinct High Fidelity magazine in 1976. Streisand also recorded for Columbia and was known to watch his recording sessions through a window.

The pianist’s OCD eccentricities were the stuff of legend:

When rehearsing with conductor George Szell, Gould took so long adjusting his piano seat that the Maestro remarked, “Perhaps if I were to slice 1/16th of an inch off your derriere, Mr. Gould, we could then begin!” Later, Szell commented, “That nut’s a genius!”

He also wore a thick winter coat, scarf, gloves and hat during heat waves in July and August!

 

 

by Peter Cates

Graham Greene

The Paradox of a Pope, from his Collected Essays
Originally written in 1951.

Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958) later became Pope Pius XII upon the death of Pope Pius XI, in 1939, during very evil years of the last century and, upon his own death, would be succeeded by the even more famous Pope John XXIII. His own leadership of the Catholic Church, particularly with respect to Nazism and the Holocaust, still continues as a subject of controversy with enough material to last several lifetimes and well beyond the scope of these few paragraphs.

One of my top five favorite writers, Graham Greene (1904-1991) wrote Paradox while the Pope was still living and he included it in the 1969 volume, Collected Essays, without changing a single word. It is a fascinating study of the complexities in human character, a subject Greene was so good at in everything of his I have ever read and re-read. He also became a Catholic during his early 20s and his faith would always resonate in his writings.

Greene’s opening comments of how “strange to come on a monument to a living man, for even the greatest usually appear only on tablets and tombstones after death,” are interesting because of the reasons for these monuments while Pius was still living. A few of these examples included his visits with soldiers from the allies and axis powers at the Vatican and receiving all of them as pilgrims; his words to a grieving father whose son had been killed during World War II and had no faith to sustain him in his loss (after Pius convinced the man there was an afterlife and the father and his son would be re-united, he left the Pope very happy); and finally the Pope’s unrelenting efforts in saving countless lives of Jewish people and other refugees in war-torn countries, while maintaining the Vatican’s neutrality publicly during these war years.

When I first saw a photo of Pius XII presiding at a Mass decades ago, he exuded an aura of both mien and mean, which started my interest in him as a historical figure. Little did I know of his real character!

A quote of this man: “To live without risk is to risk not living.”

by Peter Cates

Green Mountain Country

“He got up at seven as usual, and he and his wife had breakfast together. At half past eight he went to his office in the town. His old friend and partner was already there when he entered. They were both early risers. They spoke with each other for a moment and then he went to his desk.

“He was not feeling quite well. He said nothing about it. He had no idea that this was his last day of life. ”

The above two paragraphs introduce In the Green Mountain Country, a five-page essay, by Clarence Day (1874-1935), on the sudden death, funeral and burial of former President, Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) on January 5 and 6, 1933. It has a power and immediacy that makes it worth reading and going back to. Day wrote two books he is most famous for – Life With Father and God and My Father, both of them about his own father, a very domineering patriarch who was very set in his ways; they are also very funny, as were most of his other writings, unlike this rare example of Day on a serious level.

More about the writer and Coolidge can wait for later weeks. Other selected details include:

• By 10 a.m., he didn’t feel any better and asked his secretary, a Mr. Ross, to go home with him.
• Coolidge’s wife had gone shopping.
• He played with a jigsaw puzzle.
• He had been rarely sick in his life.
• He was thirsty and went to get a glass of water.
• He spoke to the gardner in the basement.
• He went upstairs to shave and dropped dead.

The highest officials in the country came to the funeral, including President Herbert Hoover and his wife, and mulitudes of others. They had been living in Northhampton, Massachusetts, for 30 years, Coolidge being a lawyer, Govenor of Massachusetts, Vice-President under Warren G. Harding, and then President, after Harding’s death in 1923 until 1929. His body was driven in a hearse to his hometown, Plymouth, Vermont, for burial next to his son, Calvin Jr., who died at the age of 15, in 1924, from blood poisoning, due to a blister on his foot from playing tennis.

His wife held back her tears the entire time in public until the burial and then was crying with intense sorrow as the coffin was lowered into the grave. She lived another 25 years until 1958.

Needless to say, one very eloquent example of daily newspaper journalism.

The very short book with the essay and same title is available through vendors listed on the Internet site, Bookfinder.

by Peter Cates

Verdi

Requiem

Fritz Reiner conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and the Society of the Friends of Music Chorus with soprano Leontyne Price, mezzo-soprano Rosalind Elias, tenor Jussi Bjoerling and baritone Giorgio Tozzi; RCA Victor LD-6091, 2 LPs, recorded 1960.

Composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was an unwavering supporter of the Italian Risorgimento, the unification of the Italian states lasting from 1815-1871 and becoming the country now known as Modern Italy.

A central figure for whom Verdi felt admiration was the Italian statesman, Cavour (1810-1861), himself worthy of a future column. Another was the Italian novelist, Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873). Verdi was not only drawn to the writer’s literary gifts, but also to his integrity as a human being and the ideals that sustained it. The composer stated, “I venerated him like a saint.”

The 1874 Requiem Mass was Verdi’s memorial service for Manzoni. It was finished and ready for rehearsal well in advance of the world premiere date, May 22, exactly one year after Manzoni died.

The work was an instant success and has been performed and recorded infinite numbers of times since then.

RCA Victor assembled one extraordinary group for the above set in Vienna 60 years ago when recording technology was already at a high level. Conductor Fritz Reiner (1888-1963), then still music director of the Chicago Symphony for another two to three years, brought a most brilliant merging of clarity, powerful surges of the Vienna Philharmonic’s playing, solo and choral singing, exacting dynamics, flexibility of phrasing and pacing.

Examples are the very low piannissimi of the lower strings and voices in the opening Requiem and Kyrie; the explosive, Damocles-sword wrath of the Dies Irae; the Agnes Dei with its opening a capella soprano/mezzo duet and their back and forths with the chorus and orchestra; and the concluding Libera Me with the return of the opening Requiem and Kyrie: and the soprano’s intoning in prayer form :

Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die illa tremenda; Deliver me, Lord, from eternal death, on the dread day of judgment.

The set is still in print and available on CD.

by Peter Cates

One of the most gifted and, nowadays, under-appreciated actors in Hollywood for over 30 years, Robert Ryan (1909-1973) played many character roles, being his best in films as evil men who were often neurotic, driven, complex.

One great performance was in the 1962 film, Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville’s novel. The story was based on the wars for naval supremacy between the British and French navies during the Napoleonic era; Ryan played the evil Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, on a British ship who ordered the flogging of sailors under his command for the most minor infractions, including not tucking a bunk blanket correctly. The half-smiles of enjoyment in his eyes, alongside his poised dignity, during the meted-out punishments attest to Ryan’s precisely-honed talent.

Other movies in a large list were 1947’s Crossfire as an anti-Semetic World War 2 officer; 1954’s Bad Day at Black Rock, as the leader of a dangerous gang of men living in a small desert town; and the same year’s Her Twelve Men, alongside Greer Garson, as one of two nice teachers in a private boy’s school in which Ryan sings and plays the guitar.

In 1944, Robert Ryan joined the Marines and served until late 1945; a friend of my parents told me about having the actor as a drill instructor in the handling of pistols during his boot camp experiences and remembering that he was a very good teacher.

Being a chain smoker, Ryan found out that he had inoperable cancer of the lymph nodes in 1970. But he kept acting . His last film was the Eugene O’Neill play, The Iceman Cometh, with Lee Marvin in the main role as Hickey, in its four-hour movie version; its world premiere was after Ryan died on July 11, 1973, at 63. He lost his wife, Jessica, to cancer in 1972.

Just before he died, Ryan said “I’ve been lucky as hell with my career and my family!”