The Secret Life of Glenn Gould
Researched Bibliographic Dossier
Verified edition data and a musicological research note prepared specifically for this work.
- Title
- The Secret Life of Glenn Gould
- Subtitle
- A Genius in Love
- Author
- Michael Clarkson
- Publisher
- ECW Press
- Place
- Toronto
- Year
- 2010
- Extent
- 328 pages
- ISBN
- 9781550229196
- Language
- English
- Type
- Biographical study / oral-history based portrait
SCOPE & CONTENT
Clarkson deliberately narrows his focus to a part of Glenn Gould’s biography that earlier accounts often left peripheral: his intimate relationships and the private emotional life hidden behind a carefully controlled public persona. Based heavily on interviews and recollections from women and confidants who knew Gould personally, the book reconstructs relationships with figures including Cornelia Foss, Roxolana Roslak and others. It is therefore less a conventional musicological biography than a journalistic and psychological portrait that seeks to explain how affection, secrecy, anxiety, dependency and solitude intersected with Gould’s work as pianist, broadcaster and filmmaker.
RESEARCH VALUE
Its research value is strongest when used as a complement to more documentary Gould biographies and studies of his recordings. The interviews preserve testimony that is difficult to obtain elsewhere and complicate the older stereotype of Gould as simply asexual, isolated or emotionally detached. At the same time, the book’s declared emphasis on private relationships means that interpretive claims about how those relationships affected individual performances or artistic decisions should be read as biographical interpretation rather than as settled musicological fact. The volume is especially useful for studying Gould’s self-fashioning, privacy and reception history.
- Format
- File size
- 1.9 MB
- Subjects / people
- Books & Essays · Biographies & Monographs
- Catalogue completeness
- 9 / 10 core bibliographic fields