Glenn Gould’s Manipulations

The beaver makes an indelible mark, devastating the forest, polluting the water and leaving a bleak, moribund, albeit often fascinating landscape. Yet for a Canadian to utter anti-beaver sentiments would be close to treasonous. The symbol of our country, standing for zealous devotion to hard work (no unemployment at his dam-sites…), innovative engineering abilities, hardiness and rugged individuality carries something akin to parliamentary immunity.

Even worse than lamenting the legacies of the beaver would be to disparage Glenn Gould, the symbol of Canada’s conquest of the international musical world; the hero who awed music-lovers from Moscow and Berlin to London and San Francisco; who made Bach’s longest and most abstract keyboard work a bestseller, who sold 7,000,000 records, created stimulating radio and TV programs and became an inspiration and a legend to hundreds of thousands, many of whom had not previously paid much attention to ‘classical�...