Alexander Thorburn writes a fleeting, intimate glimpse of Glenn Gould, the genius and the strange solitude of his greatness.

Glenn Gould’s sitting in Fran’s Deli, St. Clair East, and I sit here, watching him from the pub across the street. There he is, the bastard, waiting, looking, trying to get me to look at him. I had a piano installed in Fran’s, partly to drive him away, and partly to see if he would play it. Of course, he sat there eating his sandwich, looking at the telephone, as if he had a nagging need to phone someone. Not a glance at the piano.

What’s his secret? Gould is intriguing. It’s June of ‘68, and Glenn is a happy man. That silly cap sits on his head, balancing his glasses in the heat.

“Well, of course, they’re moving here,” he said, driving Longfellow, his Lincoln, to Muskoka with Lukas Foss.

An awkward silence. That triangle silence.

“Lakes will appear in the blue mountains,” he said as he drove. Lukas didn’t believe any of it, but the children loved it.

“You are the greatest pianist in the world,” said Lukas, back in 1958.

“And you are the greatest composer in the world,” said Glenn.

How things have changed.

“It was a very straight-forward triangle,” said Cornelia, Lukas’ wife, Glenn’s lover. “There really was no great mystery to it. Of course, we had something of a family, with Glenn, you know, as … not a father figure, but as a member of the family.”

“Glenn, there are half a dozen impresarios dying to get you to play.”

“Well, that’s not a very enticing proposition,” he said. “I think it is hideous. I feel like I will be standing on stage, stark naked.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes, audiences, not individually, of course, but collectively, are a force of evil. They are despicable.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but the fruit of our work in the recording studio is not some sort of autocratic thing. It’s a product we can create, a beautiful recording for – no, a kit for someone to rewrite.”

“Oh really?”

“I will sit in the Eaton Auditorium,” he said. “Lorne will record me.”

“And I will be your arms and legs,” said Ray Roberts, his personal assistant. “I will help you to do the things you don’t like while you play in this little studio we have.”

“Are you really a control freak?” asked the reporter.

“Freak?” said Glenn, almost singing. “What a word!” he said with a twinkle. “Let me write you the script before we go on.”

“Can we please talk about the stool?” said the reporter.

“Do not speak ill of a member of ze family. It is a boon, a travelling companion,” Glenn said in his German conductor voice.

Cornelia, suffocating, said, “Well, the eccentricities became more and more important. And, of course, Lukas had no interest in me at the time. He had his public but Glenn. Well, there were more and more people who loved him, but his paranoia made him more and more difficult. He was taking these anxiety pills and anti-depressants. Nobody knows what this means. His personality was changing. There is less and less of Glenn and more of somebody else emerging.”

“Who was emerging?”

The painter turned her head, a gesture of the unknowable.

“Life is not easy for him,” said Glenn, chatting into the phone.

“Who is this?” said the voice on the other side.

“It’s Glenn,” said Glenn.

“Bugger off,” he said.

“But I want you back,” said Glenn.

What kind of an Ironist are You?

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Cornelia looked into the vanishing point. “Lukas was charming and the children were clearly on the side of the father and not the avuncular “uncle.” I decided to leave, and that was the right thing, because … he was forsaking us.”

“We are all shy, and so we cannot talk,” said little Eliza.

“Well, yes, but you are not to be documented, Lenore.” She had a place in Wainscott in Long Island and Glenn came. He was wearing his gloves, his coat, and his hat and it was the middle of summer, and he was very distraught.”

“I feel not at all well,” said Lenore. Glenn hung up the phone. He sat at the phone table and took his blood pressure. “I’m actually ill,” he said.

He was in his car, travelling, and visited a doctor. “Doc, I need some pills. I can’t sleep.”

“Do you want to sleep?”

“No!” he said sharply. “I cannot sleep. Night is creativity. But there’s a hospital full of germs. Mother is dying you see, and I need to call her. But why? What is wrong with me? These germs, although they are there, are not all meant for me. I failed her. Poor Mouse. She died alone and there was me, Spaniel, lapping and wondering about her. I’m nocturnal. My moods are inversely related to the brightness of the sky. I’m like the bats and the racoons. There I am listening to Roslana Rozak singing something by Lukas Foss. I called her. I felt we needed to work together.”

“And did you?”

“Hm? Roxy is something,” said Glenn.

“We rehearsed in his apartment and watched the program, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” said Roxy. “And then we would work. He wanted a puppy farm in Manitoulin.”

“But there are the cows, and Roxy is singing. Or is she? No, that is me, and the elephant is yelling at my German accent,” said Glenn.

“Nay, that is Myron Chianti, and he messed up the words.” He paused. “These, you see, are the happiest days of my life. I can make myself happy within twenty minutes.”

Glenn sat at the piano, playing the Goldbergs. But he was a crazy man playing. Tired, wired. “He had begun to resemble Mr. Dress-up,” says Eliza.

At the piano. A twisted eccentric. Writing the numbers. His glasses magnifying the keys.

“… and the notes as imagined by me were popping into the recording and nowhere else. He opened a letter and the world said ‘Thank you Mr. Glenn. You saved my life.’”

Called Ray in the middle of the night, a day after his fiftieth birthday.

Glenn had a stroke. Something was wrong, but he stayed in the hotel. His birthday had been on a Sunday. His stroke was on Monday.

“He was fifty. Just fifty.”

He was frantic and agitated. “Nobody is helping. Why is nobody helping? I have things to do,” he croaked. “Help me,” he said sliding out of his body into that coma.

It was 1982 and the roses piled up outside Fran’s on St. Clair.

The door had shut and Glenn Gould’s puppy farm was now nothing but a dream.

His Goldbergs were his misbegotten twins.

He was odd. His gloves had fingers now. That coat worked. He told me he was going to die when he was fifty. I’d hoped he was wrong.

The largest church in Toronto is St. Paul’s Anglican Church. It was jammed to the doors.

The king had died. But he wasn’t done. Silence in the church as someone started singing.

It was Glenn. The aria from the Goldberg Variations. When it finished, Bach said it best.

“Goodbye Glenn,” he said. But it also said, “that is what he was about.”

No, that was not it. He walked alone. He sang. I believe he was only at home when he was actually playing.

Why? Well, really, that is true of all of us. The world will be a better place. But he knew the mind of Bach, that world none of us can really know. He was a mathematician at the keyboard. He worked the numbers. They added up, and he made them perfect.

Contributed by-

Alexander Montgomery (A.R. Montgomery)

An author, poet, composer, and pianist working out of Toronto, Canada, Alexander is a long-time traveller, he lives by the maxim, “I hate travelling, but I like being elsewhere.” Born in France and educated in Canada and the U.S., he has lived in France, Canada, the United States, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. A prolific ghostwriter, he has published over 160 romance novels in almost every genre. His poetry and short stories can be found in many Canadian and American journals including Otherwise Engaged and Syncopation Literary journals. He is an avid chef and a great lover of political discourse.