Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 10:10:22 -0600
Subject: RE: language!


Henk,

I wonder if we might try to draw another distinction out of your Glenn Gould
example.  It seems to me that "playing as a listener" has a couple of folds
in it that Gould's own career thematizes.  You write:


> Remember the documentary about Glenn Gould's second recording of Bach's
> Goldberg-variations? He listens to the music while he plays - and he
> plays it as a listener, not as a performer.
> 
Okay, but this is problematic, especially with Gould who insisted throughout
his career on the radical difference between the performer and audience,
auditor.  Do you know the story of his being booed after the infamous
performance of the Mozart Piano Concerto in C Major?  Leonard Bernstein came
out and apologized to the audience beforehand, saying that Gould was
insisting on the "pure" sence of *concerto* -- the piano against the
orchestra -- and would not agree on anything with him.  When it was over the
(New York) audience nearly tore the place apart, and Gould stood on the
stage bowing and blowing kisses while they booed him.  This is how I
remember the story, but its been a long time since I've thought about it.
Afterwards, Gould famously withdrew from concertizing, precisely because he
wanted to abstract himself and his playing from the *concert* effect of
being present to his listners.

The operative issue for me here is "presence."  Stanley Cavell does a
meditation in one of his essays about the road-company production of
Othello, where a red-neck jumped up on the stage at the end to keep the
black man from murdering the white woman.  What's the problem with that?  It
seems to me that the guy doesn't understand what we all know about drama --
namely, that while the action is present to us, we are not present to it,
and that is the place from which it draws all its cathartic force.

I feel like your thinking about Gould and Dylan Thomas is trying to collapse
together two elements of presence -- the performer and listner -- that
Heidegger wants to keep apart.  Isn't the whole point of your words that
they're not mine?

Michael Harrawood
Laramie, WY




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