Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 10:56:01 +0200
From: Henk van Tuijl <Henk.van.Tuijl-AT-net.HCC.nl>
Subject: Re: language!


Michael,

Could it have been Brahms's first concerto, which Gould plays in an
agonisingly slow tempo? I remember hearing a recording of it, including
Bernstein's address to the public about the fight he had with Gould. He
had finally decided to give in but did not want to bear any
responsibility for what was going to happen. 

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

For me, as one of the many listeners in the concert hall Glenn Gould is
a performer. 
And indeed, while the action is present to me, I am not present to the
action Gould is present to. As a mediator Gould is traversing the
dimension between heaven and earth, the Between as Heidegger calls it.  
Does Gould traverse the Between as a performer? Somehow I doubt this.
When I see him "at work" in the documentary about his second recording
of Bach's Goldberg-variations (and certainly _not_ in the documentary
about his recording of a Beethoven sonata), he looks to me as if he is
"listening". In ordinary language: he seems inspired.
By the way, does not Heidegger somewhere say that true saying and being
able to say is in itself already a listening (_hoeren_) (cf. GA52,
chapter 4)?

Thanks!

Kindest regards,
Henk



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