Re: JCO: Glenn Gould & the JCO short story Premature Autobiography

Cyrano,

i have this collection and will read the story in the
next few days then discuss - OK?

cheers

rob

--- Cyranomish@aol.com wrote:

>
> Hi, Steve. In the story "Premature Autobiography,"
> the genius-pianist
> Breuer listens to the student-heroine play one of
> her own compositions on the
> piano; then he remarks: "It is all very cold, what
> you have done...but is that a
> bad word 'cold'? I mean it is logical, it is not
> very like a girl. It is
> not to be expected, this kind of thing. You are a
> daughter of Bach....?"
> I think the story, if inspired by Gould, would
> not have presented Gould
> directly as a biographical figure -- for example
> GG's humming along with
> himself as he plays. The character Breuer, I think,
> would be a composite of
> many elements: Gould, recordings of Gould's playing
> as heard by JCO, other
> musicians JCO has heard, other people JCO knows, and
> JCO herself.
> If anybody is able to get hold of the story
> "Premature Autobiography,"
> (It's in the 1976 story collection The Goddess and
> Other Women) let's have a
> discussion here about it in the days ahead.
> In brief, "Premature Autobiography" is about
> "a famous man (Breuer)
> and an unknown girl; a man of 42 and a girl of 18."
> who meet in 1955 at "Sisley
> Academy," a music conservatory in the posh Delaware
> neighborhood of Buffalo,
> NY (a neighborhood, I note, that contains at least
> three Frank Lloyd Wright
> houses built in the early 1900s). The young
> girl-composer is, of course,
> bowled over by her mentor Breuer and (Watch out! I
> give away the plot here!!!)
> Has an affair with him, which lifts him out of the
> clinical depression that
> has bogged down his work for several years. There
> are some nice images & side
> themes in the story: a long, elegant cigar ash that
> is thoughtlessly flicked
> away. The girl's off-stage mother, whose fate
> becomes an Appointment in
> Samara for the girl by the end of the story. An
> autobiography of Breuer, which
> is published 14 years after their affair. I'd love
> to read it with some of
> you aficionados. Anybody game?
> Cyrano

Rock music is a recognised religion in my house - but only by me!

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