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Title: A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano
ISBN: 1596915242
Author:
Katie Hafner
Publicate Date: 2008-06-10
Publish: 2008-06-10
List Price: $24.99
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $13.83
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $13.26
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.49
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| Customer Review: |
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1: I've just interviewed the author for podcast
If your readers are interested in hearing the author talk about this book, I've just posted my podcast interview with her at http://www.bookbuffet.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/news.article/type/home/article_ID/AE4F5984-9604-4767-B9D39C33A311DA46/index.cfm (highlight link and paste in a browser). This is a wonderful story and it is fascinating to hear how Katie came up with the idea to write a story "told through the prism of an inanimate object" and that was how she came upon CD318. The three-for-one-deal is that the reader also gets to learn (more) about the Canadian musical genius, Glenn Gould and his near-blind piano tuner, Verne Edquist from Saskatchewan. I loved the parts about the Steinway piano family of manufacturers and their marketing and craftsmanship and domination of the performing artists' circuit. Enjoy! Paula Shackleton, Executive Editor and Founder BookBuffet- where book groups click.
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2: Very pleased with my purchase.
I listen to Glenn Gould recordings just about everyday and have been for for the past five or six years. Playing, tuning, some regulating of my own piano and recording myself playing Bach on it is a hobby of mine inspired by the great Gould so its almost as if this book was written for me especially. I loved it. I laughed, I cried. And more importantly, I "ah-hahed." So, its true, you CAN blame the piano! This book makes me want to go piano shopping.
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3: A Romance on Three Legs
Great book for anyone interested in Glenn Gould, music in general, pianos or if you are a piano technician.
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4: A Three Part Invention
You might think of esteemed pianist Glenn Gould as brilliant but eccentric, but wait until you read about his piano. _A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano_ (Bloomsbury) by Katie Hafner is about the three-legged instrument of Gould's passion, but it also is about a working triad: Gould, his piano, and the tuner who enabled the other two to get along. If you are a Gould fan, this volume can take an esteemed place among the biographies you have already read; it covers Gould's life, but mostly in regard to the instruments he used. The beauty of the book, though, is in those other two parts of the triad. It is quite amazing to read about how pianos get made and how their own personalities affect those who perform on them. It is also great fun to read about an artist in his own right, Verne Edquist, the tuner who was more than just a technician but functioned as an ambassador between the pianist and the piano. Hafner's beautifully balanced and richly detailed book will be good reading even if you don't know much about Gould; it's a pretty sure bet you don't know much about the fascinating world of tuners and pianos she covers here.
Gould was particular about his pianos, needing far more than a standard fine piano. He had a Chickering to practice upon at home, a small grand piano made in 1895. Its keyboard action, its touch, was perfect for him, but he could never perform a concert on it because it was too small and it had a banjo-like twang. It is Steinway CD 318 to which this book is devoted. CD 318 improbably came to birth during the years of World War II, when the Steinway firm's main products had been preempted by the war effort. Verne Edquist was a tuner working for a department store that housed CD318. He was born in 1931, one year before Gould, and had congenital cataracts which rendered him nearly blind, and he went into tuning as one of the traditional trades for blind people. Gould was impressed with the characteristics of CD 318 when he found it, pretty much abandoned at the department store, and he was delighted that Edquist was just as impressed with it. There were other tuners who worked on the piano if Gould was on the road, but the partnership with Edquist was just what Gould needed to continue his astonishing star turn, even after he had soured on public performances and begun concentrating only on recordings. His beloved piano (it was he who called it "a romance on three legs") had everything he needed, just the right touch and just the right sound, as long as Edquist could maintain it. CD 318 is so much a character of this book that it is sad, nay, tragic, that while it was being moved in 1971 it was dropped, giving it wounds from which it could never recover. Gould could not turn his back on his piano, though, and he and Edquist worked on making it playable, although it could no longer meet his standards. It is touching that upon trying the refurbished piano for the first time, he moaned, "This is not my piano. What has happened to my piano? I cannot play it; I cannot use it." He persevered to try to use his wounded instrument, and made recordings on it, but it could not perform the way it had. He had not encountered it when he made his first epochal recording of the _Goldberg Variations_, and when he went back for a second celebrated recording in 1981, CD 318 wasn't an option.
There are plenty of strange stories here about one of the most peculiar and accomplished musicians who ever lived, and some of them have turned up since Kevin Bazzana's terrific biography of Gould, _Wondrous Strange_. The lovely emphasis here, however, is on the triad of pianist, piano, and tuner, making this book a unique three-way biography. When Gould had to go on to other pianos made by Yamaha, he didn't need Edquist as much, and the two drifted apart without any schism; it is a tribute to Edquist's professionalism that he could work for the eccentric genius as long as he did. Gould died in 1982, only fifty. Edquist was called in to help install CD 318 in its permanent home at the National Library, and Gould's estate had stipulated that it can be tuned but cannot otherwise be modified; it is available to visiting performers. A fitting end to this story is that Gould's performance of Bach's _Prelude and Fugue in C_, recorded on CD 318 tuned by Edquist, is part of the recording sent on Voyager 1 in 1997 to the outer reaches of space. "When I heard that," said Edquist, "it was like a dream. There's Bach writing the music, Glenn is playing the music, and it's my tuning that's giving it voice. And it's going somewhere in outer space." Maybe millions of years from now, alien listeners will be amazed at the music; listeners on Earth will enjoy the music all the more after gaining the insights within this delightful book.
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5: Deserves a standing ovation
Katie Hafner has woven a wonderfully engrossing and engaging story from real life. She makes it seem as if the fates set the lives of a great artist, superb artisans and a masterful technician on an inevitable course of music nirvana. If you love any or all aspects of music - composers and their compositions, players, instrument makers and craftspeople- you can't help but be taken in by this gem of a book.
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