A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano | Katie Hafner

A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano | Katie Hafner | My first book on Glenn Gould: and I enjoyed it!

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A Romance on Three...

	A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano Katie Hafner Bloomsbury USA, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A grand tale of obsession about the brilliant Glenn Gould and the unique, temperamental instrument he came to love beyond all others, by a top New York Times writer.
Glenn Gould was one of the most complex, brilliant artists of the twentieth century, a musician famous for bizarre habits: he wore a hat and gloves even on the warmest summer day; refused to shake hands for fear of germs or damaged fingers; hummed and conducted himself while he played; and traveled the world with a battered old chair, refusing to perform while sitting on anything else.
But perhaps Gould?s greatest obsession of all was with a Steinway concert grand known as CD318. To explain that relationship, which Gould himself described as ?a romance on three legs,? Katie Hafner introduces us to the important figures in Gould?s life, including Verne Edquist, his longtime, long-suffering, blind tuner. She offers a fascinating history of the art of tuning, and takes us inside Steinway during the war years, when CD318 was built. And she dissects Gould?s life with the piano, from his first encounter with it to the endless coddling and tweaking that Edquist performed over the years. Hafner includes Gould?s stormy, sometimes outrageous, correspondence with Steinway, and describes his despair when CD318 was fatally dropped from a loading dock.
The book will appeal to fans of books like The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, as well as to those looking fora rich story of obsession like The Orchid Thief.

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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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My first book on Glenn Gould: and I enjoyed it!

This book was my first introduction to Glenn Gould, other than a vague familiarity with the name. Hafner's book made me interested in hearing his recordings, now that I have some insight into the musician as well as the character. I enjoyed it as a story, and as a chance to learn far more about the piano as an instrument. Since my wife is a pianist with a couple of 90+ year-old Steinways, I'm finally getting what's involved in rebuilding one of these.

You don't have to be a Gould aficionado to enjoy this read.

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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A Romance on Three Legs

Great book for anyone interested in Glenn Gould, music in general, pianos or if you are a piano technician.

A different angle on Gould

I've read at least 5 books on Glenn Gould. I still believe the best biography on Gould came from Otto Friedrich called A life in Variations. I've also read Ostwald's The Ecstacy and Tragedy of Genius, Bazzana's account entitled Wondrous Strange, Andrew Kazdin's Glenn Gould at Work, "Creative Lying", and Rhona Bergman's "The Idea of Gould".

"Romance on Three Legs", takes a different angle in that if focuses primarily on the Piano. I skipped pieces of earlier chapters that had stories in part from the other books and areas that were overused in my opinion since Friedrich published his book. I was more focused on how Gould came to find and treasure CD-318 (Steinway). This is the piano that carried most of his recording career. Hafner does a good job regarding the damage episode that occurred to this Piano and Gould's obsession to get it back to it's former glory which never quite happened. I was most interested in this part of the book as well. Gould sued Steinway years before, due to a worker who allegedly gave him too hard of a handshake. Because of this, Steinway probably gave him lesser than usual service on his behalf. This is also covered.

On the subject of Gould, Hafner does no more than the other authors in my opinion. She covers the same stories, anecdotes. She does cover a bit more on Gould's relationship with a married man's wife, Cornelia Foss. This book is still noteworthy. I'd also recommend "A Life in Variations" and Andrew Kazdin's Book, Glenn Gould at work. Kazdin is brutally honest about the working relationship he had with Gould and also covers an area regarding the damage of CD-318. Hafner does give us much more detail and more account from Verne Edquist, Gould's primary piano tuner and function tweaker. This alone gives the book a bit more credibility in my opinion.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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