Opera Chic

You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog

Young Glenn Gould and friend (ph. Sony Music, via)

Music For Two Hands And One Paw: Young Glenn Gould and A Colleague

Via Tom Sutpen, probably the world's coolest blog (Tom has a bigger better version of this photo so please visit)

"Death Is Close To Me Now And So Is Winter": 20 Years Without Thomas Bernhard

If you love classical music, or even if you don't but you love great novels, you should read Thomas Bernhard's The Loser: it's, among other things, the story of a piano student who happens to work alongside another student -- Glenn Gould (talk about keeping up one's self-confidence).

It's a major work that has enjoyed very minor exposure in the English-speaking world until now: What the public at large has denied Bernhard -- novelist, poet, playwright and essayist, who died exactly twenty years ago today and whose work is still so relevant -- classical music lovers should try to give back, at least in part.

Bernhard is an old master, a merciless mind and a steadfast critic of his country, Austria, who was promptly accused, in life, of being a "Nestbeschmutzer", someone who likes to soil his own nest. There's so much to remember him by: the astonishing beauty of his language, his honorable commitment to tell uncomfortable truths, his unrelenting bleak view of human nature. But today it's good to quote something that has been written about him and needs to be repeated: that he was morally committed as a writer to always look under the surface, no matter how ugly -- or self-defeating -- that would be.

"In his autobiography,"Gathering Evidence," Bernhard describes how one day, out of the blue, he decided not to take his usual route to school, but to walk in the opposite direction. He ended up in a shabby quarter of Salzburg he hadn't known existed; it was a neighborhood of the downtrodden, the ostracized, and the unemployed on the dole. It opened his eyes to what lurked behind the smug façade. He promptly got a menial job in a grubby convenience store in a basement and never went back to school. Walking in the opposite direction would become a stubborn habit for the rest of his short life."

Thomas Bernhard is Opera Chic's literary samurai.

Glenn Gould And His 1,325 lbs Sweetheart (We're Not Talking About One Of His Polar Bears)

Even if Glenn Gould's greatest biography, as it often happens, is in fact a novel, it's only fair that a biography of his piano -- and the guy who tuned it for him -- has now come out (OC was unaware that Glenn's beloved monstah had been badly dropped on its way to Ohio in 1971 and never really recovered). The author, a former NYT correspondent, is blogging about the book tour (and about Canada's famously excellent Chinese food).

And, even if Gould -- the elephant whisperer -- stopped touring long before he left for another planet in 1982, his piano and rickety chair are touring Canada right now.