When Glenn Gould Walked Away

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PART I

This week marks the 70th anniversary of Glenn Gould's spontaneous exit from live music on April 10, 1964. 

As a lusty, zealous, outrageous rejection of traditional instruments in favor of new tech, it's my very favorite moment in the modern history of music. 

It rivals Bob Dylan's choice to plug in his guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, one year later, in 1965. And it foretells the moment in 1975, that Grand Wizzard Theodore, at 12 years old, first scratched a record and dropped a needle to extend a pop song's break, which he calls "the darkest part of the music."  He thus turned LPs, the reproduction of music in grooved vinyl, into an instrument. 

On April 10, 1964, Gould played seven pieces, including four fugues that were plenty dark, to a packed house at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. 

Gould gave no indication that the program was his swan song. Then he strolled—he never stormed—away from his Steinway CD 318 and out the door of the concert hall, into the mild California air. A year later, he boarded a train for the desolate Northwest Territories of his native Canada. He never played another concert.