Friday, June 16, 2006

Enlightenment arrives from several quarters re. the Glenn Gould/Celine Dion connection as referenced mysterioiusly by Simon Frith. The missing link is Barbara Streisand as also reviewed by Frith in that Voice piece.

Scott Woods traces it back to "Gould's excellent High Fidelity review from 1976, "Streisand as Schwarzkopff," which begins, "I'm a Streisand freak and make no bones about it," and contains many interesting ideas about the tradition she's working in (love the line, "it would never occur to her to employ the 'I'll meet you precisely 51 percent of the way' piquancy of, say, Helen Reddy, much less the 'I won't bother to speak up 'cause you're already spellbound aren't you?' routine of Peggy Lee.")" Scott adds "if you can find a copy of The Glenn Gould Reader grab it--his criticism is often brilliant and occasionally hilarious ."

Paul Davies helpfully provides a page reference for "Streisand as Schwarzkopff" (pp 308-311), and further avers that Gould refers to Streisand again in "Stokowski in Six Scenes", also in
The Glenn Gould Reader.

uTopianTurtleTop says that "Glenn Gould was a great music critic, very witty and individualistic and, of course, deeply informed. The collection of his writings edited by Tim Page is really great. Sometimes arch. Anyway, the only pop people he writes about in the book are Streisand and Petula Clark. His Clark piece, he compares her favorably to the Beatles, whom he detests."

Only question left: who's this Schwarzkopff geezer then?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment away