Глен Гулд, медијска технологија, музикологија

Abstract

У овом раду заступа се теза да медијска технологија поставља услове у којима се мисли музика, те да представља оквир у коме се појављују и у односу на кога се сагледавају партикуларне музичке праксе XX века, а који је у значајној мери дефинисан појавом медија и медијске културе. Истовремено, „заживљавање“ одређених технолошких пракси условљено је друштвеним, културним, економским, а у случају музике и специфично музичким компонентама. У том смислу, фигура канадског пијанисте Глена Гулда издваја се као парадигматична, јер је у питању уметник чија је каријера нераскидиво везана за појаву тада нових технологија за снимање звука. У раду се прво разматрају неке опште поставке о медијској технологији у оквиру теорије медија и потреба да ове идеје буду укључене у корпус музиколошког знања, а потом се Гулдова активност разуме у односу на та знања.

The basic idea of this paper is that media technology sets conditions in which one can think music, and that this technology frames the way in which particular musical practices of the 20th century exist and through which they could be acknowledged. The 20th century itself is significantly defined by the media and media culture phenomena. But, at the same time, although media technology marks all the practices emerging in the past century, it is itself shaped by the specific social, cultural, economic and, in the case of music, characteristically musical components. In that sense, paradigmatic figure for taking all this elements into account when speaking about music and technology surely is that of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. He is an artist whose career is intrinsically bound to the emergence of (then) new technologies of sound recording. Beside stating his preference of working in electronic studio by the way of completely abandoning the concert stage at the height of his career, Gould declared his attachment to the ideas of electronic reproducibility of music in his numerous texts. Another aspect of the close bond of Gould’s persona with the media culture that could be analyzed is the formation of the “Gouldism”, or the cult of the artist in the popular culture. This was shaped as a strategy of his publisher, as a new method for attracting more listeners and consumers of recordings, since they were aimed at music market. As for the structure of the paper, some general notions on media technology within media theory are examined, as well as the need to include these in the corpus of musicological knowledge. With this in mind, some aspects of Gould’s activity, his attitudes and poetic statements are understood. The goal is to show how media technology is constitutive for the highly distinguished Gould’s poetics in more than one sense.