JAMES R. OESTREICH - New York Times - Just because you’re a hypochondriac, to paraphrase Joseph Heller’s wry comment on paranoia, doesn’t mean you aren’t sick. And the brilliant Canadian pianist Glenn Gould was, in a phrase uttered at a medical conference over the weekend, “a world-class hypochondriac.” He was also a perfectionist, easily frustrated.
“Opening theme of Casella was unbalanced, and notes appeared to stick, and scalelike passages were uneven and uncontrolled,” Gould wrote in his diary about his 1977 performance of Alfredo Casella’s “Due Ricercari sul Nome B-A-C-H,” taped for television.
“During the next two weeks problems increased,” he added later. “It was no longer possible to play even Bach Chorale securely — parts were unbalanced, progression from note to note insecure.”
In 2000 Dr. Frank R. Wilson, a neurologist, suggested in a paper, “Glenn Gould’s Hand,” that Gould had a problem little understood in his time, least of all by him. Today, though it is by no means fully understood, the disorder is called focal dystonia. Click here for full article
