What they would have edited out (if they could) Audio recording, 47:21 minutes

 

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When I first heard a recording of Glenn Gould's piano playing I was struck by what I heard underneath the virtuosic piano: audible humming. Gould's voice grabbed me because it sounded so fallible, so unconcerned with public appearances. He unwittingly performed introversion — like a stranger whispering in my ear. The intimacy of this made me listen repeatedly, obsessively, for his vocalizations.

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Audio engineers have been trying to digitally eradicate the humming in Gould's recordings for years — it screws up the "perfection" of his playing. The piece began with a desire to do precisely the opposite: edit out all piano playing and leave only the hums. Then I realized I had been trying to hum along to him for years — not to the melody of the classical music — but to Glenn's voice. This is an unedited recording of me trying to follow along as precisely as possible to Glenn Gould's humming, in real time, for the duration of his 1981 recording of The Goldberg Variations.

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Commissioned by Temple Contemporary as part of the Silence Series, curated by Rob Blackson, 2012.