Terry's comment, following up on Diane's description of the interaction of humming on the stapedius muscles brings this to mind: My understanding of Gould's personality, has for some time followed this stream of thought, ie humming while playing is a way to cope with hypersensitive hearing receptors. So many behaviors which unusual personalities display, are often simply an organisms coping mechanisms, ie, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar (actually most of the time IMO). Since their experience does not resonate with our own, we try to find some "reason" for their unusual behavior, when it is often simply a "hardware" issue (in computer parlance). Along these lines, I've been thinking about the Edwin Goode's somewhat crabby review of the "Romance on Three Legs". To be fair I agree and disagree with his take on Gould. What blows me away though, is that in all the volumes of thought and writing about Gould and his many obsessions, if Gould were alive today, mystique of the visionary artist (which he was) aside, he would be recognized as a posterchild of Aspergers Syndrome...as would Sir Iscaac Newton and a whole list of other seminal, game changing creative personalities. Having dealt with a child on the wide aspergers continuum, and, being reasonably "normal" but somewhere on that very wide continuum myself, the behaviors Gould exhibited are completely understandable and expected. While obsessive behaviors are generated as coping mechanisms, they are also underlie an experience of being which is different than most of us. That different-ness opens access to a realm, a different way of looking at things, or re-looking at things, which is sometimes just not otherwise accessible. This ability to "re-look" at things, is for me the part of Gould that was so energizing. I remain energized by his presence, despite having taken my own bach interpretations to a very different place. Jim I On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 4:40 PM, Terry Farrell <mfarrel2 at tampabay.rr.com>wrote: > I wonder if that has anything to do with why Glen Gould would hum while > playing? > > Terry Farrell > > On Sep 8, 2009, at 3:16 PM, Diane Hofstetter wrote: > > >> >> You may have noticed many performers humming along with their playing. >> This helps activate the stapedius muscles sooner so that their contraction >> will stiffen the ossicles, which act like levers, much like a grand piano >> action. >> >> The job of the ossicles is to transduce the acoustic energy entering our >> ear into mechanical energy, which is much more powerful. They do this so >> that when the energy enters the fluid filled cochlea, it is strong enough to >> move the basilar membrane thus activating the hair cells, which send the >> electrical message to the brain, which registers the sound. >> >> Thus, When the ossicles become stiffened, the sound is attenuated. >> Unfortunately, the impact of the piano hammer on a hard blow happens too >> quickly for the stapedius muscle to react and protect our hearing. >> >> I've tried humming while tuning, but for some reason it doesn't work too >> well :-) >> >> Diane Hofstetter >> > -- grandpianosolutions.com (under construction) Shirley, MA (978) 425-9026 -- grandpianosolutions.com (under construction) Shirley, MA (978) 425-9026 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090909/0ba6ba1c/attachment-0001.htm>
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