Glenn Gould in six scenes

Glenn Gould’s legacy revolves around his retirement from the concert hall in 1964. Studies of his artistry often reflect on that by following a particular impulse: to seek out the rational underpinnings of this decision and to explain them in terms of a larger technological or aesthetic vision. Drawing in particular on the work of Virginia Held and Sara Ahmed, this article conceptualises Gould’s abandonment of the concert hall as an act of self-care, a mechanism for coping with the increasingly intrusive and exploitative celebrity musical culture into which he was catapulted as a young musician. Thus, this article frames Gould’s self-care in terms of six overlapping scenes, as he performed in the concert hall and recording studio, in interviews and essays, and in front of the camera as photographic subject and television actor, culminating with a case study based on an excerpt from Bruno Monsaingeon’s documentary Glenn Gould: The Alchemist. The study concludes by suggesting that Gould’s artistic choices (and achievements) had much more to do with cultivating caring relations that allowed him to thrive than they did with an individual pursuit of a grand musical philosophy.