Glenn Gould is dead. He was the most individual performing musician of his generation, and his passing at the age of fifty removes the one pianist from the musical scene who seemed to have the ability to say something new and interesting about familiar—and over-familiar—music.

When he gave concerts—which he did widely until 1964—they were wildly successful with audiences and often even with music critics. For almost twenty years thereafter, until his death in Toronto last month, he confined himself to recorded performances. The records he made sold steadily, in quantities far surpassing those of his colleagues.

Gould’s recording career began in 1955 with the monumental Goldberg Variations of Bach; it ended (at least as far as releases during his lifetime were concerned) with the same work, recorded in 1981 and made available to the public in September to coincide with the pianist’s fiftieth birthday. The first recording created nothing short of a sensation; the second has received critical approval no less favorable, though understandably less surprised. What had seemed serious in the new performance when heard before Gould’s death now seems premonitory. The news that he had planned to give up the piano after he turned fifty—because he felt he had nothing further to say—can only intensify the impression of heaviness and doom that Gould’s last re-thinking of the work makes.

In between these two Bach recordings Gould made tens of discs, delving heavily not only into Bach but also into Mozart and Beethoven. At