Idea of North

Download Glenn Gould's Idea of North here. The piece, a documentary produced for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, consists of the voices of five people discussing the Arctic and sub-Arctic "northern third" of Canada.

Rather than presenting the interviews separately, Gould weaves and layers them, inventing and exploring a contrapuntal form derived from the composers Gould studied before he left live performance for studio art. In places, this is not particularly different from today's radio broadcasts, voices drawn, via mixing board, into a dialogue. Elsewhere, voices overlap into polyphony, into a babble from which distinct phrases emerge, are picked up by other voices, echo.

In its documentary relationship to testimony and to place, as well as the polyphony of voices, common ground is shared with Charles Reznikoff, Chris Marker, Charles Olson, Susan Howe, others.