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Everything that Gould did was in a continuum with the original place and time that he had been afforded as a performer, the concert platform.
Edward W. Said (1991, 33)
In the lore and legend surrounding Glenn Gould, as well as in much scholarly writing, The Idea of North has always held a special, if somewhat ambiguous place. First broadcast on CBC radio on 28 December 1967, it constituted the initial instalment of three programmes presenting Gould's thought on the effects of solitude and isolation upon individuals or groups. It was quickly followed by The Latecomers (broadcast 12 November 1969), which examines the collective isolation endured or enjoyed by people then living in the outports of Newfoundland. During the ensuing eight years Gould worked on Quiet in the Land (broadcast 25 April 1977) about Mennonite communities of Western Canada and their desire to be in the world but not of the world. These radio broadcasts became what Gould retrospectively called the Solitude Trilogy and are part of a number of programmes produced by Gould over the course of his career.1
Evoking Gould's self-declared fascination for Canada's vast northern territories, The Idea of North is regularly mentioned by writers interested in the relation of his work to the Canadian context.2 For some, it has acquired almost iconic status (Dickenson 1996, Hjartarson 1996, McNeilly 1996, Fink 1997). In much of this secondary literature there is however a great deal of confusion concerning the work's identity. The Idea of North is usually described either as a documentary, a piece of radio drama, a musical composition or some combination thereof. As a result North and its companion pieces of the Solitude Trilogy have been consigned to a kind of conceptual purgatory.3 Excluded from the short list of what would best be called Gould's conventional compositions,4 they are usually considered to be an aspect of his "radio and television work," and thus merely part of his journalistic output.5 As a result these works have been both underrated and misinterpreted. Judgements range from outright rejection to sympathetic ambivalence.
On the one hand, Otto Friedrich summarily dismissed North because it is neither "fish nor foul."
... these are neither abstract sounds being organized according to Gould's aesthetic plan nor are they...