The musical benefits of not playing live

Glenn Gould considered audiences ‘a force of evil’. ‘Not in their individual segments but en masse, I detest audiences.’ He retired from public performance on 10 April 1964, at the age of 31, having given fewer than 200 public recitals. The Canadian classical pianist had longstanding philosophical objections to the ritual of performing live. He found applause automatic and insincere, and often asked spectators not to bother. He even wrote a (partly) tongue-in-cheek manifesto, the Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds, in which he called for clapping to be banned. Gould believed that the most useful and honest response to music came following a period of solitary reflection, rather than as instantaneous public display.

In the age of lockdown, we’ve been handed an opportunity to test his theory. The current absence of live music instinctively feels like a grave loss, but Gould was far from alone among musicians in his dislike of it. Whether through nerves, perfectionism, paranoia, boredom or aesthetic objections, many artists have harboured similar reservations, either stopping entirely or performing on stage only rarely.

Scott Walker, who died last year, played his final concerts in 1978. Although an out-of-tune trumpet at a Birmingham show proved the bathetic final straw, Walker was plagued by stage fright, a fact that seems obvious watching his last public appearance, on Later… With Jools Holland in 1995, where he practically ran off set after singing the raw, riveting ‘Rosary’. In later years he preferred to outsource performances of his music. During three shows at the Barbican in 2008, Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker sang his most recent works while Walker masterminded proceedings from the wings.

Walker’s belief that he made his most satisfying music after renouncing the stage is not unusual. Tracey Thorn, who performed with her husband Ben Watt as Everything But The Girl before becoming a solo artist, stopped playing live almost 20 years ago.