A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano

If someone would have told me that I would be up reading this book at 2:00 am learning how someone voices a Steinway Piano, I would have said that they were nuts. But, it was true. Once I entered this Romance on Three Legs, I needed to hear how massaging of the felt, lacquering the soundboard and needling the hammers made each piano a unique sound and of unique personality.

Katie Hafner has taken this true story and created this wonderful voyage through intertwined stories of love and compassion. The feature story is about this eccentric, gifted pianist [Glenn Gould] and his search for his 88 key, life partner. But via Hafner's weaving of extraordinary detail, I found myself feeling close to this unloved, unappreciated, abandoned World War orphan piano [Steinway unit number CD318] and its quest for a caring home. Eventually the two find each other.

Then another compelling love story emerges. This one is about a once great manufacturer and its courtship of customers. Hafner takes us into the foundation and history of a last century institution called Steinway Piano. Like our `Breakfast of Champions' [Wheaties], we learn how Steinway goes to extraordinary measures to become known as the "Instrument of the Immortals".

For a while you feel that both romances are on safe footing. Then disaster strikes both.

Don't think of this book as a story written for students of music. This is a rich and enjoyable voyage about people, companies and their obsessive quest for perfection.

I've read at least 5 books on Glenn Gould. I still believe the best biography on Gould came from Otto Friedrich called A life in Variations. I've also read Ostwald's The Ecstacy and Tragedy of Genius, Bazzana's account entitled Wondrous Strange, Andrew Kazdin's Glenn Gould at Work, "Creative Lying", and Rhona Bergman's "The Idea of Gould".

"Romance on Three Legs", takes a different angle in that if focuses primarily on the Piano. I skipped pieces of earlier chapters that had stories in part from the other books and areas that were overused in my opinion since Friedrich published his book. I was more focused on how Gould came to find and treasure CD-318 (Steinway). This is the piano that carried most of his recording career. Hafner does a good job regarding the damage episode that occurred to this Piano and Gould's obsession to get it back to it's former glory which never quite happened. I was most interested in this part of the book as well. Gould sued Steinway years before, due to a worker who allegedly gave him too hard of a handshake. Because of this, Steinway probably gave him lesser than usual service on his behalf. This is also covered.

On the subject of Gould, Hafner does no more than the other authors in my opinion. She covers the same stories, anecdotes. She does cover a bit more on Gould's relationship with a married man's wife, Cornelia Foss. This book is still noteworthy. I'd also recommend "A Life in Variations" and Andrew Kazdin's Book, Glenn Gould at work. Kazdin is brutally honest about the working relationship he had with Gould and also covers an area regarding the damage of CD-318. Hafner does give us much more detail and more account from Verne Edquist, Gould's primary piano tuner and function tweaker. This alone gives the book a bit more credibility in my opinion.

You might think of esteemed pianist Glenn Gould as brilliant but eccentric, but wait until you read about his piano. _A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano_ (Bloomsbury) by Katie Hafner is about the three-legged instrument of Gould's passion, but it also is about a working triad: Gould, his piano, and the tuner who enabled the other two to get along. If you are a Gould fan, this volume can take an esteemed place among the biographies you have already read; it covers Gould's life, but mostly in regard to the instruments he used. The beauty of the book, though, is in those other two parts of the triad. It is quite amazing to read about how pianos get made and how their own personalities affect those who perform on them. It is also great fun to read about an artist in his own right, Verne Edquist, the tuner who was more than just a technician but functioned as an ambassador between the pianist and the piano. Hafner's beautifully balanced and richly detailed book will be good reading even if you don't know much about Gould; it's a pretty sure bet you don't know much about the fascinating world of tuners and pianos she covers here.

Gould was particular about his pianos, needing far more than a standard fine piano. He had a Chickering to practice upon at home, a small grand piano made in 1895. Its keyboard action, its touch, was perfect for him, but he could never perform a concert on it because it was too small and it had a banjo-like twang. It is Steinway CD 318 to which this book is devoted. CD 318 improbably came to birth during the years of World War II, when the Steinway firm's main products had been preempted by the war effort. Verne Edquist was a tuner working for a department store that housed CD318. He was born in 1931, one year before Gould, and had congenital cataracts which rendered him nearly blind, and he went into tuning as one of the traditional trades for blind people. Gould was impressed with the characteristics of CD 318 when he found it, pretty much abandoned at the department store, and he was delighted that Edquist was just as impressed with it. There were other tuners who worked on the piano if Gould was on the road, but the partnership with Edquist was just what Gould needed to continue his astonishing star turn, even after he had soured on public performances and begun concentrating only on recordings. His beloved piano (it was he who called it "a romance on three legs") had everything he needed, just the right touch and just the right sound, as long as Edquist could maintain it. CD 318 is so much a character of this book that it is sad, nay, tragic, that while it was being moved in 1971 it was dropped, giving it wounds from which it could never recover. Gould could not turn his back on his piano, though, and he and Edquist worked on making it playable, although it could no longer meet his standards. It is touching that upon trying the refurbished piano for the first time, he moaned, "This is not my piano. What has happened to my piano? I cannot play it; I cannot use it." He persevered to try to use his wounded instrument, and made recordings on it, but it could not perform the way it had. He had not encountered it when he made his first epochal recording of the _Goldberg Variations_, and when he went back for a second celebrated recording in 1981, CD 318 wasn't an option.

There are plenty of strange stories here about one of the most peculiar and accomplished musicians who ever lived, and some of them have turned up since Kevin Bazzana's terrific biography of Gould, _Wondrous Strange_. The lovely emphasis here, however, is on the triad of pianist, piano, and tuner, making this book a unique three-way biography. When Gould had to go on to other pianos made by Yamaha, he didn't need Edquist as much, and the two drifted apart without any schism; it is a tribute to Edquist's professionalism that he could work for the eccentric genius as long as he did. Gould died in 1982, only fifty. Edquist was called in to help install CD 318 in its permanent home at the National Library, and Gould's estate had stipulated that it can be tuned but cannot otherwise be modified; it is available to visiting performers. A fitting end to this story is that Gould's performance of Bach's _Prelude and Fugue in C_, recorded on CD 318 tuned by Edquist, is part of the recording sent on Voyager 1 in 1997 to the outer reaches of space. "When I heard that," said Edquist, "it was like a dream. There's Bach writing the music, Glenn is playing the music, and it's my tuning that's giving it voice. And it's going somewhere in outer space." Maybe millions of years from now, alien listeners will be amazed at the music; listeners on Earth will enjoy the music all the more after gaining the insights within this delightful book.

This book was my first introduction to Glenn Gould, other than a vague familiarity with the name. Hafner's book made me interested in hearing his recordings, now that I have some insight into the musician as well as the character. I enjoyed it as a story, and as a chance to learn far more about the piano as an instrument. Since my wife is a pianist with a couple of 90+ year-old Steinways, I'm finally getting what's involved in rebuilding one of these.

You don't have to be a Gould aficionado to enjoy this read.

While the title leads one to believe this is a story about a piano, it is, rather, an engrossing tale about two extraordinary people who are societal outcasts but who miraculously find each other and happen upon the ideal instrument. All three combine to create the perfect musical trio. Hafner is a brilliant storyteller who keeps the biographical oddities unfolding. Even the complex technical particulars of Gould's beloved piano are imbued with life and it becomes a central character in the book. The story moves quickly and informs the reader every step of the way. Highly recommended!

Although I'm not a musician, I am a lover of music and of books about musicians. This looked like an interesting diversion, and I'm so pleased I bought it. There is, of course, a lot of the standard bio information about Glenn Gould, but with quite a lot of "I didn't know that" items and anecdotes. What I found really interesting was the technical detail about the components and construction of a concert grand, and the number of variables that go into the sound that finally comes out. There was also a very revealing description of the skills of a tuner / piano technician, and what a godsend the career has been for so many blind people. Highly recommended.

What a gem of a book to get inside the life of a great but eccentric virtuoso. The author is a very good writer and the book is enjoyable even if you are left wondering whether this genius needed help at a time when we did not understand these OCD type of disorders. If you are a pianist or just enjoy great musicians and reading about their lives, you will enjoy this book.

In a wonderfully sideways approach to the usual Glenn Gould immortalizations, Katie Hafner uses the professionals around him, particularly his almost blind main tuner Verne Edquist, to show us the working, if eccentric, professional searching for an instrument with which he can most intimately convey his interpretations. She reminds us that a pianist is communicating as much with a piano as they are with the composer, that pianos changed in many ways over the 20th century, and that Steinway & Sons is a group of people, not a monolith.

I loved, loved, loved this. I work in a music store and wanted to be more educated about pianos, and this was a beautiful, compelling introduction. I learned a lot about players' preferences and was really pleased at how much the book explored piano technology. For all the learning, though, it was a spectacularly good read that I raced right through. Glenn Gould was, inevitably, entertaining, and this book had just the right balance of basic biography and focus on his piano. So grateful I read it and I'd recommend it to anyone, whether they care about pianos or not: it's a great story.

There are times in life when books and passions coalesce, as if perfectly divine universes marry, becoming one. Katie Hafner's Romance on Three Legs is such a union. Glenn Gould, the idol of my youth, the incarnation of everything Bach, and more, found his piano, his sole companion. Gould's reveting quest for his piano is explored, magically, in Katie's spell binding book, which reads like the smoothest dialogue, and for those who love a terrific mystery, you don't have to be a Gould lover to adore this read. I only put it down twice, each, to turn out my light to sleep.
Never mind the stuffed shirts and the concert hall etiquette and attire, the musings of all in attendance, saddle your gear, and ready yourselves for an old fashioned yarn, rife with imagination and resolve. Get ready to meet Gould's friend, a nearly blind piano tuner, who, with the spirited knowledge of a wizard incarnate, takes Gould's hand and leads him to his promised land.