A Romance on Three Legs – Katie Hafner

Paperback available in April, 2009 at $10.88, Hardcover - $16.49
Non-Fiction

Buy it if: You want a peek at the men and machines behind the concert pianist's curtain

Don’t buy it if: You’re looking for a biography of Glenn Gould

The relationship between artist and instrument can be a very ethereal thing. On the one hand, Jimmy Page pulled sounds out of his cheap-o Danelectro guitar nightly that I couldn’t get out of a ’57 Les Paul…but on the other, a master of their craft should have an instrument worthy of their performance. For Glenn Gould – a man noted for his obsessions and idiosyncrasies – finding his soulmate in a piano was no easy task. Katie Hafner’s A Romance on Three Legs is the story of this search and the fascinatingly unique world in which it was conducted.

So much has been written about Glenn Gould already that if you’re looking for details of his oddities you should probably travel elsewhere. The genius-touched-by-madness theme is a central one that plays well on Main Street, but this book explores the world of Steinway piano building and dealing, piano technician schools for the blind, and an industry bending over backwards to cater to the whims of a select few high-end concert pianists. And while focusing on Gould and his favorite Steinway gives the book its audience, it’s these other storylines – being woven in and out of the quest – that make for such captivating reading. In the end, the famous pianist is only one of a host of fascinating ‘characters’ that include Verne Edquist, his nearly blind personal tuner, the Steinway Piano company and even Eaton’s, the Toronto department store where Gould preferred to record.

This is a narrative for the hopeless romantic, a sucker for a love story. In essence, that’s the story being told – the tale of a man and his greatest relationship. It just happens to be with an 88-keyed concert grand. How they came to be together, the music they made, the trips they took… Change ‘piano’ to ‘woman’ and you might expect to see Jane Austen’s name on the cover.

Every ‘concert level’ grand piano made by Steinway is given a unique number, a designation indicating both its uniqueness and quality. Hafner tracks the movements of various pianos against the players who performed on them, showing how Gould and his not-yet-beloved “CD 318” were often ships passing in the night, two personalities that brush up against each other at a party before meeting again under different circumstances. Despite sounding impossibly anthropomorphic, it’s a very effective way to demonstrate the emotional connection that grows between musician and favored instrument. When pianist and piano finally do connect, it’s the prelude to a romance (the title fits perfectly) that is to experience the ups and downs, the joys and tragedies, that make for moving drama, instead of dry documentation.

At a tight 232 pages, this book succeeds by only referencing Glenn Gould’s famed weirdness as a way to put events into context. The author’s eyes rarely come off the paradoxical prize – that one of the world’s most famous pianists simply can’t be satisfied by perhaps the world’s most famous piano manufacturer. And instead of filling pages with well-known facts and rumors about Gould, she peppers the book with details of the piano industry that I – a known lover of obscure trivia – found simply fascinating. Steinway pianos at the time had no set plans?! Apparently the carved wooden bodies were simply assembled from memory, with older craftsmen educating younger generations along the way… Unbelievable. Gould’s innovative use of multi-track splicing, the decades old ‘pygmy’ chair – missing a seat and held together by tape – that was the only piece of furniture upon which Gould would consent to perform... This kind of knowledge dovetails in perfectly and gives the book its true dimension.

The fascinating world of famous pianists and the instruments that provided their voices is portrayed vividly in the book, with an elegance that draws all the details together and paints a final scene that is truly enlightening without being at all cumbersome. It’s like being allowed to eavesdrop on conversations that happened 50 years ago and hear notes that have long since faded. As I’ve come to expect from the greatest concerts, I was a little sad it had to end, but well satisfied by the experience.