The View from the Edge:

Glenn Goulds The Latecomers and CODCOs Cod on a Stick

By Ned Zimmerman

Student ID: 6201733

Tutor: Margaret Westby

Course: FFAR 250, Tutorial GG

2 February 2012

In The Latecomers (1969), the second installment of his Solitude Trilogy of

experimental radio documentaries, Canadian musician and broadcaster Glenn Gould interwove

the testimonies of thirteen Newfoundlanders in a poetic examination of the changing fortunes of

the new province and its outport communities. Newfoundland theatre troupe CODCO explored

the same subject in their irreverent collectively created play Cod on a Stick, first staged in 1973

at Torontos Theatre Passe Muraille. Gould and CODCO could hardly have diverged further in

the approach to their common subject matter, but both The Latecomers and Cod on a Stick

offer reflections on Canadian culture from a unique perspective and stand as enduring specimens

of Canadian national art.

Glenn Gould was born in Toronto on September 25, 1932 and was best known during his

lifetime as a brilliant classical pianist. Yet Gould was never entirely comfortable on stage; the

intense pressures of live performance led him to characterize the concert circuit as [one of] the

last blood sports (qtd. in Friedrich, 100). He abruptly retired from his concert career in 1964, at

31 years of age, and used his newfound freedom to pursue his passion for broadcasting (Friedrich

108). Gould had begun a love affair with the microphone when he made his first radio

appearance on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1950 (Payzant 36). He later

wrote: I have not since been able to think of the potential of music [] without some reference

to the limitless possibilities of the broadcasting and/or recording medium (qtd. in Payzant 36).

Goulds enthusiasm for the broadcast medium found its fullest and most unique

expression in his Solitude Trilogy of hour-long contrapuntal radio documentariesThe Idea

of North (1969), The Latecomers (1969), and The Quiet in the Land (1973) (Payzant 128).

Contrapuntal radio was based on the notion of musical counterpointthe coherent combination

Zimmerman 2

of distinct melodic lines [] [that] fulfils the aesthetic principle of unity in diversityas well

as the cinematic techniques of montage, the creating [of] new forms, effects, and emotional

connotations through strategic editing (Whittall, Bazzana 300). Gould exploited the versatility

of magnetic tape and layered together recorded interviews in a compositional style that invited

comparisons to the fuguethree voices representing contrasting views enter one after the

other and eventually all talk at once before drifting off into silence (Ibid.).

American composer and musician John Cage wrote in 1957 that new recording

technology could be used to make a new music that was possible only because of it, while

observing that advantage can be taken of these possibilities only if one is willing to change

ones musical habits radically one may fly if one is willing to give up walking (64). While

Cage used conventional musical instruments in unconventional manner, Gould brought his finely

honed sensibilities as a classical musician to the then-unconventional medium of manipulated

recorded spoken word, and composed his trilogy in accordance with musical principles of

rhythm, texture, tone, dynamics, pacing, and the strategic, integral use of silence (Bazzana

303). As a result, Goulds contrapuntal radio is distinctive yet very much at home within the

canon of experimental music and musique concrte that encompasses the work of Cage, Pierre

Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen and others (Ibid.).

Goulds goal in the Solitude Trilogy was to undertake an examination of people who

accept isolation or stand apart from the cultural mainstream (Payzant 128). An only child, he

had grown to believe that solitude nourishes creativity and he saw the Canadian north as a

place where nonconformists can live and flourish (Gould qtd. in Littler 219; Littler 220). His

1967 documentary The Idea of North reflected his fascination with the norths profound

Zimmerman 3

influence on the Canadian sensibility (Bazzana 293). Gould offered a contemporary vision of

what constituted Canadas national art in the observation that my notion of what [the north]

looked like was pretty much restricted to the romanticized, art-nouveau-tinged Group of Seven

paintings [which] served as a pictorial introduction to the north for a great many people of my

generation" (qtd. in Littler 220). On a journey by train from Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba in

June of 1965, he came to realize that the north was possessed of qualities more elusive than

even a magician like A. Y. Jackson could define with oils, and it was these qualities that he

sought to capture in The Idea of North (Ostwald 232; Gould qtd. in Bazzana 293).

Following on the success of his first documentary, Gould travelled to Newfoundland in

August 1968 to conduct separate interviews with the thirteen individuals whose voices would

form the instrumentation of The Latecomers (Friedrich 195). He later described the trip as

one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life (Gould qtd. in Bazzana 305). The title of

the work refers to the fact that Newfoundland had become the last province to join confederation,

only nineteen years earlier; the Newfoundland that Gould encountered in 1968 seemed to him at

once a part of Canada and isolated from the mainstream of Canadian life and was in the midst

of a painful transition as families abandoned small outports in favour of St. Johns and other

major centres (Bazzana 306). The optimism of confederation had quickly ebbed. I was

convinced that it was going to do great things for the people but disillusionment came very

early, says one of his subjects in The Latecomers. Gould saw his new work as focusing on

the province-as-island [and] the problems of maintaining a minimally technologized style of

life in a maximally technologized age (Gould qtd. in Littler 221). He also observed that

Newfoundland seemed to be paying the cost of nonconformity (qtd. in Bazzana 306).

Zimmerman 4

Goulds vocal composition in The Latecomers reflected attempts to [synthesize] three

principles: documentary, drama, and music (Bazzana 301). In one excerpt, a dialogue between a

woman and a man develops some rather interesting overtones as they debate the merits of

leaving or staying in Newfoundland (Gould qtd. in Payzant 132). The manwho cant bring

himself to leaveinvokes Henry David Thoreau, concluding that people who are removed from

the centre of a society are always able to see it more clearly (The Latecomers).

The dialogue between the man and woman was constructed in Goulds editing process;

the womans exasperation was with Gould himself, who in his role as the interviewer was

romanticizing Newfoundland life such that she felt the need to give him some perspective. Gould

observed that [t]he dialogue represented in that scene never took place yet I have a strange

feeling that had they met, it would have (qtd. in Friedrich 195). Indeed, none of his subjects

ever met (Ibid.). Gould was not afraid to play with the accepted boundaries of the documentary

form in order to create confrontations of characters with different perspectives (Bazzana 301).

His editorial process was exacting; he spent nearly 400 hours in studio assembling The

Latecomers from raw recordings, and all told, Goulds contrapuntal radio documentaries took

up more of [his] time than any other activityincluding music (Payzant 133; Hurwitz 259).

Goulds radio documentaries bewildered some listeners on account of their contrapuntal

aesthetic, and they seemed clearly aimed at audiences accustomed to high art (Bazzana 305). The

work of CODCO was quite the opposite. Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel proposed that popular

art derives from common experiences which audience and performers share, suggesting that

those experiences, known and familiar, are deepened when re-enacted (64). CODCOs

collectively created plays are readily included in this category of work.

Zimmerman 5

Collective creation is a theatrical practice in which a company of actorsusing

research, improvisation, and co-operative script developmentcreates an original

play (Collective Creation 106). Toronto-based Theatre Passe Murailles 1972 production, The

Farm Show, was the first collectively created play to receive widespread recognition in Canada,

and it was Theatre Passe Murailles artistic director, Paul Thompson, who sparked the formation

of CODCO by offering a $300 writing grant to founding members Tommy Sexton and Diane

Olsen (Collective Creation 106; Peters xi). Sexton and Olsen assembled a small troupe of

fellow Newfoundlander actors and writers in Torontoall between the ages of sixteen and 25

and they wrote their first play, Cod on a Stick, as a response to Newfoundlands quarter of a

century as a province of Canada (Peters xxi). While collective creation often involves some

hierarchy, CODCO was entirely non-hierarchical; member Mary Walsh attributed this to their

basic anarchistic tendencies and shared belief that all authority [was] bad (Peters xix).

Cod on a Stick was a great success in its original twenty-minute form; soon Sexton and

Olsen, along with Greg Malone, Cathy Jones, Paul Sametz and Mary Walshthe original

CODCO lineupexpanded the play into a 45-minute version. Cod on a Stick had succeeded at

turning the pain and embarrassment of being foreigners in a strange land into side-splitting but

pointed humour, although the jokes were just as often at the expense of the visitors, here from

Tronto as at that of the Newfoundlanders themselves (Peters xii; Sexton et al 9).

CODCO soon took the play back to St. Johns, where the response was

overwhelming (Peters xii). Cod on a Stick had the qualities of the music hall or cabaret, as the

play dealt, by means of spectacle, song, comedy, with a whole range of familiar experiences,

framed by common references and attitudes [which] were, to a large extent, shared between

Zimmerman 6

audience and artistparticularly Newfoundland audiences (Hall and Whannel 56). The troupe

obtained funding for a tour of Newfoundland and took Cod on a Stick to an estimated 5,271

people in 23 towns and villages across the province (Peters xii). Often their audiences had never

before experienced live theatre, and they applauded the actors who showed them that comedy

could be made from the fabric of their everyday lives (Peters xiii). Much like Goulds frustrated

interview subject in The Latecomers, not all Newfoundlanders were happy with this vision of

their province. Mary Walsh recalls one occasion where the play infuriated an audience of ex-pat

Newfoundlanders in Philadelphia: It was as if they had left Newfoundland and suffered the

duress caused by having a different accent, of being from a place that was very poor, and then we

arrived and celebrated the wrong accent and the being very poor (qtd. in Peters xv).

One brief scene (titled The Newfoundland Delegation) aptly demonstrates the comic

absurdity of Newfoundlands early years as a misunderstood, neglected and ridiculed member of

confederation. The Newfoundland delegations leader, Eugene, presents himself at the House of

Commons; Members of Parliament are advised: You will find earphones located to the left of

your desks for simultaneous translation for the Newfoundland delegation (Sexton et al. 48). As

well as translating Eugenes dialect, the Translator deftly replaces all of his complaints with

euphemismswhen Eugene suggests that the honourable ministers doesnt know a jeezly

ting about the fisheries, the Translator equivocates that the ministers [a]re perhaps a little out

of touch with their constituents in Newfoundland (Ibid.). The mispronunciation of

Newfoundland by mainlanders in Cod on a Stick reveals the irony of being mocked by those

who cant even pronounce the name of your province correctly.

Zimmerman 7

Unusually for a small, independent Canadian theatre company, CODCO was able to tour

across Canada without outside financial support during their heyday in the mid-1970s; they were

playing to sold-out theatres with standing room only from Victoria to St. Johns (Peters xv).

Their work achieved broad appeal by seeking relevance in terms of longstanding social and

political situations or conditions rather than focusing on particular social or political events

they deftly revealed fundamental truths of the Canadian experience in a manner that made their

work both accessible and entertaining to all Canadians (Peters xx).

Both The Latecomers and Cod on a Stick carry the same implicit or explicit message

that someone living apart from Canadian society can see Canadian society more clearly than

somebody living in the middle of it (The Latecomers). Globe and Mail theatre critic John

Fraser observed with regards to CODCOs countrywide success that since [Newfoundlanders]

are some distance, geographically and spiritually, from our presiding stridencies and pretentions,

they can prick our consciences and vanities as no one else can (qtd. in Peters xx). In Narrating

the Nation, Stuart Hall argues that [i]nstead of thinking of national cultures as unified, we

should think of them as constituting a discursive device which represents difference as unity or

identity (617). Halls contention could easily be an aesthetic statement for Glenn Goulds

contrapuntal radio documentaries, which created unity in diversity in their artful assemblage of

voices representing contrasting views (Whittall, Bazzana 300). His argument is applicable in a

different sense to CODCOs nonconformist vision of Canadian society seen from its edges,

which in representing the experiences of a single part reveals a great deal about the whole. Gould

and CODCO, with distinct aesthetic practices, have both created enduring works of national art

that offer deep insights into the Canadian identity by standing apart from the mainstream.

Zimmerman 8

Works Cited

Bazzana, Kevin. Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould. New Haven, Connecticut:

Yale University Press, 2003. Print.

Cage, John. Experimental Music. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, Connecticut:

Wesleyan University Press, 1961. 7-12. Print.

Collective Creation. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre. Ed. L.W. Connolly and

Eugene Benson. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 1989. 106-8. Canadian

Publishers Collection. Web. 1 Feb. 2012. .

Friedrich, Otto. Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Limited,

1989. Print.

Gould, Glenn, dir. The Idea of North. Ideas. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Toronto,

Ontario, 28 Dec. 1967. Radio.

Gould, Glenn, dir. The Latecomers. Ideas. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Toronto,

Ontario, 12 Nov. 1969. Radio.

Hall, Stuart. Narrating the Nation: An Imagined Community. Modernity: An Introduction to

Modern Societies. By Stuart Hall, David Held, David Hubert, and Kenneth Thompson.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996. 613-15. Print.

Hall, Stuart, and Paddy Whannel. Minority Art, Folk Art and Popular Art. The Popular Arts.

London: Hutchinson Educational, 1969. 45-65. Print.

Hurwitz, Robert. Towards a Contrapuntal Radio. Glenn Gould: By Himself and His Friends.

Ed. John McGreevy. Toronto: Doubleday Canada Limited, 1983. 253-264. Print.

Zimmerman 9

Littler, William. The Quest for Solitude. Glenn Gould: By Himself and His Friends. Ed. John

McGreevy. Toronto: Doubleday Canada Limited, 1983. 217-226. Print.

Ostwald, Peter. Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius. New York and London: W. W.

Norton & Company, 1997. Print.

Payzant, Geoffrey. Glenn Gould, Music and Mind. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2005. Print.

Peters, Helen. Introduction. The Plays of CODCO. Ed. Helen Peters. New York: Peter Lang,

1992. xi-xxxi. Print.

Sexton, Tommy, Diane Olsen, Cathy Jones, Paul Sametz, Greg Malone and Mary Walsh. Cod

on a Stick. The Plays of CODCO. Ed. Helen Peters. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. 3-68.

Print.

Whittall, Arnold. Counterpoint. The Oxford Companion to Music. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford

Music Online. 1 Feb. 2012 .

Zimmerman 10