ABSTRACT
The act of the potentiality to play the piano is certainly, for the pianist, the performance of a piano piece; but what happens to the potentiality not to play when he starts to play? How is a potentiality not to play realized? . . . If every potentiality is both potentiality to be and potentiality not to be, the passage to the act can only take place by transferring one’s own potentiality-not-to in the act. This means that if the potentiality to play and the potentiality not to play necessarily belong to every pianist, Glenn Gould is, however, the one who is capable of not not playing; the one who, directing his potentiality not only to the act but also to his own impotentiality, plays, as it were, with his potentiality not to play.
