So endlessly inspired by your work. The video essay genre is already so dear to me, and you seem to carry it with the full awareness of its capacities, with the uninhibited intellectual curiosity the video essay as a format allows you to entertain. AND you choose as your subject matter an interrogation into the guiding philosophy of one of my favorite artists and thinkers of all time. Thank you so, so much for this.
I appreciate this! I agree about video essays and am inspired by others who’ve done it so well in other subject areas. And it’s because there’s few to none that explore topics in the world of classical music/piano that I’m happy to be contributing to fill the void (now if only I can make a few ~10 minute videos instead of the usual half hour, I could produce on a wider array of topics).
@@Viktorvelat95 I think you meant to reply to the other comment about imagining Gould’s alter egos having their own UA-cam channels, but yes! Just like that.
I sometimes imagine Gould creating multiple UA-cam channels -- one for himself, and others for some of the alter-egos that popped up in several of his radio programs....
Haha that’s right. He would have had a whole network of UA-cam to be channels produced by himself and his alter egos/characters, and they’d all be trashing each other every day
What an absolutely brilliant discussion about Gould by people who understand what he was doing. Bravo, Ben. Your work is exciting and refreshing. Please keep them coming! I have hope for future Gouldians that they will better understand and appreciate Glenn because of content like this.
Hey Ben, one pianist that I particularly adore is Richter, he hasnt really been mentioned on your channel (or tonebase) and I would love to see you make a video about him. Great video!
Absolutely - on the tonebase premium app there’s a segment where I talk with manny ax about richter. But it’s past time that I spotlight him in a YT vid.
I was friends with one of Gould’s psychiatrist/musical friends. I would go to his place to feed the cats when he was out, and often Gould would phone at those times. This was pre-answering machine days, so I’d take the call. Thus I had the repeated redoubtable pleasure to talk to him. I never told him that I was not a fan of his playing, not then, not now.
GG ventured into the musical world in a way no one else had done. Apart from his musical interpretations, he should be admired for his brilliance and confidence.
The most remarkable thing about Gould is that his mind, his spirit, his legacy - all continue to be a fountain of wonder and inspiration for us to this day. He was taken from us far too soon but he still gives us food for thought, and nourishment for the soul. It's hard to say whether the speculation that he had Asperger Syndrome was accurate or not as he had no formal diagnosis - but either way he is an inspiration for me and many others who have AS.
Please dont take this wrongly- I'm actually glad you left tonebase. Looking back, the only tonebase episodes I really looked forward to and episodes I keep coming back to, are with you in it. And since you started posting here more frequently, I only have been watching this channel and not tonebase. My top favorites are with you and Bernstein and McDermott. I look forward to seeing more from you.
Damn this is a good video. I do think that while knowing the composer influences your assessment of the piece, I think it makes it more meaningful knowing something about the what the person who wrote this piece of music is like. I also very much enjoy hearing how a certain pieces detach from a composers typical style and flair, showing development of the artist.
That’s totally fair. Presumably, we become interested in a composer’s life and development only AFTER their music has independently impressed us, and of course then it’s very interesting in its own right to trace their development and the variety of music they create. I think the issue Gould is responding to is that part of us that says *because Bach or Mozart or Beethoven composed this, it must be the highest masterpiece and I’m automatically wrong to think otherwise* (which I know I’ve felt before). And the reverse is true, and maybe worse: we write off composers we haven’t heard of because we assume history didn’t select them for good reason.
Gould was right on the need to not care about others when making creative work. Then social media showed up and put a score against popularity and created an environment where homogenization and endless paraphrases (or plagiarism) became the norm for the masses of content creators
26:18 What Mr Gould really would have loved are DAW's (digital audio workstation), I can only imagine he'd be over the moon at the endless, almost instant editing capabilities.
Nice episode on Gould, Ben. I recently been listening to Ivo Pogorelic, specifically his rendition on Brahms Op 118. Would love to hear your thoughts on him.
Glenn would have certainly loved the internet of the early 90s, say. I've always imagined him having one of those old-fashioned self-made websites to upload recordings and writings, it's a perfect fit. But I'm almost certain he would detest today's internet, including most of UA-cam.
Amazing video once again, thanks so much. Glenn has always been a huge part of my life, first time I went to Toronto I didn't ask the cab driver to drop me off at my hotel but at Mount Pleasant Cemetary. There I spent half an hour looking for Gould's tombstone with his Partitas in my ears, when I found him I sat there for an hour listening to his music and thinking of him. Trivial question but when do I get those cool t-shirts ?? Thanks and hi from Paris :)
A friend with a 1200-acre ranch said she would be buried there. I ask her what the tombstone would say. She said, "it's going to say, 'I'm not here!''"
Never once have I fancied, that the interpreter of the multitudes of Bach’s preludes and fugues which cross courses occasionally within my Spotify playlist could have so beguiling and abstract a view of the idea of musical composition. Such content as is this shall always be highly appreciated on my part at least - portraying within such brevity one of the most fascinating (and erectly perverse) artists of the previous century!
In a way I hate Glenn, he was that last straw that made want to be a pianist (without his or any genius). But that's also why I love him. It enriched my life to a degree that I would not have had otherwise. So, eternal thanks Mr. Gould. And thanks Ben for this great show!
That's not the Turkish March. This is the first movement of the sonata whose third movement is the Turkish March. Well, either way, the part his is playing...he plays it ridiculously.
All very interesting, although one has to be puzzled by the background recordings of Gould playing badly. For all of his intellectual prowess, his playing often demonstrates that the essence of music is something other than intelligence.
yeah his mozart is deliberately "bad." Although I think the Turkish March actually works at his tempo. The K. 333, which he actually adores, sure doesn't sound like he adores it. Some of the other background recording though are pretty great, no? I'm thinking of the Bach Chromatic Fantasy and Art of Fugue, and the Beethoven Concerto and Sonata at the end.
@@benlawdy No complaint about the Turkish March tempo. It’s marked Allegretto, and nearly everyone ignores that and plays it way too fast. Yes, K. 333 sounds like a rigid student, but Beethoven op. 110 seems better, at least what I could hear if it. Perhaps he took it more seriously because the third movement contains two fugues.
@@clarkbowler157 Pls see my comment, above. I’ll add that his Mozart lacks warmth, character, freedom. Most of my students sound better than this. I’m not saying that Gould always sounded this poor. Sometimes he seems to have had trouble getting out of his head.
„A genius is the one most like himself.” - Thelonius Monk. I agree with both Gould and Monk. You need to stop worrying what others may think of your composition. Then you will create the greatest works of art
Thanks for this not only informative but delightful video. I confess to feeling envious of Tim Page and any other recipients of middle of the night calls from Glenn Gould! Your video accurately describes exactly what I always loved about Gould’s artistry and approach to “thinking” about music. His many vitriolic detractors just don’t get it. And I don’t get them!
insightful video about Gould that considers aspects of his personality in more depth and nuanced way. Very interesting opinions of him even if one disagrees. For example for me improvisation should have a stronger emphasis in the education, especially for becoming composers. All of the greats were capable improvisers Bach Beethoven Mozart, Schumann Chopin Liszt etc.. In contrast Gould only wrote his String quartett, maybe some "preformulated" Improvisation would have helped him to losen up and compose more. He to me seems a bit to controlled and wanting to control to many things, which i think stands in the way of creativity and composition.
I agree about improvisation, and I’ve produced videos for tonebase with some really phenomenal historical improvisers like Noam Sivan who really make the case for the liberating aspects of improvisation. And I don’t think Gould would have disagreed that composers especially of the 18th century failed their skill for premeditated composition by first learning how to improvise within a given tonal language. Gould here is reacting to what happens when improvisation ends up thoroughly defining your musical practice, which is what he thinks happened to late Mozart - where what’s written down tends to follow more formulaic sequences derived from improvisatory techniques rather than responding to the inner development of the melodic and harmonic material in the music itself. Another way of thinking of it is this: imagine someone who learned how to improvise in the style of Shakespeare (I’ve seen this done before, and it’s pretty amazing actually). Even if they’re incredibly skilled, would you expect what comes out of their mouths to be equal to what Shakespeare achieved in his composed sonnets?
(Having said that, thank you for your comment and I do agree Gould could have stood to loosen up a bit and just “jam” at the piano… although I can’t imagine it haha)
@@benlawdy thank you for explaining it more in depth. I wasnt so sure about how to understand it in the video. Your explanation makes sense also by considering Goulds personality and way of communicating, which can be easily misunderstood. When he states he doesnt prefer romantic composers, he is still capable of playing Richard Strauss, Wagner Brahms etc. which he enjoys a lot. It seems his somtimes "provocative" statements shouldnt be taken to literally. In that sense he might enjoy some improvisation, but for him it maybe would come after carefully planning and structuring the composition. Are there any tapes of him improvising on themes ? maybe he even played some Jazz like Friedrich Gulda another contradictory figure =)
One would think that the improvisation throne has now long enough been passed over to and occupied by jazz players that realisation of this fact might have penetrated the rarefied bubble of snobbery of the "serious" music world. Apparently not...
@@alienígena-e1p to be fair, Gould’s comments on that front are 60 years old. I think that snobbery has been largely transcended. But it’s still worth considering the more interesting critiques of improvisation like Gould’s, which I feel are less about rank snobbery than about asserting a particular vision of human freedom.
@@jackburgess8579 and yet you made it all the way through? You must have noticed then that the focus of this video wasn’t on analyzing any particular Gould recording, but on analyzing the ideas expressed in the private phone call. If you’d like to listen to Gould all of his recordings are right here on UA-cam. There are better things to save your outrage for ;)
@@benlawdy I don't understand how you can think that using serious music as background music is ever ok. It is hugely distracting and it condones, or even encourages, poor listening habits and superficial attitudes.
@@jackburgess8579 interesting point. I guess I wouldn’t entirely agree that it’s just background music - yes it’s partly that, but the music was in every case directly relevant to the ideas being discussed in the foreground. It’s not like I just pulled random Gould recordings and slapped them down. As for encouraging poor habits and superficial attitudes towards listening to serious music, the world we live in is already infinitely more responsible for that than this channel, which is dedicated to getting people to listen more critically - these aren’t only my own intentions but seem corroborated by many listeners in the comments section. I can’t please everyone though, and I respect your opinion. I’m someone who hates when films try to manipulate my emotions with a score in lieu of a decent script, and who hates when classical music is what’s played in kitschy upscale cafes. But, in contrast, I would hope and even expect that many who listen to - say - the dialogue about Bach or Strauss’s late music will now have reason to go listen to it after watching this video, which is not the same as when music is just used as decorative wallpaper.
Well I'm not sure how much I agree with Gould in general, but we certainly agree on art valuation! A picture should stand on its own merit, signed or unsigned, with or without provenance. If someone can paint a picture that an expert can't tell isn't a Vermeer, why is it worth any less? Just because it's not been around as long?
26:36 i dIDnT kNow GlEnn gOUlD HAs yoUTuBe ChAnNel btw this is awesome work, i never seen video like this that 'explain' the man Glenn gould. thank you for sharing
A great show and I thoroughly enjoyed. it. However, for future reference "ducats" is pronounced "DUCK-ets". "due-KHAT" is a villain in the Star Trek universe.
I don't agree with Gould's outrageous accusation that Chopin and Rachmaninoff were not good composers. My Tchaikovsky and Beethoven-linage piano teacher rom Kissin's old school (she is a student of Liberman, who was a student of Nikolaev who had both Beethoven and Tchaikovsky in his lineage) certainly doesn't think Chopin or Rachmaninoff were 'not good composers'. I'd prefer also to go with what Horowitz says about Rachmaninoff: 'I think he was one of the great composers'. And about Chopin: 'each of his mazurkas is better then the last one'. or indeed what Rachmaninoff says about Chopin 'he is much more modern than even today's most contemporary composers'.But, hang on, is it even right to compare Chopin and Rachmaninoff with that titan of composers - Mr Gould? Why the Pole and the Russian simply shrivel beneath the glaring genius of Gould's (completely worthless and forgotten) compositions.
Don’t worry, almost nobody agrees with Gould that Chopin was a bad composer. But we can agree with Gould that, you shouldn’t care what Gould thinks about Chopin - or anyone in the lineage you cite for that matter. You should decide what you think of Chopin’s works through your own deep engagement with them. That’s the point.
@@benlawdy I stopped listening to ANY GLENN GOULD many years ago when I discovered the unlimited richness of dozens of others. In fact, I came to say exactly that.
@@benlawdy Yes -Although I do frankly take seriously what he has to say. I like the fact that he apparently liked a Strauss piece more than any other. Because that obviously suggests he wasn't just despising any music after, say, Beethoven. I have never been able to play Chopin - much the most difficult composer (maybe after Mozart). Here for instance is my best butchering of his Polonaise 'Heroic': ua-cam.com/video/GP-Xk6Vk4yE/v-deo.html and here is my own attempt at a the composition of a 'Polonaise': ua-cam.com/video/NDnJNk17q8E/v-deo.html
At 19:17, in the recording of the third movement to Beethoven's 3rd Concerto, were those coins falling on the ground? lol, I remember hearing this in the recording previously.
When Glenn Gould didn't get along with a piece, he blamed the composer. For example, he interpreted a piano concerto by Mozart in a very mindless way and then blamed the composer.
As a clairvoyant 😉, I have a comment of Glenn Gould au bout du fil, about your video : « Thank you, thank you, and thank you (speaking contrapuntally, of course). Mr. Laude, you are undoubtedly the first person I've heard express themselves so clearly and eruditely about Glenn Gould. It's quite remarkable, really. To hear Mr. Gould's voice is indeed an enrichment. Though I must say, I've always found my own voice to be rather grating - a sort of nasally drone, wouldn't you agree? But then again, perhaps that's precisely why it's so captivating. It's the imperfections, you see, that make a performance truly human. I do hope you'll forgive my somewhat circuitous manner of speech. You'll find that my thoughts, much like my interpretations of Bach, tend to weave in and out, creating a tapestry of ideas that may seem disparate at first, but ultimately converge into a cohesive whole. It's all about the counterpoint, you understand - in music, in speech, in life itself. But I digress. Your astute observations about my work are truly appreciated. It's refreshing to encounter someone who can penetrate the layers of complexity and emerge with such clarity. Bravo, Mr. Laude. Bravo indeed. ».
@@benlawdy No idea. He wrote an autobiography in 2021 `Humphrey Burton: In My Own Time: An Autobiography`. Maybe through the publisher Boydell and Brewer we could learn more?
@@benlawdy Oh definitely not in a bad way. It was really cool and made me realize just how much thought goes into interviews and videos like this. by the way I love what you do on this channel and with tonebase. Thanks for the wonderful content.
@@timothyhayes8128 thank you! These are a lot of work, and tbh I’m a bit too prone to long scripted essays. This vid was originally supposed to be 10 minutes. The channel (and my health!) would benefit from more videos of shorter length!
@@benlawdy haha well either way, we really appreciate the hard work you put in to them. I personally take any free time I have to practice the piano. Which by the way You're still better at Pathetique than me. (I'm working on it though.) Thanks again
I like Glenn Gould for many reasons and dislike him for many reasons (mostly musical, because I don’t really know that much about him as a person). But imagine the level of narcissism you have to have to inconvenience someone by waking them up in the middle of their sleep for your own pleasure (and do this habitually). Either that, or he was “on the spectrum,” as they say nowadays. It’s the only way I can explain this. It’s like something Sheldon (from the Big Bang Theory) would do.
@@mhermarckarakouzian8899 I believe he was on the spectrum, yes. Definitely no ill intent. And most people were flattered to receive the calls - but also I don’t imagine he knew this and was taking advantage of his celebrity. Like Tim Page said, he was like a child at a slumber party wanting to stay up all night with his friends. Hard to separate that side of him from his incredible artistic nonconformity, so I guess it’s a trade off. Artists can be much bigger selfish divas than Gould, who was actually quite modest and unassuming - maybe *too* unassuming.
I strongly disagree with the points about improvisation. Improvisation is not a collection of cliches thrown together in sound and fury signifying nothing. It's the end result of countless hours of preparation, deep insight into the nature of a piece, and then the ability to let all of that go in favor of expression in the moment. Gould is rather like the recent AI chatbots that have sprung up. He speaks with great confidence and facility, but with a lack of substance beyond his own preferences and opinions. While I don't agree with Seymour Bernstein's opinion of him, I do think that a good deal of the mystique revolving around Gould comes from a cult of personality more than anything else. He's a smart, talented guy, but he's often simply wrong.
@@arryaxx263 I agree that’s the ideal of improvisation. And also improvisation is/should be an important part of any musician’s foundation. It’s unfortunate that it was lost from classical training, and I support the new wave of advocates to resurrect it (Noam Sivan being the most impressive). Gould was partly reacting to developments in the 60s/70s where indeterminacy and chance procedures were being incorporated into composition. That’s not the same as improvisation, but he saw it as part of a general threat to actually making sense. Also, I mentioned you articulated an ideal - wouldn’t you say that the actual practice of improvisation often ends in recycled cliches? Even when you’re “letting it all go,” that doesn’t guarantee you’re speaking originally or coherently for others to appreciate. My critique of Gould would be more about his lack of concern with music education more broadly (although I remind myself it relatively healthy and better funded at the time). Developing musical fluency - ie improvisation - should be at the heart of it, as I mentioned. But at the same time, there is a distinction most performing artists/musicians accept between improvised and planned performance. Both can be done at a high level, but the best improv troupe could not spontaneously come up with a drama on par with a skilled playwright. As for a cult of personality, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, it’s true: Gould has a lot of followers who buy into the persona. But ironically, many Gould fans are unaware of his beliefs and are instead just buying into his mystique. I think the point to be made is one Gould makes himself, and I discuss in the video: his identity shouldn’t matter so much as his ideas and his work. And on that front, I think there was plenty of substance and coherence to Gould’s aesthetic practice - he’s certainly much more thoughtful than most performing musicians. And his being wrong about lots of things, well: show me a complex, world-historical artist or thinker who wasn’t.
Psychoanalytically, it’s normal to speak of “finding interpretive possibilities not wholly realized even by the composer.” Great art is interpretively inexhaustible. And a Rorschach test is meant to probe the psyche of the viewer, not of the guy who made the inkblots.
@@rg3388 right, and I think most forks at artistic interpretation have had this moment of enlightenment. Except classical music, which still lags behind in superstition
I think someone can be modest and be a narcissist too (but again, I’m not trying to push the narrative that he was). The main reason I commented was that I also (very often) get a strong “appetite” at, say, 1am and start to listen to certain pieces or play or compose. The passion and energy I get turns into an urge to want share my thoughts with someone. So I found that midnight urge very relatable. But I would never wake someone up for this. I get that it’s unbearable, because (and this is gonna sound weird, but) I “talk to myself” instead (in my own head.. pretending there’s another person there). Like who do I think I am that someone would be so interested in what I have to say that they wouldn’t mind being woken up to hear it? Anyways. That’s why I commented lol
@@mhermarckarakouzian8899 I feel you. Glenn kept odd hours, which is not that strange for musicians, although maybe a bit extreme (waking up mid afternoon, going to sleep after dawn). And most of his interlocutors were people in music/the arts. Midnight ain’t THAT late for us. I wonder what poor Glenn would have done in today’s age when people keep their phones silent at night
Lol he would’ve shown up at their doorstep. Thanks for replying btw. Big fan. I’m happy I found your channel (after noticing your absence on tonebase, I saw a comment there saying that you got your own channel). Wishing you many many more followers!
@@dylanzwering2255 I love me some Schumann, but I think it’s true that he didn’t write well for the piano. Also I think Gould undervalues Schumann’s polyphony, which is often nuanced and beautiful. But hey - everyone plays the composers Gould dislikes, so I’m glad he has the weird tastes that he does.
One can dislike Chopin, but I can't agree with the statement that he is a bad composer. I didn't know the meaning of "homophonic" and I just found a definition on Google, so I might be wrong on the technical side. My thought is that the piano is objectively neither strictly contrapuntal nor homophonic; it's actually both. It should depend on the composer's or pianist's feelings, taste, and culture how the piano is used. And I am not sure that the statement "for Chopin, the piano is a homophonic instrument" is 100% correct. It sounds too absolute, as if there were no changes or differences between Chopin's compositions, and as if they were always the product of a static vision about the piano and music (which is impossible, given that people's perspectives change over time). As far as I remember, there is a contrapuntal side in Chopin. Even though it is not as prominent as in Bach, it is still an important side that gives the music depth. Gould's statement sounds like an oversimplification. In front of the rigid statement of Gould, Chopin looks like a much more versatile and "free" composer.
I agree with him on most, but not on the central idea of his that context doesn't matter - it verry much matters to me who, what and in what conditions produced a work of art. Two identical paintings, to me, may have completely different reactions depending on all the meaning behind them
On one side I strangely sympathize with Gould's preference to play music he doesn't like - and playing it in a way you notice how much he dislikes it. On the other side I wonder why his genius recordings of Scriabin Sonatas and Haydn Sonatas are not mentioned anywhere. What if Gould just played the music he liked and people were amazed of THESE recordings...
the part about Gould not liking all Bach was really interesting, could you point me in the direction of any sources where he speaks more critically of Bach in a negative way? Google is of course useless lately for anything nuanced like that
@@frankrogers4386 just off the top of my head, Gould’s critique of many of Bach’s works is well documented - several preludes (and some fugues) from the WTC, the more “skittish” toccatas from the Goldberg variations, and here in this link very explicitly the chromatic fantasy and fugue and the Italian concerto: ua-cam.com/video/F3y6rsHFc2g/v-deo.htmlsi=0Zxm1249REm4IL-j
Check out the “Art of the fugue” documentary by Bruno monsaingeon (about an hour long). Gould talks about how he likes some preludes and some fugues, but rarely finds a pair he think works together organically.
“Hedonistic pursuit of improvisation as a way of life.” I need to memorize this quote. Gould probably hated American music and American way of thinking.
Has Gould withstand time? The trouble with not caring about others is obvious. He seems like an acute case of naval gazing. I apply the hyper critical attitude to him that he applies to others.
I just smashed the dislike button. In the same way Gould would have objected to someone wittering in his ear about Bach and Mozart and Schumann while he's trying to enjoy half an hour's concert, I found pretty well all the spoken content of this impenetrable because of the wallpapering of music from end to end. I'm apparently rather unusual in this, but I'm applying one idea I did manage to pick up, of not caring what anyone else thinks. And yes, of course, I tried silencing my speakers and putting subtitles on, which works to a degree, a bit like dealing with the wittering fool behind me by putting headphones on with deafening white noise and just watching the pianist's fingers. I look forward to listening to the phonecall, though, assuming one of them isn't in a nightclub at the time.
I love Gould while completely disagreeing with him on many issues, including the argument about improvisation, which you Ben seem to defend with the analogy about how this very video essay is scripted. It seems you imply that the video is significant because it was scripted and that you couldn't just sit in front of a camera and start talking without a script and ever say anything deep and meaningful... which of course is completely untrue. Hundreds of people make video essays which have no script and are of immense value. And withour going further, the very act of human conversation is the greatest example of improvisation through language. If Gould's argument was true, we would all have to write down every single thing we're going to say, for it to ever have any meaning, or use, or depth. So not only is improvisation useful, it is many times necessary. But again, while I will vehemently disagree with Gould on many issues, I still love his playing and his eccentric personality and I consider him a great artist.
@@mrpossibilities but if I sat down and just started talking, it would need to be significantly edited and I would have wished I said a number of things in a different way, and there would be more holes in the logic. Of course I agree about the incredible creativity embodied just in simple speech acts and in musical improvisation (see other comment threads where I defend the importance of improvisation), but at the same time, many of the greatest human achievements - artistic or otherwise - arguably are not improvised, but carefully planned. Nobody writing a scholarly essay or a sonnet or a sonata would just capture their first improvised take - maybe they’d begin that way if they’re very talented, but then they would become their own editors and craft exactly the the thing they want to communicate. This is especially true if you’re trying to build a complex argument with many moving parts, and in the same way, it’s true when the greatest composers (who were also fantastic improvisers) write down their best pieces.
Hey Ben - love this series! I would push back on the idea that the greatest human achievements are not improvisatory, since extraordinary actions have an element of exploration, of seizing opportunity, of acting in the face of uncertainty. Not that Gould’s ideas are incoherent - he seems to consistently view musical works as objects, and be dismissive of music as action, process, or interaction.
@@jaurisova6 is this THE David Stone? What’s up man! Thanks for watching and I’m flattered you dig the series. Your point is well taken. I do feel like when I’m listening to Gould (at his best) that it feels anything but planned, even when he’s set up a strict pulse and is following some interpretive rule he’s set for himself, the music sounds almost more alive, more spontaneous - like it’s living an breathing on its own and making decisions without some outside force steering it this way or that way. He is able to manifest the academic notion of musical autonomy in actually sound. I think that was Gould’s goal, and it’s ironic that he achieve it through calculation - but at the same time, when he’s playing in the moment, it’s not some cold, premeditated act of execution, but he’s really possessed by the music. It seems like he’s reacting to the uncertainties in real time and genuinely exploring, and that’s communicated to the listener. But it’s as if he’s programmed a simulated world for us to live inside of that’s totally determined by an invisible code but feels undetermined. And I think the best composed music is like this too. I don’t want to put down improvisation and the incredible achievements they are possible in the face of much more uncertainty there, but I’m partial to planning because it’s kind of the most distinctly human thing we’ve got - the ability to plan ahead and design elegant solutions to complex problems - and whether in science or art, it seems like the achievements that are most timeless are the ones that have this property. On the other hand, I could just be projecting my own biases because I suck at improvisation…
@@benlawdy Yep, it’s me! Yeah, I really do love this series and the high-quality conversation it’s sparking. I have a bad memory of taking goulds side in a discussion that got pretty heated with a jazz major in college - improvisation is great, I said, but won’t the processes of editing and composition always improve that raw material? He took it very personally, so maybe that’s affected my current opinion! There’s so much to say on the topic, so just to note one more thing - I find that improvisation can generate textures that are difficult, if not impossible to notate with any fidelity. Georges Sand claimed that Chopin’s compositions were kind of approximations of much more vivid improvisations. The process of composition entails forcing a really rich multidimensional activity into a storage/communication channel that just will never carry the entire musical “thing”. But one of Gould’s gifts, like you say, was to resurrect and revivify the compressed and lossy messages in 18th century scores, and make it sound like an improvisation just as much as an actor does the same with simple text.
@@jaurisova6 Chopin is probably the right figure to consider in this conversation, although Gould wouldn’t agree, precisely because he seemed to embody both sides as you alluded to. His notated compositions often began as improvisations, and many of the things that make them singularly beautiful surely depended on that ineffable, impulsive moment of creation at the keyboard. But then what did he go and do? He turned into a Beethovenian premeditator of every note, crafting the piece into a monument for posterity. He even allegedly said about Liszt adding embellishments in one of his nocturnes “keep your pigs out of my garden” (I heard Garrick Ohlsson say this, but have had trouble sourcing it.) And surely Gould has a bit of that as well - his recording sessions were often just exercises in seeing how many different ways he could play a passage, which is an improvisatory impulse, and only after the fact stitching the whole performance together in a coherent way. And speaking of Gould and jazz, isn’t it ironic so many jazz players admire Gould, and how much overlap there is between Gould’s flat handed/slappy direct technique and the kind of chops you often see great jazz improvisers carry? Although they might be opposites in terms of aesthetics, they’re strikingly similar in terms of a commitment to directly communicating a sound world with listeners. Something most of us in the classical world could learn a lot from. Great to catch up with you on UA-cam! Maybe again some time in the physical world.
@@benlawdy Yeah - although I admit it was solely because of Gould's performance of Beethoven's op. 126 no. 3 (on yt - he does much posturing and 'conducting with his spare hand) that I learnt this miniature miracle. I wish I still played it (I cannot sight-read). It's that last bit of number 3 a la op 111 or op 106 that I particularly loved playing. And in general I like his eroica variations, plus I had a cd of him playing Handel suites for harpsichord. But I don't recall that. Did you like your 'double' (sorry)?
@@militaryandemergencyservic3286 I play op126 and yes the heavenly last section of #3 is the highlight. I also love #4, which is the only piece Beethoven ever composed in B minor. Didn’t understand your last question.
@@benlawdy how fascinating. i don't actually like the loud ones in the set. I like 3 and i like number 5 also and 6 and 1. Basically all the quiet ones.
@@benlawdy that lovely last section is indeed lovely. Reminds me of his quartet no 12 with that similarly 'heavenly country jig/gigue' part. Btw you must have heard Seymour Bernstein say how Czerny had said Beethoven could hear op 111 with an ear trumpet? So I guess op 126, too (otherwise, how he could hear the delicacy of that end of no3 is beyond me - well. obviously in his head i guess). The last question was about the guy I found on a Times Radio video who looks uncannily similar to you. Did you not see it? it's the guy speaking from1:06 on this: ua-cam.com/video/u3bJodftgGM/v-deo.html And why don''t you want Tiffany Poon on your channel, or Tone base? Is she not well-known enough? I went to a concert of hers in London recently and was very, very impressed. Fantastic playing. I'll post the part of his e flat quartet when I find it...from 27:52 on this video (I once met Gunter Pilcher the violinist, after they did Schubert's great g major quartet in Paris in about 2008) -ua-cam.com/video/JVVdMzv02s8/v-deo.html
There was plenty of Strauss and some Schoenberg in this video, but no Stravinsky whatsoever. Would have loved to hear “Sacre du Printemps” in Stravinsky’s own transcription for four-hands that he himself performed together with Claude Debussy. That said, the only partner Gould would have accepted might be his monozygotic twin. 🤔
@@achenarmyst2156 Gould wasn’t the biggest Stravinsky fan - although who knows what he thought of his late music. If he had come around to the rite of spring and lived long enough, he would have simply performed the four hand version with himself on a Yamaha disklavier
I had not known of the Glenn Gould Foundation until now so thanks for the heads up. Can’t believe all the magazine issues are freely downloadable!
So endlessly inspired by your work. The video essay genre is already so dear to me, and you seem to carry it with the full awareness of its capacities, with the uninhibited intellectual curiosity the video essay as a format allows you to entertain. AND you choose as your subject matter an interrogation into the guiding philosophy of one of my favorite artists and thinkers of all time. Thank you so, so much for this.
I appreciate this! I agree about video essays and am inspired by others who’ve done it so well in other subject areas. And it’s because there’s few to none that explore topics in the world of classical music/piano that I’m happy to be contributing to fill the void (now if only I can make a few ~10 minute videos instead of the usual half hour, I could produce on a wider array of topics).
@@benlawdyso basically the same thing Schumann did back then with Florestan, Eusebius and Raro
@@Viktorvelat95 I think you meant to reply to the other comment about imagining Gould’s alter egos having their own UA-cam channels, but yes! Just like that.
I sometimes imagine Gould creating multiple UA-cam channels -- one for himself, and others for some of the alter-egos that popped up in several of his radio programs....
Haha that’s right. He would have had a whole network of UA-cam to be channels produced by himself and his alter egos/characters, and they’d all be trashing each other every day
goddd rip glenn you would've loved modern technology.. well some of it for sure.
@@benlawdyimagine the click bait thumbnails 🤣
Glenn Gould breaths, Seymour: " W h y i s y o u r w h o l e e x i s t e n s s u c h a t r a v e s t y t o m u s i c"
i didnt like him that much until i listened to his bach preludes fughettas and fugues album
@@AttitudeIndicatorhis Bach is amazing. Especially the well tempered clavier. But I can't listen to his Beethoven
It’s nice to hear an opposing view on his interpretations.
What is wrong with his Beethoven Piano Concerto known as The Emperor?
@@MarilynCrosbie idk, I love it personally, and I do enjoy his Beethoven from time to time
What an absolutely brilliant discussion about Gould by people who understand what he was doing. Bravo, Ben. Your work is exciting and refreshing. Please keep them coming! I have hope for future Gouldians that they will better understand and appreciate Glenn because of content like this.
12:20 Why yes, Mr. Laude. We do indeed have wonderful comments in this channel because we're listening to a wonderful human ❤
Best video so far... congrats!
Hey Ben, one pianist that I particularly adore is Richter, he hasnt really been mentioned on your channel (or tonebase) and I would love to see you make a video about him. Great video!
Absolutely - on the tonebase premium app there’s a segment where I talk with manny ax about richter. But it’s past time that I spotlight him in a YT vid.
I was friends with one of Gould’s psychiatrist/musical friends. I would go to his place to feed the cats when he was out, and often Gould would phone at those times. This was pre-answering machine days, so I’d take the call. Thus I had the repeated redoubtable pleasure to talk to him. I never told him that I was not a fan of his playing, not then, not now.
Oh my gouldness! What an awesome video!
another great video about gould! keep it up ben, your videos make the classical world of piano that much more fun to learn about.
'I'll never play Chopin again." Fred will be pleased, I assure you.
GG ventured into the musical world in a way no one else had done. Apart from his musical interpretations, he should be admired for his brilliance and confidence.
The most remarkable thing about Gould is that his mind, his spirit, his legacy - all continue to be a fountain of wonder and inspiration for us to this day. He was taken from us far too soon but he still gives us food for thought, and nourishment for the soul.
It's hard to say whether the speculation that he had Asperger Syndrome was accurate or not as he had no formal diagnosis - but either way he is an inspiration for me and many others who have AS.
Thanks so much for this, Ben!
Thanks for being part of it!! Wish we could all listen to the other ~24 hours of phone calls you had with Glenn following this one.
14:36 i just love how much fun you're having with these videos, please never stop making these
Please dont take this wrongly- I'm actually glad you left tonebase. Looking back, the only tonebase episodes I really looked forward to and episodes I keep coming back to, are with you in it. And since you started posting here more frequently, I only have been watching this channel and not tonebase. My top favorites are with you and Bernstein and McDermott. I look forward to seeing more from you.
Thank you for your comment. By the way, I've got videos in the pipeline of that feature both Bernstein and McDermott - stay tuned!
Damn this is a good video. I do think that while knowing the composer influences your assessment of the piece, I think it makes it more meaningful knowing something about the what the person who wrote this piece of music is like. I also very much enjoy hearing how a certain pieces detach from a composers typical style and flair, showing development of the artist.
That’s totally fair. Presumably, we become interested in a composer’s life and development only AFTER their music has independently impressed us, and of course then it’s very interesting in its own right to trace their development and the variety of music they create. I think the issue Gould is responding to is that part of us that says *because Bach or Mozart or Beethoven composed this, it must be the highest masterpiece and I’m automatically wrong to think
otherwise* (which I know I’ve felt before). And the reverse is true, and maybe worse: we write off composers we haven’t heard of because we assume history didn’t select them for good reason.
This is awesome, thank you so much for sharing!!
Bravo! Wonderful video and great work bringing Gould to the masses :)
This is a well-composed video essay. Thanks, Ben.
Appreciate Ben's 'Gouldian' approach to planning and framing the melodies and counter melodies of his argument here.
A very suitable tribute!
THE T-SHIRT!!!!
Awesome video as always Ben, please keep them coming!
To learn that about his personnality makes him way more sympathetic to me !
Subscribed! What a great channel, thank you! 🇨🇦
Gould was right on the need to not care about others when making creative work. Then social media showed up and put a score against popularity and created an environment where homogenization and endless paraphrases (or plagiarism) became the norm for the masses of content creators
26:18 What Mr Gould really would have loved are DAW's (digital audio workstation), I can only imagine he'd be over the moon at the endless, almost instant editing capabilities.
@@scottrader6411 oh yeah, he would have been a kid in a candy store with a DAW
what a wonderful film. thank you!
Thank you for championing the wonderful Glenn Gould's genious.
Nice episode on Gould, Ben. I recently been listening to Ivo Pogorelic, specifically his rendition on Brahms Op 118. Would love to hear your thoughts on him.
Glenn would have certainly loved the internet of the early 90s, say. I've always imagined him having one of those old-fashioned self-made websites to upload recordings and writings, it's a perfect fit. But I'm almost certain he would detest today's internet, including most of UA-cam.
This video is so full of information I broke a capillary just thinking about it !
If I can tell Glenn Gould just one thing, I'd tell him that I love his unique interpretation of the Chopin b-minor sonata and think it's amazing.
Amazing video once again, thanks so much. Glenn has always been a huge part of my life, first time I went to Toronto I didn't ask the cab driver to drop me off at my hotel but at Mount Pleasant Cemetary. There I spent half an hour looking for Gould's tombstone with his Partitas in my ears, when I found him I sat there for an hour listening to his music and thinking of him. Trivial question but when do I get those cool t-shirts ?? Thanks and hi from Paris :)
A friend with a 1200-acre ranch said she would be buried there. I ask her what the tombstone would say. She said, "it's going to say, 'I'm not here!''"
Definitely starting to have more appreciation and understanding of Gould thanks to your videos. Very well put together piece Ben! ❤
Never once have I fancied, that the interpreter of the multitudes of Bach’s preludes and fugues which cross courses occasionally within my Spotify playlist could have so beguiling and abstract a view of the idea of musical composition. Such content as is this shall always be highly appreciated on my part at least - portraying within such brevity one of the most fascinating (and erectly perverse) artists of the previous century!
In a way I hate Glenn, he was that last straw that made want to be a pianist (without his or any genius). But that's also why I love him. It enriched my life to a degree that I would not have had otherwise. So, eternal thanks Mr. Gould. And thanks Ben for this great show!
@@ZuckermannTV I can relate!
Just brilliant, Ben.
That was a fun video. Cracks me up his comments on Chopin and Rachmaninoff.
That Turkish March recording in the background at the beginning... 😂
It sounded like a Turkish Walk lol
Wim Winters tempo
@@marcorvalIdea of the North? 😉
That's not the Turkish March. This is the first movement of the sonata whose third movement is the Turkish March. Well, either way, the part his is playing...he plays it ridiculously.
@@bortbort1 ha, thank you for the clarification!
All very interesting, although one has to be puzzled by the background recordings of Gould playing badly. For all of his intellectual prowess, his playing often demonstrates that the essence of music is something other than intelligence.
yeah his mozart is deliberately "bad." Although I think the Turkish March actually works at his tempo. The K. 333, which he actually adores, sure doesn't sound like he adores it.
Some of the other background recording though are pretty great, no? I'm thinking of the Bach Chromatic Fantasy and Art of Fugue, and the Beethoven Concerto and Sonata at the end.
@@benlawdy No complaint about the Turkish March tempo. It’s marked Allegretto, and nearly everyone ignores that and plays it way too fast. Yes, K. 333 sounds like a rigid student, but Beethoven op. 110 seems better, at least what I could hear if it. Perhaps he took it more seriously because the third movement contains two fugues.
@@benlawdythe Turkish March at that tempo actually feels like mental sorbet after so many versions at breakneck speed.
On what basis do you call the playing "bad"?
@@clarkbowler157 Pls see my comment, above. I’ll add that his Mozart lacks warmth, character, freedom. Most of my students sound better than this. I’m not saying that Gould always sounded this poor. Sometimes he seems to have had trouble getting out of his head.
Masterpiece video
Great video!
you should do pogorelich next! great video as always. thank you
@@faqenz3902 I will get to him! Doing a lot around the Chopin competition over the next year and planning on a video about the 1980 competition
„A genius is the one most like himself.” - Thelonius Monk. I agree with both Gould and Monk. You need to stop worrying what others may think of your composition. Then you will create the greatest works of art
... or will NOT create 😛
Thanks for this not only informative but delightful video. I confess to feeling envious of Tim Page and any other recipients of middle of the night calls from Glenn Gould!
Your video accurately describes exactly what I always loved about Gould’s artistry and approach to “thinking” about music. His many vitriolic detractors just don’t get it. And I don’t get them!
insightful video about Gould that considers aspects of his personality in more depth and nuanced way. Very interesting opinions of him even if one disagrees. For example for me improvisation should have a stronger emphasis in the education, especially for becoming composers. All of the greats were capable improvisers Bach Beethoven Mozart, Schumann Chopin Liszt etc.. In contrast Gould only wrote his String quartett, maybe some "preformulated" Improvisation would have helped him to losen up and compose more. He to me seems a bit to controlled and wanting to control to many things, which i think stands in the way of creativity and composition.
I agree about improvisation, and I’ve produced videos for tonebase with some really phenomenal historical improvisers like Noam Sivan who really make the case for the liberating aspects of improvisation. And I don’t think Gould would have disagreed that composers especially of the 18th century failed their skill for premeditated composition by first learning how to improvise within a given tonal language. Gould here is reacting to what happens when improvisation ends up thoroughly defining your musical practice, which is what he thinks happened to late Mozart - where what’s written down tends to follow more formulaic sequences derived from improvisatory techniques rather than responding to the inner development of the melodic and harmonic material in the music itself.
Another way of thinking of it is this: imagine someone who learned how to improvise in the style of Shakespeare (I’ve seen this done before, and it’s pretty amazing actually). Even if they’re incredibly skilled, would you expect what comes out of their mouths to be equal to what Shakespeare achieved in his composed sonnets?
(Having said that, thank you for your comment and I do agree Gould could have stood to loosen up a bit and just “jam” at the piano… although I can’t imagine it haha)
@@benlawdy thank you for explaining it more in depth. I wasnt so sure about how to understand it in the video. Your explanation makes sense also by considering Goulds personality and way of communicating, which can be easily misunderstood. When he states he doesnt prefer romantic composers, he is still capable of playing Richard Strauss, Wagner Brahms etc. which he enjoys a lot. It seems his somtimes "provocative" statements shouldnt be taken to literally. In that sense he might enjoy some improvisation, but for him it maybe would come after carefully planning and structuring the composition. Are there any tapes of him improvising on themes ? maybe he even played some Jazz like Friedrich Gulda another contradictory figure =)
One would think that the improvisation throne has now long enough been passed over to and occupied by jazz players that realisation of this fact might have penetrated the rarefied bubble of snobbery of the "serious" music world. Apparently not...
@@alienígena-e1p to be fair, Gould’s comments on that front are 60 years old. I think that snobbery has been largely transcended. But it’s still worth considering the more interesting critiques of improvisation like Gould’s, which I feel are less about rank snobbery than about asserting a particular vision of human freedom.
Very Nice vídeo!!👏👏👏
He was the absolute best of the best. He understood so much and wanted to share it all. I'm glad he managed to share as much as he did.
Oh dear.
Chopin is not for machines.
Thanks!
Thank you!
nice tshirt by the way😂
@@bartikoks if Gould were still alive, he might try to sit on me
25 minutes of Gould as background music.
Unbelievable and outrageous.
@@jackburgess8579 and yet you made it all the way through? You must have noticed then that the focus of this video wasn’t on analyzing any particular Gould recording, but on analyzing the ideas expressed in the private phone call. If you’d like to listen to Gould all of his recordings are right here on UA-cam. There are better things to save your outrage for ;)
@@benlawdy
I don't understand how you can think that using serious music as background music is ever ok.
It is hugely distracting and it condones, or even encourages, poor listening habits and superficial attitudes.
@@jackburgess8579 interesting point. I guess I wouldn’t entirely agree that it’s just background music - yes it’s partly that, but the music was in every case directly relevant to the ideas being discussed in the foreground. It’s not like I just pulled random Gould recordings and slapped them down. As for encouraging poor habits and superficial attitudes towards listening to serious music, the world we live in is already infinitely more responsible for that than this channel, which is dedicated to getting people to listen more critically - these aren’t only my own intentions but seem corroborated by many listeners in the comments section. I can’t please everyone though, and I respect your opinion. I’m someone who hates when films try to manipulate my emotions with a score in lieu of a decent script, and who hates when classical music is what’s played in kitschy upscale cafes. But, in contrast, I would hope and even expect that many who listen to - say - the dialogue about Bach or Strauss’s late music will now have reason to go listen to it after watching this video, which is not the same as when music is just used as decorative wallpaper.
Isn't that, especially in this context, kind of like saying "I wish the alto voice wasn't there; it obscures the tenor."?
@@benlawdyI did not. I turned it off as soon as I realized the distracting background Gould will not let me focus on what people were saying.
17:23 reminds me of the one quote from Tár that goes something like “can you separate the art from the artist?”
Well I'm not sure how much I agree with Gould in general, but we certainly agree on art valuation! A picture should stand on its own merit, signed or unsigned, with or without provenance. If someone can paint a picture that an expert can't tell isn't a Vermeer, why is it worth any less? Just because it's not been around as long?
26:36 i dIDnT kNow GlEnn gOUlD HAs yoUTuBe ChAnNel
btw this is awesome work, i never seen video like this that 'explain' the man Glenn gould. thank you for sharing
Nice Gouldian counterpoint with the Mozart playing at same time as your open.
A great show and I thoroughly enjoyed. it. However, for future reference "ducats" is pronounced "DUCK-ets". "due-KHAT" is a villain in the Star Trek universe.
Gould tried something different, which I admire. It didn’t work, but kudos for trying.
Glenn Gould is the most interesting man in the classical world. ❤
He's the Bobby Fischer of piano players
I don't agree with Gould's outrageous accusation that Chopin and Rachmaninoff were not good composers. My Tchaikovsky and Beethoven-linage piano teacher rom Kissin's old school (she is a student of Liberman, who was a student of Nikolaev who had both Beethoven and Tchaikovsky in his lineage) certainly doesn't think Chopin or Rachmaninoff were 'not good composers'. I'd prefer also to go with what Horowitz says about Rachmaninoff: 'I think he was one of the great composers'. And about Chopin: 'each of his mazurkas is better then the last one'. or indeed what Rachmaninoff says about Chopin 'he is much more modern than even today's most contemporary composers'.But, hang on, is it even right to compare Chopin and Rachmaninoff with that titan of composers - Mr Gould? Why the Pole and the Russian simply shrivel beneath the glaring genius of Gould's (completely worthless and forgotten) compositions.
Don’t worry, almost nobody agrees with Gould that Chopin was a bad composer. But we can agree with Gould that, you shouldn’t care what Gould thinks about Chopin - or anyone in the lineage you cite for that matter. You should decide what you think of Chopin’s works through your own deep engagement with them. That’s the point.
@@benlawdy I stopped listening to ANY GLENN GOULD many years ago when I discovered the unlimited richness of dozens of others. In fact, I came to say exactly that.
@@benlawdy Yes -Although I do frankly take seriously what he has to say. I like the fact that he apparently liked a Strauss piece more than any other. Because that obviously suggests he wasn't just despising any music after, say, Beethoven. I have never been able to play Chopin - much the most difficult composer (maybe after Mozart). Here for instance is my best butchering of his Polonaise 'Heroic': ua-cam.com/video/GP-Xk6Vk4yE/v-deo.html
and here is my own attempt at a the composition of a 'Polonaise': ua-cam.com/video/NDnJNk17q8E/v-deo.html
At 19:17, in the recording of the third movement to Beethoven's 3rd Concerto, were those coins falling on the ground? lol, I remember hearing this in the recording previously.
When Glenn Gould didn't get along with a piece, he blamed the composer. For example, he interpreted a piano concerto by Mozart in a very mindless way and then blamed the composer.
As a clairvoyant 😉, I have a comment of Glenn Gould au bout du fil, about your video :
« Thank you, thank you, and thank you (speaking contrapuntally, of course). Mr. Laude, you are undoubtedly the first person I've heard express themselves so clearly and eruditely about Glenn Gould. It's quite remarkable, really.
To hear Mr. Gould's voice is indeed an enrichment. Though I must say, I've always found my own voice to be rather grating - a sort of nasally drone, wouldn't you agree? But then again, perhaps that's precisely why it's so captivating. It's the imperfections, you see, that make a performance truly human.
I do hope you'll forgive my somewhat circuitous manner of speech. You'll find that my thoughts, much like my interpretations of Bach, tend to weave in and out, creating a tapestry of ideas that may seem disparate at first, but ultimately converge into a cohesive whole. It's all about the counterpoint, you understand - in music, in speech, in life itself.
But I digress. Your astute observations about my work are truly appreciated. It's refreshing to encounter someone who can penetrate the layers of complexity and emerge with such clarity. Bravo, Mr. Laude. Bravo indeed. ».
He doesn't like Mozart and Chopin too - Das deutet auch Glenn's Grenzen an!
It would be absolute amazing if you could get Humphrey Burton for an interview.
Any idea about his health?
@@benlawdy No idea. He wrote an autobiography in 2021 `Humphrey Burton: In My Own Time: An Autobiography`. Maybe through the publisher Boydell and Brewer we could learn more?
That was very eye-opening when you had your script on screen.
@@timothyhayes8128 in a good way or a bad way?
@@benlawdy Oh definitely not in a bad way. It was really cool and made me realize just how much thought goes into interviews and videos like this. by the way I love what you do on this channel and with tonebase. Thanks for the wonderful content.
@@timothyhayes8128 thank you! These are a lot of work, and tbh I’m a bit too prone to long scripted essays. This vid was originally supposed to be 10 minutes. The channel (and my health!) would benefit from more videos of shorter length!
@@benlawdy haha well either way, we really appreciate the hard work you put in to them. I personally take any free time I have to practice the piano. Which by the way You're still better at Pathetique than me. (I'm working on it though.) Thanks again
I told you he was a genius talker.
I like Glenn Gould for many reasons and dislike him for many reasons (mostly musical, because I don’t really know that much about him as a person). But imagine the level of narcissism you have to have to inconvenience someone by waking them up in the middle of their sleep for your own pleasure (and do this habitually). Either that, or he was “on the spectrum,” as they say nowadays. It’s the only way I can explain this. It’s like something Sheldon (from the Big Bang Theory) would do.
@@mhermarckarakouzian8899 I believe he was on the spectrum, yes. Definitely no ill intent. And most people were flattered to receive the calls - but also I don’t imagine he knew this and was taking advantage of his celebrity. Like Tim Page said, he was like a child at a slumber party wanting to stay up all night with his friends. Hard to separate that side of him from his incredible artistic nonconformity, so I guess it’s a trade off. Artists can be much bigger selfish divas than Gould, who was actually quite modest and unassuming - maybe *too* unassuming.
Mate, if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. If you don’t know the reference, look it up.
@@benlawdy Tim Page said Glenn probably was on the spectrum, and Tim Page himself is, so he would probably recognize it
Wow. Someone needs to turn this phone call into a subdued one-act Broadway play.
The guy was completely nuts on Bach
I don't much care for Liszt, but the fact it's I've never written anything at all. Likewise, I haven't written 58 mazurkas.
I want your shirt ahahah
I used to call people unsolicited at 1, 2, 3 am. Then I quit drinking.
I strongly disagree with the points about improvisation. Improvisation is not a collection of cliches thrown together in sound and fury signifying nothing. It's the end result of countless hours of preparation, deep insight into the nature of a piece, and then the ability to let all of that go in favor of expression in the moment. Gould is rather like the recent AI chatbots that have sprung up. He speaks with great confidence and facility, but with a lack of substance beyond his own preferences and opinions. While I don't agree with Seymour Bernstein's opinion of him, I do think that a good deal of the mystique revolving around Gould comes from a cult of personality more than anything else. He's a smart, talented guy, but he's often simply wrong.
@@arryaxx263 I agree that’s the ideal of improvisation. And also improvisation is/should be an important part of any musician’s foundation. It’s unfortunate that it was lost from classical training, and I support the new wave of advocates to resurrect it (Noam Sivan being the most impressive). Gould was partly reacting to developments in the 60s/70s where indeterminacy and chance procedures were being incorporated into composition. That’s not the same as improvisation, but he saw it as part of a general threat to actually making sense. Also, I mentioned you articulated an ideal - wouldn’t you say that the actual practice of improvisation often ends in recycled cliches? Even when you’re “letting it all go,” that doesn’t guarantee you’re speaking originally or coherently for others to appreciate.
My critique of Gould would be more about his lack of concern with music education more broadly (although I remind myself it relatively healthy and better funded at the time). Developing musical fluency - ie improvisation - should be at the heart of it, as I mentioned. But at the same time, there is a distinction most performing artists/musicians accept between improvised and planned performance. Both can be done at a high level, but the best improv troupe could not spontaneously come up with a drama on par with a skilled playwright.
As for a cult of personality, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, it’s true: Gould has a lot of followers who buy into the persona. But ironically, many Gould fans are unaware of his beliefs and are instead just buying into his mystique. I think the point to be made is one Gould makes himself, and I discuss in the video: his identity shouldn’t matter so much as his ideas and his work. And on that front, I think there was plenty of substance and coherence to Gould’s aesthetic practice - he’s certainly much more thoughtful than most performing musicians. And his being wrong about lots of things, well: show me a complex, world-historical artist or thinker who wasn’t.
Psychoanalytically, it’s normal to speak of “finding interpretive possibilities not wholly realized even by the composer.” Great art is interpretively inexhaustible. And a Rorschach test is meant to probe the psyche of the viewer, not of the guy who made the inkblots.
@@rg3388 right, and I think most forks at artistic interpretation have had this moment of enlightenment. Except classical music, which still lags behind in superstition
Speaking of meaningful comments -- where can I acquire a Ludwig van Beethoven action figure?
I am 100% sure but his last recording is “Richard Strauss piano sonata” He recorded in August (month before his death)
Bernstein, a musical critic trying to analyze a genius, ego aside, an exercise in futility. Respect Laude’s semblance of analytical impartiality.
Hahaha - 99.9M subscribers and that bell - and securing solitude via being locked in one’s own closet -
Where did you get the t shirt Ben?
@@robinthomsoncomposer www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Gould-s-Chair-by-YesterdayBlues/159260073.NL9AC
Thank you so much
I would like to add the text under it “The delusion the piano is a homophonic instrument!”😂😂😂
I think someone can be modest and be a narcissist too (but again, I’m not trying to push the narrative that he was). The main reason I commented was that I also (very often) get a strong “appetite” at, say, 1am and start to listen to certain pieces or play or compose. The passion and energy I get turns into an urge to want share my thoughts with someone. So I found that midnight urge very relatable. But I would never wake someone up for this. I get that it’s unbearable, because (and this is gonna sound weird, but) I “talk to myself” instead (in my own head.. pretending there’s another person there). Like who do I think I am that someone would be so interested in what I have to say that they wouldn’t mind being woken up to hear it? Anyways. That’s why I commented lol
@@mhermarckarakouzian8899 I feel you. Glenn kept odd hours, which is not that strange for musicians, although maybe a bit extreme (waking up mid afternoon, going to sleep after dawn). And most of his interlocutors were people in music/the arts. Midnight ain’t THAT late for us. I wonder what poor Glenn would have done in today’s age when people keep their phones silent at night
Lol he would’ve shown up at their doorstep. Thanks for replying btw. Big fan. I’m happy I found your channel (after noticing your absence on tonebase, I saw a comment there saying that you got your own channel). Wishing you many many more followers!
I'm very similar, I do that, too, late night playing and everything else you said! You are not alone! :)
What Gould said would make schumann catch fire
@@dylanzwering2255 I love me some Schumann, but I think it’s true that he didn’t write well for the piano. Also I think Gould undervalues Schumann’s polyphony, which is often nuanced and beautiful. But hey - everyone plays the composers Gould dislikes, so I’m glad he has the weird tastes that he does.
Where do we get the shirt? 😂
“Gouldian”
I like that.
One can dislike Chopin, but I can't agree with the statement that he is a bad composer.
I didn't know the meaning of "homophonic" and I just found a definition on Google, so I might be wrong on the technical side.
My thought is that the piano is objectively neither strictly contrapuntal nor homophonic; it's actually both.
It should depend on the composer's or pianist's feelings, taste, and culture how the piano is used. And I am not sure that the statement "for Chopin, the piano is a homophonic instrument" is 100% correct. It sounds too absolute, as if there were no changes or differences between Chopin's compositions, and as if they were always the product of a static vision about the piano and music (which is impossible, given that people's perspectives change over time).
As far as I remember, there is a contrapuntal side in Chopin. Even though it is not as prominent as in Bach, it is still an important side that gives the music depth.
Gould's statement sounds like an oversimplification. In front of the rigid statement of Gould, Chopin looks like a much more versatile and "free" composer.
I agree with him on most, but not on the central idea of his that context doesn't matter - it verry much matters to me who, what and in what conditions produced a work of art. Two identical paintings, to me, may have completely different reactions depending on all the meaning behind them
On one side I strangely sympathize with Gould's preference to play music he doesn't like - and playing it in a way you notice how much he dislikes it. On the other side I wonder why his genius recordings of Scriabin Sonatas and Haydn Sonatas are not mentioned anywhere.
What if Gould just played the music he liked and people were amazed of THESE recordings...
the part about Gould not liking all Bach was really interesting, could you point me in the direction of any sources where he speaks more critically of Bach in a negative way? Google is of course useless lately for anything nuanced like that
@@frankrogers4386 just off the top of my head, Gould’s critique of many of Bach’s works is well documented - several preludes (and some fugues) from the WTC, the more “skittish” toccatas from the Goldberg variations, and here in this link very explicitly the chromatic fantasy and fugue and the Italian concerto:
ua-cam.com/video/F3y6rsHFc2g/v-deo.htmlsi=0Zxm1249REm4IL-j
Check out the “Art of the fugue” documentary by Bruno monsaingeon (about an hour long). Gould talks about how he likes some preludes and some fugues, but rarely finds a pair he think works together organically.
@@benlawdy thanks!
“Hedonistic pursuit of improvisation as a way of life.” I need to memorize this quote. Gould probably hated American music and American way of thinking.
Hmm. Sounds like lots of fun for Glenn Gould and not so much at the other end of the line.
Has Gould withstand time? The trouble with not caring about others is obvious. He seems like an acute case of naval gazing. I apply the hyper critical attitude to him that he applies to others.
I just smashed the dislike button. In the same way Gould would have objected to someone wittering in his ear about Bach and Mozart and Schumann while he's trying to enjoy half an hour's concert, I found pretty well all the spoken content of this impenetrable because of the wallpapering of music from end to end. I'm apparently rather unusual in this, but I'm applying one idea I did manage to pick up, of not caring what anyone else thinks. And yes, of course, I tried silencing my speakers and putting subtitles on, which works to a degree, a bit like dealing with the wittering fool behind me by putting headphones on with deafening white noise and just watching the pianist's fingers. I look forward to listening to the phonecall, though, assuming one of them isn't in a nightclub at the time.
Oh, I'll dispute that he's an artistic genius...
I love Gould while completely disagreeing with him on many issues, including the argument about improvisation, which you Ben seem to defend with the analogy about how this very video essay is scripted. It seems you imply that the video is significant because it was scripted and that you couldn't just sit in front of a camera and start talking without a script and ever say anything deep and meaningful... which of course is completely untrue. Hundreds of people make video essays which have no script and are of immense value. And withour going further, the very act of human conversation is the greatest example of improvisation through language. If Gould's argument was true, we would all have to write down every single thing we're going to say, for it to ever have any meaning, or use, or depth. So not only is improvisation useful, it is many times necessary.
But again, while I will vehemently disagree with Gould on many issues, I still love his playing and his eccentric personality and I consider him a great artist.
@@mrpossibilities but if I sat down and just started talking, it would need to be significantly edited and I would have wished I said a number of things in a different way, and there would be more holes in the logic. Of course I agree about the incredible creativity embodied just in simple speech acts and in musical improvisation (see other comment threads where I defend the importance of improvisation), but at the same time, many of the greatest human achievements - artistic or otherwise - arguably are not improvised, but carefully planned. Nobody writing a scholarly essay or a sonnet or a sonata would just capture their first improvised take - maybe they’d begin that way if they’re very talented, but then they would become their own editors and craft exactly the the thing they want to communicate. This is especially true if you’re trying to build a complex argument with many moving parts, and in the same way, it’s true when the greatest composers (who were also fantastic improvisers) write down their best pieces.
Hey Ben - love this series! I would push back on the idea that the greatest human achievements are not improvisatory, since extraordinary actions have an element of exploration, of seizing opportunity, of acting in the face of uncertainty. Not that Gould’s ideas are incoherent - he seems to consistently view musical works as objects, and be dismissive of music as action, process, or interaction.
@@jaurisova6 is this THE David Stone? What’s up man! Thanks for watching and I’m flattered you dig the series. Your point is well taken. I do feel like when I’m listening to Gould (at his best) that it feels anything but planned, even when he’s set up a strict pulse and is following some interpretive rule he’s set for himself, the music sounds almost more alive, more spontaneous - like it’s living an breathing on its own and making decisions without some outside force steering it this way or that way. He is able to manifest the academic notion of musical autonomy in actually sound. I think that was Gould’s goal, and it’s ironic that he achieve it through calculation - but at the same time, when he’s playing in the moment, it’s not some cold, premeditated act of execution, but he’s really possessed by the music. It seems like he’s reacting to the uncertainties in real time and genuinely exploring, and that’s communicated to the listener. But it’s as if he’s programmed a simulated world for us to live inside of that’s totally determined by an invisible code but feels undetermined. And I think the best composed music is like this too. I don’t want to put down improvisation and the incredible achievements they are possible in the face of much more uncertainty there, but I’m partial to planning because it’s kind of the most distinctly human thing we’ve got - the ability to plan ahead and design elegant solutions to complex problems - and whether in science or art, it seems like the achievements that are most timeless are the ones that have this property. On the other hand, I could just be projecting my own biases because I suck at improvisation…
@@benlawdy Yep, it’s me! Yeah, I really do love this series and the high-quality conversation it’s sparking. I have a bad memory of taking goulds side in a discussion that got pretty heated with a jazz major in college - improvisation is great, I said, but won’t the processes of editing and composition always improve that raw material? He took it very personally, so maybe that’s affected my current opinion!
There’s so much to say on the topic, so just to note one more thing - I find that improvisation can generate textures that are difficult, if not impossible to notate with any fidelity. Georges Sand claimed that Chopin’s compositions were kind of approximations of much more vivid improvisations. The process of composition entails forcing a really rich multidimensional activity into a storage/communication channel that just will never carry the entire musical “thing”. But one of Gould’s gifts, like you say, was to resurrect and revivify the compressed and lossy messages in 18th century scores, and make it sound like an improvisation just as much as an actor does the same with simple text.
@@jaurisova6 Chopin is probably the right figure to consider in this conversation, although Gould wouldn’t agree, precisely because he seemed to embody both sides as you alluded to. His notated compositions often began as improvisations, and many of the things that make them singularly beautiful surely depended on that ineffable, impulsive moment of creation at the keyboard. But then what did he go and do? He turned into a Beethovenian premeditator of every note, crafting the piece into a monument for posterity. He even allegedly said about Liszt adding embellishments in one of his nocturnes “keep your pigs out of my garden” (I heard Garrick Ohlsson say this, but have had trouble sourcing it.) And surely Gould has a bit of that as well - his recording sessions were often just exercises in seeing how many different ways he could play a passage, which is an improvisatory impulse, and only after the fact stitching the whole performance together in a coherent way. And speaking of Gould and jazz, isn’t it ironic so many jazz players admire Gould, and how much overlap there is between Gould’s flat handed/slappy direct technique and the kind of chops you often see great jazz improvisers carry? Although they might be opposites in terms of aesthetics, they’re strikingly similar in terms of a commitment to directly communicating a sound world with listeners. Something most of us in the classical world could learn a lot from.
Great to catch up with you on UA-cam! Maybe again some time in the physical world.
Where in this video does Gould discuss not playing Chopin again?
4:45
Could we shorten this rant and get on with the phone call? THANKS!
i quite like Gould's Beethoven I prefer Gulda and his 2 recordings in different years ) to Gould for the Bach 48.
Yeah much of Gould’s wtc is my least favorite Gould, and I also love Gulda’s.
@@benlawdy Yeah - although I admit it was solely because of Gould's performance of Beethoven's op. 126 no. 3 (on yt - he does much posturing and 'conducting with his spare hand) that I learnt this miniature miracle. I wish I still played it (I cannot sight-read). It's that last bit of number 3 a la op 111 or op 106 that I particularly loved playing. And in general I like his eroica variations, plus I had a cd of him playing Handel suites for harpsichord. But I don't recall that. Did you like your 'double' (sorry)?
@@militaryandemergencyservic3286 I play op126 and yes the heavenly last section of #3 is the highlight. I also love #4, which is the only piece Beethoven ever composed in B minor.
Didn’t understand your last question.
@@benlawdy how fascinating. i don't actually like the loud ones in the set. I like 3 and i like number 5 also and 6 and 1. Basically all the quiet ones.
@@benlawdy that lovely last section is indeed lovely. Reminds me of his quartet no 12 with that similarly 'heavenly country jig/gigue' part. Btw you must have heard Seymour Bernstein say how Czerny had said Beethoven could hear op 111 with an ear trumpet? So I guess op 126, too (otherwise, how he could hear the delicacy of that end of no3 is beyond me - well. obviously in his head i guess). The last question was about the guy I found on a Times Radio video who looks uncannily similar to you. Did you not see it? it's the guy speaking from1:06 on this: ua-cam.com/video/u3bJodftgGM/v-deo.html And why don''t you want Tiffany Poon on your channel, or Tone base? Is she not well-known enough? I went to a concert of hers in London recently and was very, very impressed. Fantastic playing. I'll post the part of his e flat quartet when I find it...from 27:52 on this video (I once met Gunter Pilcher the violinist, after they did Schubert's great g major quartet in Paris in about 2008) -ua-cam.com/video/JVVdMzv02s8/v-deo.html
There was plenty of Strauss and some Schoenberg in this video, but no Stravinsky whatsoever.
Would have loved to hear “Sacre du Printemps” in Stravinsky’s own transcription for four-hands that he himself performed together with Claude Debussy.
That said, the only partner Gould would have accepted might be his monozygotic twin. 🤔
@@achenarmyst2156 Gould wasn’t the biggest Stravinsky fan - although who knows what he thought of his late music. If he had come around to the rite of spring and lived long enough, he would have simply performed the four hand version with himself on a Yamaha disklavier