Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner How Mozart Became a Bad Composer - by Glenn Gould

In the new Gould bio I read that he did a short documentary called How Mozart Became a Bad Composer that aired on public television in the US and Canada.

Some excerpts from the book (words in quotation marks are quoting the documentary itself):

He [Gould] took issue with the "facility for improvisation" that, he claimed, led Mozart to an over-reliance on conventional formulas in his compositions, most obviously in the "jaded, weary" works of his later years. In the C minor piano concerto [K 491]... Gould heard only "an appalling collection of cliches" of no greater potency than "inter-office memos".

Gould didn't like Mozart. He once said that Mozart died too late rather than too early. Don't know why he has recorded the complete Mozart sonatas then. The set is better than I had expected, for someone who doesn't like Mozart.

In Gould's complete Mozart set, the liner notes of the version I have include a funny "dialogue" between Gould and Mozart that takes place in the afterlife. I believe it contains quotes from the documentary noted above.

I love Gould's paying of Bach, but not his playing of Mozart. Gould was pretty opinionated, and sometimes played Mozart's music to a point of distortion. I had a recording of his playing Mozart's Fantasia in d minor, and he did some strange things.For example, in some sections there are whole note rests, with the "hold" sign above them. Well, Gould, holds and holds and holds, and I kept thinking "come on, get on with it." His whole rendition of this composition is ludicrous.
I often wondered why, if he disliked Mozart so much he would have his playing of them recorded.Gaby Tu

Bazzana says in his Gould biography that Gould did no like Mozart and played him in such a way as to prove the point. Another way of looking at it might be that Mozart made Gould sound like a bad pianist...

I'm currently working on K310, so I pulled out the Gould collection to listen to it. He plays the first movement so fast it sounds as if it's the accompaniment to a silent film (the part when the girl is tied to the train tracks and the train is coming). He obviously found the repetition, lack of counterpoint, and predictable harmonies boring, missing the charm.

He misses everything Mozart needs, but has everything Mozart doesn't need, so to me it still sounds genius.

Gould recorded that Mozart set JUST to prove that Mozart is a bad composed...

technically speaking, he probably learned the entire thing in less than 5 hours.

Perhaps mr.Gould never listened to Mozart's Requiem?

He has no right to criticise a genius bigger than himself.

oh, come on. you never have opinions - positive or negative - about people smarter than yourself? Don't we have the right to think that a pianist plays bad even if we can't play better ourselves?

Unless YOU are the greatest genius in the world, I'd say that you have no right whatsoever to call Mozart a genius :rolleyes:

When I learning K 310, I bought the Gould collection of Mozart sonatas, not knowing how much he hated Mozart. I listened the CDs several times. I was very befuddled. It was my first real experience of listening to a professional classical recording and thinking to myself, "I really HATE this."

I used those CDs as coasters for a long time ...

I'm SURE Gould knew the Requiem, and I'm SURE that didn't change his opinion of Mozart at all. In fact, it was Mozart's later works which Gould hated the most. If I'm not mistaken, Gould said that one of the reasons he played Mozart was because it was 'the most fun he'd ever had, running his fingers up and down the keys.' So Gould at least enjoyed the purely physical aspect of Mozart's music.

Oh, and by your logic, should you really be critizing Mr. Gould?

Maybe, Gould has a totally different personality with Mozart, he couldn't understand his music at all!
When he plays Bach, he feels proud; when he plays Mozart, he feels lost, that's why he hate Mozart.

GG was often deliberately provocative, and even more frequently had his tongue planted firmly 'in cheek'. But at his core he remained true to his art. One of the reasons he remains so refreshing to us 25 years after his death is because of his uncompromising challenges to conventionality. I certainly did not agree with all or even many of his opinions, but growing up in Canada he was a hero to me because of his artistic integrity. He willingly abandoned fame and money to keep his independence, and ironically it was that choice that helped sustain his reputation to this day, no matter how silly some of his opinions might strike us now.

Gould's Mozart is bad news. It's all off. He had some pretty silly opinions. I don't know where he got them from. I think he was too isolated ,most of the time, especially when he was young, and when he was around people he was always talking to them about his ideas, and they listened because they thought it was something profound. Nothing profound really, just a big imagination.
Read this:http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~weinberg/hysteric.html

I too, am not much of a fan of Mozart, aside from his requiem. His keyboard works especially bore me, they seem so contrived and happy all the time. The whole Classical era attitude seemed to hold that music was just a simple benefit of having the ability to hear sweet little melodies, whereas Bach... Bach wrote some of the most incredibly well crafted and technically perfect monuments of intellect and complexity, and at his time he wasn't even appreciated for his output that would fill volumes.

True, Bach did write for occasion, but his music seems much more real to me than Mozart's.

I prefer romanticism generally over all the rest, but I'd take Bach over Mozart any day. It's just so much more interesting.

Oh, great - so now Mozart is not genius according to you and Gould, while the rest of the world is sitting in bunch of lies still thinking that Mozart is a genius. heh

I am saying that Gould should not dare to criticize a myth. Mozart is a myth. Perhaps his Sonatas are not that deep, but please dial me if you write another Requiem even a quarter as good as the one Mozart wrote.

Hey, I have no complaints about his requiem. I think it's one of the finest pieces of music ever written.

I was talking to Blaude.

For those of you who havn't spoken, what do you think about Gould's argument?