Loki is fantastic, the haters are just jealous. Makes me think of a post i read about someone working from home being told his dog cant show up in his calls because the office doesn't allow dogs.... Insanity
@@SamTahbou It doesn't bother me in any way, but it's obvious people only have dogs/cats in their content so animal-obsessed people can go 'aw, look at the cute dog/cat', aw isn't he cute, aw, aw, aw!' It's the lowest form of pandering, and completely transparent. Everyone who wants a dog or cat has one, big deal. As for being jealous, as I said, literally anyone can own a dog if they want, so why would anyone be jealous? But then I guess the sort of people who like Mozart don't mind gratuitous and obvious sentimentality.
I like all your videos, but I especially enjoy the in-depth lecture videos with your brilliant playing. I'd love to see more of them, not fewer! They're what make this one of my favourite channels on TH-cam. And, for the record, Loki's presence is nothing but a joy.
Loki is great and adds alot to the videos and your lectures are brilliant and I am glad you are here to learn from! Please keep them coming! Thank you!
Far more important than Mozart's K 491 is the issue of the dog: THE BOW WOW MUST STAY! What a lovely looking, happy creature! Aside from that, thank you for the very interesting breakdown of what is going on under the hood. For those of us trying to write - especially using the now ancient major and minor modes, which have been extremely well trodden - this stuff is extremely useful. When I was an undergraduate at the now defunct Dartington College of Arts in Totnes, I never had any lectures that gave this kind of insight. Coming to think of it, in three years, I think we only had two lectures on tonality, and none on counterpoint. Man alive, did I have to do some catching up before trying to write some actual proper music, as opposed to the 'anything goes' rubbish that they encouraged us to pump out there. If you play Loki some recordings of experimental music from the 60s, I'm sure he will agree with me.
I prefer Beethoven's attitude to Mozart compared with Glum Ghoul. Beethoven once attended an outdoor concert of Mozart’s great C minor Piano Concerto. He turned to his friend Johann Baptist Cramer and said with a sigh: “Ah, Cramer. We will never be able to do anything like that.” In a letter to Abbe Maximilian Stadler, Beethoven wrote, 'I have always counted myself amongst the greatest admirers of Mozart and shall remain so until my last breath'.
This video absolutely needed to happen. Very well articulated. I can send this to the Gould sycophants now. Also your dog is great and is apart of the personality of your videos. The lecture style is absolutely necessary. How else could you expect to explicate adequately enough? You're an engaging speaker so you have nothing to worry about.
The more people talk about Gould, the more I'm convinced he was perhaps one of the greatest business minds and PR geniuses of the 20th century (if nothing else).
As has already been said by others, this is arguably the best rebuttal (on TH-cam at least) of Glenn Gould's arguments for Mozart being a bad composer. It is well known that the puritanical Gould did not like the dramatic aspects of Mozart's music. So already there, he had a cognitive bias against Mozart. Added to that, he seemed to prefer music with a clear architectural structure that followed a strict logic. He called Bach the greatest musical architect (a valid point, if there ever was one), and if my memory serves me correctly, he essentially argued that Mozart was too lazy in his writing of passages played by the left hand and thereby had missed many opportunities. Gould was a musical genius who had an almost unparalleled ability to play 4-5 voices in a fugue so that each voice was perfectly clear. When he toured in Russia in 1957, the Russian musicians thought that he was an alien, they had never heard anything like it, as several of them testified in the documentary The Russian Journey (highly recommended!). So with his almost superhuman ability to overview and remember every tiny detail in a piece of music, it is no wonder why he loved Bach. Nevertheless, one could argue that his obsession with musical structure and his seeming need for a rationale behind every last note sometimes got the better of him, particularly when combined with his puritanical streak.
People who don’t like seeing Loki have some choices: listen but don’t watch, examine their opinion and change it, etc, etc. I’m part of the Loki fan club.
Around 15:00, I love the discussion of rhythm, and the long-range movement of the top note of the scale. Noticing those things is the difference between "Mozart is boring" and "Mozart is magical". Thanks for showing the magic of that passage.
One of my personal favourite Mozart genres is his late chamber music. Sublime. I don't think it is an understatement to claim that Mozart developed 18th century chamber music into maturity. For the first time, there was an equal balance between all instruments. Sometimes it feels like Mozart was writing music before his time, and I definitely have moments listening to his chamber music, when it seems he transcends the classical style into proto-Romanticism of the next century. So yes, on many, many levels, Mozart was an absolutely exceptional composer.
Yes - the chamber music is astonishing. The amazing divertimento for string trio, the wonderful quartets, the violin sonatas and piano trios and piano quartets, and perhaps most amazing of all the string quintets!
Thanks for that, I’m glad to have stumbled across you. My own take on Gould is that it’s important to see him in the context of the new technology of the day - I think he was very aware that it needed exploring thoughtfully in the recording studio and mass media of television. To state something controversial is to strive for relevance and to some degree I think he was testing the waters in terms of what he could get away with. However, it may be that his prime motivation was to encourage a general audience to listen and question the relevance of Mozart’s music - he would have known his arguments were easy to challenge but in that perhaps he knew many would take up the challenge and listen with fresh ears - indeed as you have guided us to do.
Hi, gould sycophant here. I think that his excellency's point was not that Falling Fifths sequences are boring or dull in and of themselves, but rather that Mozart over indulges in using them.
Thanks as always for your illuminating discussion Professor! I (foolishly) used to speak disparagingly of Mozart too, referring to him as the Celine Dion of classical music. This was all completely independent of Glenn Gould I might add. Things Mozart did like the Alberti bass, etc. seemed very light and uninspired to me, like pop music or elevator music, which explains the reference to Celine Dion. I now (thankfully) have a lot more appreciation for him and especially for his later works. Silly me.
Lovely stuff. I found myself thinking a lot of the same stuff about Gould (esp the stuff about him deliberately playing Mozart badly to support his thesis haha) but with a lot less granular knowledge... So I really wanted to hear what you had to say. He doesn't help his case by playing extracts of Mozart so it sounds like Bach either haha? That said, I actually really enjoy Gould's trolling here... I think thats' what it is. Investigating classical/gallant/baroque improv and partimento and realising how important the Italians (and opera) were to the music culture of the time has really changed my perspective on this era. I spent some years singing not just Mozart but some of those semi-forgotten Italian composers who ended up in the beginners Arie Antiche repertoire (the Schirmer Book of Old Italian Songs), so I always felt there was a bit of a split between the instrumental canon and the music that singers love (such as Bel Canto.) I wonder if the sort of centralisation of Bach in the historical narrative by the Romantics has left us with a tendency to dismiss a lot of C18 music for teleological reasons - probably much more so in the mid 20th century when Modernism was the big deal. Everything builds up to Schoenberg... Stravinsky's tribute to these 'generic' masters (well to what he thought was Pergolesi haha) in Pulcinella is an interesting counterpoint to this. Of course Bach, as I understand it, loved Italian music?
Yes! Bach was an amazing composer but his deification in the 19th century certainly skewed the perception of Music history in a very Germanic direction. I completely agree that this has led to an unbalanced view. The Italian tradition, with its emphasis on the voice and melody and dramatic juxtaposition and rhythmic vitality, tends to be ignored. You're right that Stravinsky was alert to this (he also loved Verdi). That's one of the reasons why (I would suggest) he's more important that Schoenberg
I have loved this piece since I was a teenager, and I am not even a pianist. I hear longing, darkness, sweetness, drama, loneliness and terror in this piece, in my opinion one of Mozart's most expressive instrumental works. I think the seeming simplicity and cliched aspect is simply Mozart playing it close to the vest--he deos not want to draw too much attention in overt ways to any particular moment, he would rather the expressivity have a quiet power. It is nice that you reveal some of the amazing subtleties under the surface, and rather sad that Gould got bored playing the piece (which I think is the real problem for him).
I have only been learning piano for a year now (after 6 decades of not doing so), & about the same into reading more deeply about music history. Yes, some of the things you discuss shoot straight over my head (theory). It is simply fantastic. I really enjoy how you notate the musical score with bits of knowledge as well (more theory). & I would say that my reading of music has greatly increased because of the way your videos are presented. Well done, editor! My only suggestion would be to say: don't be afraid of longer videos. As for Loki, well, anyone how has a problem with a dog being present (or even wandering about), you just send them my way, & I'll sort it.
Professor, your little pet is adorable! (...opinion offered by a fan in northwest Arkansas) I remember seeing Glenn Gould performing on 1950s TV. Really eccentric, and sometimes even a bit spooky!
Dog on channel? Great! I see no reason not to. Too lectureree? (sp?). No way! More lectures please. Don't dumb down for people who can only concentrate for less than 30 seconds at a time- there is a very substantial audience for those that want more. No more 'lowest common denominator!'
Shostakovich as a young man did what must be the pinnacle of improvisatory piano - accompanying silent film showings in the cinema. It gives a flavour that runs through a lot of his "proper" output. I have a lot of love for Gould's extensive Bach output and I'm a sap for his eccentricities and the character he projects. A friend of mine had CDs with his radio interviews and Jings did they get us arguing! I gorge myself on Gould's opinions the way I once read Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture. The polemic, the logic, the enthusiasm and the determination of it is an absolute delight - but I am aware that it is a brilliantly coloured mixture of great sagacity and codswallop.
Thank you! Gould does indeed play Mozart 'mechanistically' and I have been saying as much for years. I do think that Gould's approach to music was overly cerebral and (dare I say?) pretentious. I find Gould cold and condescending; someone who liked to feel above others. Mozart's late music is usually fabulous. Who could doubt the greatness of Symphonies 39-41? Or Die Zauberflöte? Or the 27th Piano Concerto? Or Ave Verum Corpus? And so on. Gould, in his cold, cerebral way, probably preferred Alban Berg's most atonal sonic 'hell' to all of this sublime music. I prefer Andras Schiff's Bach and Uchida's Mozart...
But that was not the music Gould talked about. He was in particular talking about his piano sonatas, which are indeed pretty formulaic and unimaginative for the most part. Most definately the most uninteresting part of his entire catalogue.
I have not much time for Gould. Anyone thinking that his K.491 was good needs their head examined. He was obviously trying to do a Lang Lang and turn it into a huge showpiece. Horrid indeed.
As I see it, Gould disagreed with romanticism aesthetics, which lead him to different paths to interpret all that non-romantic repertoire which was being played romanticly. Since I despise romanticism as a whole, I concur with Gould thinking. And no, playing non-romantic isn't playing robotic, there's plenty of expression in Gould work
I don't think at all that Gould didn't like this music, but he did have some serious problems with it, almost wishing it could be better, maybe. When he presents these ideas in essays and film he is presenting an argument, something often a bit extreme and seemingly rigid or dogmatic. He does this, I believe, for the purpose of really making an audience or reader think critically; he wants to enter into a dialogue with society and the musical public. In his essay "Glenn Gould Interviews Himself About Beethoven" he goes as far as to say that he does not enjoy listening to works like the Grosse Fuge or even the 14th String Quartet, I think this is both true and false in some senses, that he does enjoy this music immensely and is quite literally entranced by it (visible any time he plays anything), but at the same time cannot help but think about it at an incredibly deep intellectual/musicological level. Thus he discovers problems. His main driving principle as an interpreter was to fix problems in the music, look deep into its structure from the future further than even the composer was able to, and present a new version of it which works better in a way, has fewer problems. He has a deep love for music, and wants to make you think about it, and wants to communicate with you. He is always described as a great pianist first, but he described himself as a Canadian writer and broadcaster who just happened to play the piano, saying it was the greatest means through which he was capable of conveying his thoughts. A couple other responses to points you made. There are many other beautiful things about this piece and stylistic period of Mozart's development, the rhythmic genius, instrumentation, other voices, etc., but what Gould is criticizing here is the harmonic simplicity and dullness. Just the same harmonic sequence over and over again, decorated differently with virtuosic patterns. Related to this, as to what you said about Bach, Gould mentions this same thing in the program; the ruthless exploitation of the same motivic sequences "ad infinitum" is a common element in many of Bach's compositions. Gould mentions between essays and other film programs on Bach that although his music can be endlessly sequential, especially in his earlier works, he is in facts using this sequential simplicity to explore immensely intense and emotional harmonic development, really getting to know the secrets of harmony inside and out. At the same time, Gould makes the argument that Bach is also always involved in fugal writing. There are countless examples of sequences and patterns even from the earliest works that move their way all through Bach's life and development, but now instead of infinite repetition they just blow right by one after the next, "giving the impression of an infinitely expanding universe." It seems as though when writing in other forms he is constantly having to resist the urge to turn it into fugue, constantly exploring small motivic cells and ways they can be developed and interrelated (much like Schoenberg would do 200 years later!). Gould writes that in a way Bach is always writing a fugue, collecting ideas for future fugues, and eventually his life's defining work, The Art of Fugue. So back to the point, I think what bothered Gould in this sense was Mozart's lack of development. It's not like he had significantly better instrumentation in his later period than when he was younger, and although as a craftsman and contrapuntist he may have in fact developed his capacity, he never really put that capacity to the test. He was content almost making self parody, and the ingeniousness, fire and personality of his youth was no longer present. This, I think, is Gould's major problem with Mozart. or If anyone wants to talk about anything Gould related please reply, love the guy and don't get many chances to really have a conversation about it lol
I'm certainly not more knowledgeable on Gould than you. So, I'm writing this just off of what little I know and your comment. I think Gould is simply partial to Bach. The argument that when Mozart uses circle of fifths - it's uninspired writing and when Bach uses the circle of fifths idiom it's exploring emotional harmonic development is backed up by nothing but his personal taste. On the topic of development, motivic and contrapuntal development are not the only kind of development and nor should they be (neither does Mozart shy away from them). As for Mozart falling into self-parody, I strongly believe that Mozart of all people, had a strong internal standard for compositions he would put his name on. Contrapuntal entries in sonata form recapitulation, triplet accompaniment replacements for alberti bass in concerti, lots of delicious chromaticism, dissonance, invertible counterpoint (at the octave, fifth, even tenth) - these are elements of his music which he could have done simply without and passed off - if he simply wanted to parody. I think all this ultimately boils down to the composer Gould likes more. And there's nothing wrong with liking Bach over Mozart.
Seymour Bernstein said, via Tonebase, that there was something "snide" about Gould. I like his piano playing but I have to agree. Gould argued that it's sloppy to incorporate improvisation ideas into a composition (which disqualifies most of Chopin's works from being great music).
I'm no fan of Mozart, and I really like Gould, but his arguments about Mozart puzzle me. Have you seen the session where Glenn Gould and Yehudi Menuhin play Schönberg's phantasy op. 47? Before they play it, the two have a chat about the music. Menuhin is not convinced by the composition, and he's explaining why, but he's willing to take the music at its own merit. When Gould notes that Menuhin apparently doesn't like Schönberg, the response is very interesting: "Well, Glenn, I was very anxious to take you up on the invitation to play it, because I admire you, and know that you know more about Schönberg, and have a genuine understanding of Schönberg, perhaps than anyone else. And I'm always interested in learning about something through the eyes of someone who understands it, and loves it, because I've always had the motto in my life than anyone who liked something knew more about it than one who didn't." Gould doesn't like Mozart, and doesn't understand Mozart, but he's not willing to seriously consider the arguments of those who do. He's brilliantly cynical, sure, but he's missing the point.
Great comment! The Schoenberg phantasy film is fascinating. The discussion they have beforehand is marvellously civilised: a model of how people should disagree instead of the ghastly polarisation that tends to characterise so much contemporary discussion. They then go on to perform it brilliantly too. With Mozart, I think Glenn had real difficulties with all the homophonic style gallant aspects of the style - he thinks Mozart ought to be trying harder (there's an interesting discussion about fugue in which he's very complementary about Mozart: th-cam.com/video/8_JccQK3KKU/w-d-xo.htmlsi=WlGY7juUi6zQX8UZ).
Your YT videos are not lecture-y. I sat in those lectures in music school. I find your posts excellent, good for non-musicians, and helpful for those classically trained. I wish as a youth I'd heard like you in my classes.
I appreciate your justification of the sequences and their rhythmic interest. I think Vivaldi parodies this in a violin concerto in D minor, RV 235. (I love listening to Carmignola's interpretation while reading the manuscript on Del Vivaldi's channel.) Almost the entire first parts of the first movement is made up of circle of fifths sequences. Then at the end, he breaks ritornello form by having the orchestra play completely unrelated material and ends the movement, almost as though laughing and saying, "Well, you wanted something new, right?" Ironically, though, he briefly quotes that closing material in the third movement (albeit with an added trill), which further convinces me this was parody. But the whole movement is filled with weird textural subtleties (or, in some instances, not as subtle). It's not surprising that the concerto would be a form in which composers would display their rhythmic mastery-the concerto master himself, as Chandler says, "did for rhythm what Bach did for counterpoint". I also have to disagree with Gould here. I do wonder if he was being controversial for the sake of being controversial. And keep Loki!
This is a great video. I loved your point on sequences - that stretch of Brandenburg 5 really makes me feel I'm laying in a brook and all my worries are steadily dissolved. There's a hypnotic quality music can offer that can only be wrought by long stretches of repetition.
I am really struggling to rationalise how anyone could possibly have a problem with a cute dog chilling to a classical music discussion. A human needs to be completely hard hearted to make such remarks. About this concerto in particular, it is actually one of my favourite Mozart concertos but at the same time when I first listened to Gould discussing this passage, I sort of agreed with him on a superficially intellectual level. But, after you emphasised the rhythmic importance of the passage, subtle nuances such as the breaking of the hemiola, inversion of rythms from long-short to short-long, it really clicked something in me. Added to that, the seemingly homogeneous and non dynamic way that Gould plays that passage (even if deliberately) speaks to how he (and I on first hearing) couldn’t comprehend the point of the passage on an intellectual level. This was a very fascinating discussion from which I learnt a lot! Thank you!
Glenn Gould's video tells us a great deal about Glenn Gould but little of relevance about Mozart. Television companies should be more careful about the 'experts' that they promote, but they never are. They want characters who can hold an uninformed audience. So lectures by various experts on a range of subjects on TH-cam are most welcome though rare. (Yale university public lectures, National Gallery [London] and some of the TED speeches (Evelyn Glennie's is superb) are among personal favourites. And Loki says nothing but tells us more about Mozart (of worth) than Mr Gould.
@@brianmidmore2221 ...or the Mona Lisa was just a cliche portrait... Glenn Gould was a pompous self-centered narcissistic contrarian who liked to be intentionally divisive and say controversial things just to get a rise out of people and play the devil's advocate for ridiculous points of view...he was basically a big giant TROLL. He was the Alex Jones of his time. He once said that Mozart, who died at the incredibly young age of 34, "it is a shame that Mozart didn't die SOONER." I say it is a shame that Glenn Gould didn't do the same. Instead we were cursed with decades of his pompous and ridiculous opinions and his non stop humming and singing as he butchered every performance he ever gave by turning it into an out of tune drunken karaoke parody of whatever piece he was playing. I would like anyone to show me where the vocal line is on the score in ANY of the pieces Gould plays for solo piano. Cause I sure HEAR IT. EVERY TIME.
I'm a professional symphonic musician (clarinetist). I love Glen Gould. I love this video. But I love Mozart the most! FWIW, my favorite of the piano concerti is the companion to the C minor, the A major, K.488, but then again, I AM a clarinetist. Speaking of which, a staple of my repertoire, C. M. von Weber's 1st clarinet concerto in F minor, basically pilfers the opening of K.491 for it's first theme. I completely agree that Mozart is, first and foremost, an opera composer. A critic once accused me of being perhaps overly dramatic in my interpretation of the Clarinet Concerto, K.622, calling it a "stately and courtly" work. He thought I played it too much as if it were Beethoven. Well, considering the proximity of K.622 work to both "The Magic Flute" and the Requiem and the fact that Beethoven was already 20 years old, I think prima facie that would mean a rather dramatic interpretation might be completely in line with what the composer had in mind. Thanks!
“Interactive communication vs dynamic conflict” - superb juxtaposition! Your demonstrative analysis is wonderful; leave Gould to hum along with Sir Humphrey 🌝
Please don’t make any adjustments too the gifts you bring the internet. Specificity and quality takes time. TH-cam and similar platforms are constantly flooded with quick format infotainment which I am sure the people who seek it will have no problem finding. Rare gems like your channel are valuable. If anything go deeper, all the best and thanks for the great work.
What a treat, great content, from Loki to unpicking incredible craftsmanship given with soul satisfying simplicity - that's great art. My only argument about this super analytical approach is that these microelements are probably spontaneously created and captured on paper or on the spot during improvisation. And that's talent. Great we can analyse it and analyse it after hundreds of years, but has this resulted in our modern approach of composing something without any spontaneity adhering to absurd rules of dissonance that even when broken with incredibly clever tricks and reflect moments of genius, nobody understands and nobody wants to know about? Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this video after a really difficult day at work and it made my day. Thank you very much indeed!
Thank you for your kind comment. I think analysis can always help us to know and love music better, and there are all sorts of amazing kinds of music being created even today!
For me, nobody plays Bach like Gould. I can't say if some of his more controversial interpretations were what Bach had intended but he sure does the finest job of them. Genius as he was, Gould made me shake my head in disbelief when I first heard him slating Mozart. He was entitled to his opinion...which is all it was...albeit that of a genius 😄 Also, I love your channel and have thoroughly enjoyed each video you have kindly presented to us. Loki belongs there too, I found it a bit ruff that someone would object 😂
I love this video. thank you so much! I've always thought that the profundity of Mozart's contrapuntal, harmonic, and rhythmic skill is seriously underrated, because he conceals it so well. I look forward to more videos on his music!
Don't worry too much about changing anything that doesn't occur to you organically. Your videos make my world better. Us people who make content out of love and appreciation should remain skeptical of the demands of the audience. There have been people on these platforms who find their entire mental landscape morphed into whatever is getting views, reactions, and responses. It can be an insidious force if not met with equal parts reverence and irreverence (kinda like how Gould approaches the world if you pay close attention).
I'd argue that Gould occasionally forms fine-tuned (but incorrect) arguments so that people will be forced to think higher quality thoughts (generated within their own noggins) in order to disagree.
I absolutely lovely that someone on yt does this complex musical analysis. As a college student, its a studying tool that i can use towards understanding the subject in question. I absolutely love it! Keep on making great videos like this one:)
I was born before 1960. I love music….Big Band, Swing, Rock, Classical…etc… I used to be good on clarinet but I stopped playing in the early 1970’s. One of the dumbest things I ever did. 😀 I’m not smart enough to have ever played Classical musical but I DO appreciate those that can. Those were the masters. Cheers from America. :-)
You touch on this facinating question as to why great music is made up of commonplace elements yet 'speaks'. Talented people can make a phrase which is a simple as three blind mice some how speak to us but less talented people doing that just sounds like a bunch of notes.
Shakespeare was a lousy playwright because he used words, phrases, clauses, sentences, punctuation. And some of his poetry rhymes - how tedious. And he played to the pit - how vulgar. Gould is just being a smartass, like Bernstein, when he claimed that Beethoven couldn't write a decent melody (after pinching the slow movement of the Emperor for "There's a place for you" in West Side Story).
Hi 🙂! That's funny because now almost all comments revolve around Loki 🤣. Gould was a genius for sure but Mozart was by far an even much more greater genius ! I liked how you pointed all the elements proving Gould wrong. And I like your channel a lot. Cheers ! 🙂
Another great video! Your enthusiasm for the music you are presenting is palpable. Thank you very much. As for Gould, he is always referred to as « eccentric. « Frankly, I think he was just plain nuts, a bit childish and a whole lot silly. Great finger dexterity, prodigious memory, but his understanding of quite a lot of music was shallow. His Beethoven is (to me) unlistenable. His performances could be shocking (Bach, and not just the Goldberg Variations; Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 1, for example), but hardly authoritative and not particularly enjoyable.
Thank you. He always divides opinion. For me, he's an indispensable figure: a marvellous, crazy, eccentric, profoundly creative person and a pianist of phenomenal gifts, but yes some of his performances are pretty unlistenable to. On the subject of Beethoven, he really only 'gets' late Beethoven. His recording of Op. 109 is very interesting: th-cam.com/video/tuNkBd_LL1s/w-d-xo.html
I agree with a lot of Glenn Gould's more bonkers takes, lol, probably more than most people, but he was definitely off-the-mark with Mozart. Side note but I don't think he's actually deliberately playing "badly" -- I think that's his genuine interpretation of how he wants to play his music. His recorded CDs of Mozart is exactly like this too, a kind of "Mozart on Meth". I don't think it really works; some of his interpretation of Mozart piano works sound genuinely insane (and I don't use that word lightly).
These discussions of music are fantastic. This music has been a huge part of my life, but I never understood any of the theory behind it. I really appreciate how you break it down. It's similar to close reading a poem. Very effective, very engaging. (And Loki's great!)
beautiful video and a worthy defense. i love glenns iconoclasm and believe there should be no sacred cows, everyone should use their own ears and minds and decide for themselves what they find meritorious. now to unseal the indictment! - i agree that his case is at the very best unforgivably arbitrary, as you say you can indict many of glenns favorites (Bach and Strauss come immediately to mind) if you are going to say sequences area always laziness and lack of invention. i think this is really rooted in schoenbergs idea of developing variation being a more worthy/ethical way, the mark of a high minded composer, and the often concomitant slight or suspicion of sequence per se that often accompanied it. schoenberg attacked sequence in that way and i think that had a big effect on acolytes of the second Viennese school.. thank you for pointing out some of the merits of the passages gould roasted, my only complaint is you left out my favorite moment from the English pedagogue when he waxes purple about how wonderful it is “not to modulate” 😂
Fascinating comment! Yes, you're right: the problem with sequences is Schoenbergian (although, oddly W.A.M was Schoenberg's favourite composer apparently). I'll have to put the comment about modulation in another video!
Thank you. Despite watching about 20 hours of TH-cam content a week, I comment maybe once a year. I loved this spot - I love Mozart but didn't know this piece, and will definitely listen to the C minor with a lot more appreciation now. Looking forward to anything you have to say about the Beatles! And the dog stays!
My guess is that "return of the wizard" is a reference to the Wizard of Oz where they find he's just a small man who was generating a big image. I don't think it suits but that's my best guess.
“Actually”, Gould laments some of Bach’s sequences too in his series of interviews with Bruno Monsaingeon. I believe it was in the context of fugue writing; Bach had to work at fugue writing and his early fugues can be tedious, is the argument. Here is the video; the relevant discussion begins right after the opening piano: th-cam.com/video/exD8bhJP1eo/w-d-xo.html
Yes. Fascinating video. I think ultimately his point is that Bach worked hard to improve his craft (whereas he thinks Mozart took a more comfortable improvisatory route).
My interpretation of Gould's statement that "Mozart is a bad composer" suggests that Gould is not speaking literally but instead using the statement as a form of satire. You see it as an ironic commentary on how one might misunderstand or oversimplify Mozart’s music. He’s not only parodying such a shallow interpretation, but he’s also mocking himself within the satire. By making such a provocative statement, Gould may be exposing the limited perspectives some listeners or music analysts might have, while also poking fun at his own role as a critic or musician. Through this layered satirical approach, Gould could be highlighting the absurdity of trying to reduce a genius like Mozart to simplistic judgments, thereby critiquing both the audience and his own analytical authority. However i can be wrong...
I remember being a little shocked when I first heard Glen Gould say these things regarding Mozart's later works, even though Mozart was still a young man when he apparently made this poor quality music and poor choices in his works. He says he actually likes Mozart as we all should do especially if you love lyrical melody. Glen went on further and attacked The Beatles in another video which annoyed me further as I truly love everything they stood for but specifically their sense of gorgeous melody when we must remember popular music had so much stripped away during that impasse where classical music was at its worst point in time and the only music people were really listening too was Rock'n'roll and this was too formulaic using barely 4 chords but arranged into countless rhythmic patterns until The Beatles came along and introduced us all to New Tonal music showing the world that there was still so much to do and to dismiss them as bad and poor quality is utterly wrong. The Beatles threw classical music a lifeline in many ways. Thank god this happened or I can say most people would of never heard of Mozart and understood his pure brilliance. As for Glen I admire him and thoroughly enjoy his input 95% of the time.
tbh. loki lives in your house and the commenters don't so he wins. also, you saying all this reminds me of something that i read while i was writing my master's thesis, that i haven't been able to find since so i'm not completely convinced that i wasn't making it up or imagining it somehow. but that was slavoj zizek claiming that figaro is the villain of the marriage of figaro. (i also ended up reading more zizek, including the death of opera, which i think was one of my favourite Academic Texts that i've read, so god knows where he was coming from if he did say that.)
Thank you. A dog in the video might be disconcerting were it a husky, but Loki is perfect, marking the difference between a formal lecture and a deeply illuminating talk in a domestic setting. Even ordinary life can be conducted at a high intellectual level, with dogs and jokes too. I think the distinction between "really great" and "only 'great' because an institution" is a false dichotomy. As you point out, one of the markers of the sort of stuff that we call great is that it endures; and it can only do that if it can survive different contexts, and audiences with different expectations. We do expect something special from the work of someone institutionalised as "great"; and if generation after generation keeps on finding different, but related, greatness, then it's presumably there. I more at home with literature than music, so I mention Shakespeare. I am sure that there are interpretations, in performance and in description, that would really surprise Shakespeare, but they can still make the plays live in a way that grows out of the scripts, and that is in some sense congruent with the meanings we've always found there. And while we're here: I'm beguiling my retirement with properly reading the Iliad with a few friends, at about 50 lines a week. No poetry has ever been more composed out of cliches than stuff compose in the oral formulaic tradition; and yet every week we find wonders. The makers who keep on being thought of as great somehow create works that have a capacity to bear a great range of interpretation and receptions, beyond what could have been anticipated when they were new. I don't understand how it happens, but it's also like the way myths persist, even as their use and meaning changes.
@@themusicprofessor We're reading it in Greek. I learned Ancient Greek long ago (imperfectly--I was a lazy student) and in retirement I got it back, and taught a few friends so they could read with me. Homeric Greek is actually quite easy, because the writing is very repetitive and formulaic, and only a few parts of the rich grammatical system are used most of the time. I'm not flexing, but it really is worth the effort because if you read it at, as I say, 50 lines a week, you take it very slow and you see what surprising things are going on. One member of our little Zoom group, who is a folklorist, never read the Iliad because she wanted to save it to see if she would get to read it in Greek. And so it came to pass. We read a version with all the help in the world, right there on the page, so it really isn't a major effort, and compared with doing sudoku or crosswords, the reward is incomparable. But, as to translations: I think Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey is wonderful (blank verse, and yet a real page-turner). She's just published her translation of the Iliad, which is a very different poem, and I haven't spent much time with it. To tell the truth, I find reading most translations a bit of a chore. And compared with music theory, Homeric Greek is a doddle (he says, knowing nothing about music theory but feeling intimidated).
What you said about Gould enjoying Mozart even as he argues against the music is exactly how I feel about The Beatles. I've thought The Beatles deserved much less acclaim than they receive since I was about twelve years old. But when I listen to something like "Blackbird", I notice my body enjoying it when I'm not thinking about it. So I just avoid listening to The Beatles so I don't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance, jajaja.
Your correct about Mozart, and I could care less what man had to say about Mozart, he was an eccentric........ When you heard Bach, or Brahms, you heard Gould......
As much as I think Gould is being hyperbolic, I don't disagree entirely with his assessment that a lot of Mozart sounds like "office memos". Same, however, could be said about Bach, too, a composer who also recycled a lot of his material. The main difference between them is stylistic: Mozart's style is usually far lighter than that of Bach's, and that's why I personally like Bach more than Mozart, even though Bach's fodder isn't any better than Mozart's.
Great that you have come to the defence of this marvellous work. Interesting though how Gould brings out some of the inner voices in the parts he plays.
First things first: Loki stays! Wall of text follows now... It seems to me that one of the pitfalls of being a genius (in scarequotes) is the irresistible urge for overblown iconoclasm. The bigger the target the better. Beethoven has apparently been a particularly attractive one: Another commentator noted Bernstein vs. Beethoven on which you made a video. John Cage preferring traffic noise over Beethoven (paraphrased) is another quasi-famous example. It's not a genius monopoly either, on the contrary. Semi-ignorant so called intellectuals often grind their axes on well known and loved targets to amplify their false image of wisdom, or authority, or expertise etc. and so on. One example, though probably unfamiliar to the audience of this channel, is particularly relevant: Sadettin Kaynak was a composer of Turkish music active in the firsts half of the 20th century. His stature in that particular tradition is comparable to that of Mozart and others of similar significance. Yet he has been the target of those semi-ignorant charlatans ever since his own day and age. That all said, my own warmth towards Mozart wasn't always there either; not that I'm a genius or (thankfully!) a semi-ignorant pseudo-intellectual, but a composer and ever a student of music in general. The point of the matter was that I was simply not good enough to appreciate Mozart! I needed to mature a bit and learn to discern what may not be necessarily apparent at first. Works for almost everything :) Thank you and keep up the good work.
Yes and Beethoven himself was certainly not innocent in this respect and neither was Mozart. There are some very famous quotes by them on other composers and musicians which are pretty funny to read. I compose too and I as everyone else have composers I simply don't get well along with and one of than is Chopin. It has to do with your approach to the music and how you experience the musical flow in time. I am not going to make a long paragraph of exactly why I am not particularly fond of his music, but one thing might be just the opposite of Gould's critique: Although there are certainly clichés here too (which I find embarrassing), the music is short and has a very simple form and unlike a composer like Mozart or Beethoven, there is no particular emphasis on it. Instead the expression is here and now and seem exaggeratedly melodramatic and emotional and that makes me lose the concentration after a very limited number of bar. It's just boring for me. Nothing happens.
@@NidusFormicarum It essentially boils down to utmost subjectivity doesn't it? You are not ashamed to put it that way honestly (credit to you) yet some people prefer wrapping it up in seemingly yet untruthfully higher meanings of all sorts. After all these years I still have composers I can't get into from all eras, from Boccherini to Xenakis to Ferneyhough. What I've managed to teach myself is that it's _me_ who for some reason or other can't get _them_ *or* simply their music isn't to my completely personal, subjective taste :)
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Why would anyone complain about Loki? He's just hanging out 😪
Loki is fantastic, the haters are just jealous. Makes me think of a post i read about someone working from home being told his dog cant show up in his calls because the office doesn't allow dogs.... Insanity
@@SamTahbou It doesn't bother me in any way, but it's obvious people only have dogs/cats in their content so animal-obsessed people can go 'aw, look at the cute dog/cat', aw isn't he cute, aw, aw, aw!'
It's the lowest form of pandering, and completely transparent.
Everyone who wants a dog or cat has one, big deal.
As for being jealous, as I said, literally anyone can own a dog if they want, so why would anyone be jealous?
But then I guess the sort of people who like Mozart don't mind gratuitous and obvious sentimentality.
Loki stays. Your format and style is perfect.
Yes. I agree.
Ignore the nonsense. Keep being yourself. Your style and content is spot on.
Hey! Cool to see we watch similar content, Alan. Your playing is a big inspiration for me.
Include Loki! :-)
I like all your videos, but I especially enjoy the in-depth lecture videos with your brilliant playing. I'd love to see more of them, not fewer! They're what make this one of my favourite channels on TH-cam.
And, for the record, Loki's presence is nothing but a joy.
Thank you!
Loki (should be spelled Lowkey since this is a music channel) is a major part of your videos at this point 🐕
Loki is great and adds alot to the videos and your lectures are brilliant and I am glad you are here to learn from! Please keep them coming! Thank you!
Thank you!
Far more important than Mozart's K 491 is the issue of the dog: THE BOW WOW MUST STAY! What a lovely looking, happy creature! Aside from that, thank you for the very interesting breakdown of what is going on under the hood.
For those of us trying to write - especially using the now ancient major and minor modes, which have been extremely well trodden - this stuff is extremely useful.
When I was an undergraduate at the now defunct Dartington College of Arts in Totnes, I never had any lectures that gave this kind of insight. Coming to think of it, in three years, I think we only had two lectures on tonality, and none on counterpoint. Man alive, did I have to do some catching up before trying to write some actual proper music, as opposed to the 'anything goes' rubbish that they encouraged us to pump out there.
If you play Loki some recordings of experimental music from the 60s, I'm sure he will agree with me.
I prefer Beethoven's attitude to Mozart compared with Glum Ghoul. Beethoven once attended an outdoor concert of Mozart’s great C minor Piano Concerto. He turned to his friend Johann Baptist Cramer and said with a sigh: “Ah, Cramer. We will never be able to do anything like that.” In a letter to Abbe Maximilian Stadler, Beethoven wrote, 'I have always counted myself amongst the greatest admirers of Mozart and shall remain so until my last breath'.
Great Beethoven quotes!
@@themusicprofessor Beethoven also wrote "Handel is the master of us all"
@@themusicprofessorChopin said the same thing about Beethoven in a letter after hearing one of his string quartets.
It‘s amazing you take the time to show off some of the more interesting aspects of music properly. Thank you for keeping this format alive!
Thank you!
Doggo is great. Keep Loki in the videos.
This video absolutely needed to happen. Very well articulated. I can send this to the Gould sycophants now.
Also your dog is great and is apart of the personality of your videos. The lecture style is absolutely necessary. How else could you expect to explicate adequately enough? You're an engaging speaker so you have nothing to worry about.
The more people talk about Gould, the more I'm convinced he was perhaps one of the greatest business minds and PR geniuses of the 20th century (if nothing else).
As has already been said by others, this is arguably the best rebuttal (on TH-cam at least) of Glenn Gould's arguments for Mozart being a bad composer. It is well known that the puritanical Gould did not like the dramatic aspects of Mozart's music. So already there, he had a cognitive bias against Mozart. Added to that, he seemed to prefer music with a clear architectural structure that followed a strict logic. He called Bach the greatest musical architect (a valid point, if there ever was one), and if my memory serves me correctly, he essentially argued that Mozart was too lazy in his writing of passages played by the left hand and thereby had missed many opportunities.
Gould was a musical genius who had an almost unparalleled ability to play 4-5 voices in a fugue so that each voice was perfectly clear. When he toured in Russia in 1957, the Russian musicians thought that he was an alien, they had never heard anything like it, as several of them testified in the documentary The Russian Journey (highly recommended!). So with his almost superhuman ability to overview and remember every tiny detail in a piece of music, it is no wonder why he loved Bach. Nevertheless, one could argue that his obsession with musical structure and his seeming need for a rationale behind every last note sometimes got the better of him, particularly when combined with his puritanical streak.
Thank you for your interesting comment.
Puritanical is a perfect word for him.
I love your discussion here!❤😊
Indeed he called himself "the last puritan."
@@sm0065 Not without a pinch of irony, though.
My father and I used to watch Gould in the 60s discussing Schoenberg between episodes of Bonanza and a wrestling show.
Those were the days!
Loki STAYS 🔐
He brings joy into a World that so desperately needs it. My lady cat loves him and would not be happy if he was excluded.
People who don’t like seeing Loki have some choices: listen but don’t watch, examine their opinion and change it, etc, etc. I’m part of the Loki fan club.
Aren't we all?
Around 15:00, I love the discussion of rhythm, and the long-range movement of the top note of the scale. Noticing those things is the difference between "Mozart is boring" and "Mozart is magical". Thanks for showing the magic of that passage.
By the way, Beethoven must have liked it since he clearly copied the affect (and even the key) for his 3rd concerto.
I seem to recall Leonard Bernstein had a bit to say about Beethoven being a "bad" composer and then going through his 7th symphony
We actually made a video about this!
th-cam.com/video/VNG4sUvi9BM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=GTDl4njrneNgamxO
@@themusicprofessor Ah, that could be where I remember it from....
One of my personal favourite Mozart genres is his late chamber music. Sublime. I don't think it is an understatement to claim that Mozart developed 18th century chamber music into maturity. For the first time, there was an equal balance between all instruments. Sometimes it feels like Mozart was writing music before his time, and I definitely have moments listening to his chamber music, when it seems he transcends the classical style into proto-Romanticism of the next century.
So yes, on many, many levels, Mozart was an absolutely exceptional composer.
Yes - the chamber music is astonishing. The amazing divertimento for string trio, the wonderful quartets, the violin sonatas and piano trios and piano quartets, and perhaps most amazing of all the string quintets!
Thanks for that, I’m glad to have stumbled across you. My own take on Gould is that it’s important to see him in the context of the new technology of the day - I think he was very aware that it needed exploring thoughtfully in the recording studio and mass media of television. To state something controversial is to strive for relevance and to some degree I think he was testing the waters in terms of what he could get away with. However, it may be that his prime motivation was to encourage a general audience to listen and question the relevance of Mozart’s music - he would have known his arguments were easy to challenge but in that perhaps he knew many would take up the challenge and listen with fresh ears - indeed as you have guided us to do.
Hi, gould sycophant here. I think that his excellency's point was not that Falling Fifths sequences are boring or dull in and of themselves, but rather that Mozart over indulges in using them.
Thanks as always for your illuminating discussion Professor! I (foolishly) used to speak disparagingly of Mozart too, referring to him as the Celine Dion of classical music. This was all completely independent of Glenn Gould I might add. Things Mozart did like the Alberti bass, etc. seemed very light and uninspired to me, like pop music or elevator music, which explains the reference to Celine Dion. I now (thankfully) have a lot more appreciation for him and especially for his later works. Silly me.
Lovely stuff. I found myself thinking a lot of the same stuff about Gould (esp the stuff about him deliberately playing Mozart badly to support his thesis haha) but with a lot less granular knowledge... So I really wanted to hear what you had to say. He doesn't help his case by playing extracts of Mozart so it sounds like Bach either haha?
That said, I actually really enjoy Gould's trolling here... I think thats' what it is.
Investigating classical/gallant/baroque improv and partimento and realising how important the Italians (and opera) were to the music culture of the time has really changed my perspective on this era. I spent some years singing not just Mozart but some of those semi-forgotten Italian composers who ended up in the beginners Arie Antiche repertoire (the Schirmer Book of Old Italian Songs), so I always felt there was a bit of a split between the instrumental canon and the music that singers love (such as Bel Canto.)
I wonder if the sort of centralisation of Bach in the historical narrative by the Romantics has left us with a tendency to dismiss a lot of C18 music for teleological reasons - probably much more so in the mid 20th century when Modernism was the big deal. Everything builds up to Schoenberg... Stravinsky's tribute to these 'generic' masters (well to what he thought was Pergolesi haha) in Pulcinella is an interesting counterpoint to this. Of course Bach, as I understand it, loved Italian music?
Yes! Bach was an amazing composer but his deification in the 19th century certainly skewed the perception of Music history in a very Germanic direction. I completely agree that this has led to an unbalanced view. The Italian tradition, with its emphasis on the voice and melody and dramatic juxtaposition and rhythmic vitality, tends to be ignored. You're right that Stravinsky was alert to this (he also loved Verdi). That's one of the reasons why (I would suggest) he's more important that Schoenberg
all this time I thought Loki was the professor
Loki is a professor of being a good boy
Professor Loki is expert in dogology
Perhaps rather the Muse?
Loki provides all the pawnotes.
@@heresy7266 All these puns on professor Loki are in increasingly PAW taste 😆
One of the best classical music channels on the Internet! Thank you for making these
Thank you!
I have loved this piece since I was a teenager, and I am not even a pianist. I hear longing, darkness, sweetness, drama, loneliness and terror in this piece, in my opinion one of Mozart's most expressive instrumental works. I think the seeming simplicity and cliched aspect is simply Mozart playing it close to the vest--he deos not want to draw too much attention in overt ways to any particular moment, he would rather the expressivity have a quiet power. It is nice that you reveal some of the amazing subtleties under the surface, and rather sad that Gould got bored playing the piece (which I think is the real problem for him).
I have only been learning piano for a year now (after 6 decades of not doing so), & about the same into reading more deeply about music history. Yes, some of the things you discuss shoot straight over my head (theory). It is simply fantastic. I really enjoy how you notate the musical score with bits of knowledge as well (more theory). & I would say that my reading of music has greatly increased because of the way your videos are presented. Well done, editor! My only suggestion would be to say: don't be afraid of longer videos.
As for Loki, well, anyone how has a problem with a dog being present (or even wandering about), you just send them my way, & I'll sort it.
Professor, your little pet is adorable! (...opinion offered by a fan in northwest Arkansas) I remember seeing Glenn Gould performing on 1950s TV. Really eccentric, and sometimes even a bit spooky!
Dog on channel? Great! I see no reason not to. Too lectureree? (sp?). No way! More lectures please. Don't dumb down for people who can only concentrate for less than 30 seconds at a time- there is a very substantial audience for those that want more. No more 'lowest common denominator!'
Shostakovich as a young man did what must be the pinnacle of improvisatory piano - accompanying silent film showings in the cinema. It gives a flavour that runs through a lot of his "proper" output.
I have a lot of love for Gould's extensive Bach output and I'm a sap for his eccentricities and the character he projects. A friend of mine had CDs with his radio interviews and Jings did they get us arguing! I gorge myself on Gould's opinions the way I once read Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture. The polemic, the logic, the enthusiasm and the determination of it is an absolute delight - but I am aware that it is a brilliantly coloured mixture of great sagacity and codswallop.
Thank you! Gould does indeed play Mozart 'mechanistically' and I have been saying as much for years. I do think that Gould's approach to music was overly cerebral and (dare I say?) pretentious. I find Gould cold and condescending; someone who liked to feel above others. Mozart's late music is usually fabulous. Who could doubt the greatness of Symphonies 39-41? Or Die Zauberflöte? Or the 27th Piano Concerto? Or Ave Verum Corpus? And so on. Gould, in his cold, cerebral way, probably preferred Alban Berg's most atonal sonic 'hell' to all of this sublime music. I prefer Andras Schiff's Bach and Uchida's Mozart...
I will take Schiff and Uchida over Fouls any day!
But that was not the music Gould talked about. He was in particular talking about his piano sonatas, which are indeed pretty formulaic and unimaginative for the most part. Most definately the most uninteresting part of his entire catalogue.
I have not much time for Gould. Anyone thinking that his K.491 was good needs their head examined. He was obviously trying to do a Lang Lang and turn it into a huge showpiece. Horrid indeed.
As I see it, Gould disagreed with romanticism aesthetics, which lead him to different paths to interpret all that non-romantic repertoire which was being played romanticly.
Since I despise romanticism as a whole, I concur with Gould thinking.
And no, playing non-romantic isn't playing robotic, there's plenty of expression in Gould work
@@JulioLeonFandinho If he agreed so much then why did he love Wagner and Strauss? ;)
I don't think at all that Gould didn't like this music, but he did have some serious problems with it, almost wishing it could be better, maybe. When he presents these ideas in essays and film he is presenting an argument, something often a bit extreme and seemingly rigid or dogmatic. He does this, I believe, for the purpose of really making an audience or reader think critically; he wants to enter into a dialogue with society and the musical public. In his essay "Glenn Gould Interviews Himself About Beethoven" he goes as far as to say that he does not enjoy listening to works like the Grosse Fuge or even the 14th String Quartet, I think this is both true and false in some senses, that he does enjoy this music immensely and is quite literally entranced by it (visible any time he plays anything), but at the same time cannot help but think about it at an incredibly deep intellectual/musicological level. Thus he discovers problems. His main driving principle as an interpreter was to fix problems in the music, look deep into its structure from the future further than even the composer was able to, and present a new version of it which works better in a way, has fewer problems. He has a deep love for music, and wants to make you think about it, and wants to communicate with you. He is always described as a great pianist first, but he described himself as a Canadian writer and broadcaster who just happened to play the piano, saying it was the greatest means through which he was capable of conveying his thoughts.
A couple other responses to points you made. There are many other beautiful things about this piece and stylistic period of Mozart's development, the rhythmic genius, instrumentation, other voices, etc., but what Gould is criticizing here is the harmonic simplicity and dullness. Just the same harmonic sequence over and over again, decorated differently with virtuosic patterns. Related to this, as to what you said about Bach, Gould mentions this same thing in the program; the ruthless exploitation of the same motivic sequences "ad infinitum" is a common element in many of Bach's compositions. Gould mentions between essays and other film programs on Bach that although his music can be endlessly sequential, especially in his earlier works, he is in facts using this sequential simplicity to explore immensely intense and emotional harmonic development, really getting to know the secrets of harmony inside and out. At the same time, Gould makes the argument that Bach is also always involved in fugal writing. There are countless examples of sequences and patterns even from the earliest works that move their way all through Bach's life and development, but now instead of infinite repetition they just blow right by one after the next, "giving the impression of an infinitely expanding universe." It seems as though when writing in other forms he is constantly having to resist the urge to turn it into fugue, constantly exploring small motivic cells and ways they can be developed and interrelated (much like Schoenberg would do 200 years later!). Gould writes that in a way Bach is always writing a fugue, collecting ideas for future fugues, and eventually his life's defining work, The Art of Fugue. So back to the point, I think what bothered Gould in this sense was Mozart's lack of development. It's not like he had significantly better instrumentation in his later period than when he was younger, and although as a craftsman and contrapuntist he may have in fact developed his capacity, he never really put that capacity to the test. He was content almost making self parody, and the ingeniousness, fire and personality of his youth was no longer present. This, I think, is Gould's major problem with Mozart.
or
If anyone wants to talk about anything Gould related please reply, love the guy and don't get many chances to really have a conversation about it lol
I'm certainly not more knowledgeable on Gould than you. So, I'm writing this just off of what little I know and your comment.
I think Gould is simply partial to Bach.
The argument that when Mozart uses circle of fifths - it's uninspired writing and when Bach uses the circle of fifths idiom it's exploring emotional harmonic development is backed up by nothing but his personal taste.
On the topic of development, motivic and contrapuntal development are not the only kind of development and nor should they be (neither does Mozart shy away from them).
As for Mozart falling into self-parody, I strongly believe that Mozart of all people, had a strong internal standard for compositions he would put his name on.
Contrapuntal entries in sonata form recapitulation, triplet accompaniment replacements for alberti bass in concerti, lots of delicious chromaticism, dissonance, invertible counterpoint (at the octave, fifth, even tenth) - these are elements of his music which he could have done simply without and passed off - if he simply wanted to parody.
I think all this ultimately boils down to the composer Gould likes more. And there's nothing wrong with liking Bach over Mozart.
Seymour Bernstein said, via Tonebase, that there was something "snide" about Gould. I like his piano playing but I have to agree. Gould argued that it's sloppy to incorporate improvisation ideas into a composition (which disqualifies most of Chopin's works from being great music).
Glenn didn't like Chopin either!
Funnily enough, 'snide' would be my first choice of adjective to describe Seymour Bernstein!
@@melefth Agreed. I think he was projecting.
I'm no fan of Mozart, and I really like Gould, but his arguments about Mozart puzzle me.
Have you seen the session where Glenn Gould and Yehudi Menuhin play Schönberg's phantasy op. 47? Before they play it, the two have a chat about the music. Menuhin is not convinced by the composition, and he's explaining why, but he's willing to take the music at its own merit. When Gould notes that Menuhin apparently doesn't like Schönberg, the response is very interesting:
"Well, Glenn, I was very anxious to take you up on the invitation to play it, because I admire you, and know that you know more about Schönberg, and have a genuine understanding of Schönberg, perhaps than anyone else. And I'm always interested in learning about something through the eyes of someone who understands it, and loves it, because I've always had the motto in my life than anyone who liked something knew more about it than one who didn't."
Gould doesn't like Mozart, and doesn't understand Mozart, but he's not willing to seriously consider the arguments of those who do. He's brilliantly cynical, sure, but he's missing the point.
Great comment! The Schoenberg phantasy film is fascinating. The discussion they have beforehand is marvellously civilised: a model of how people should disagree instead of the ghastly polarisation that tends to characterise so much contemporary discussion. They then go on to perform it brilliantly too. With Mozart, I think Glenn had real difficulties with all the homophonic style gallant aspects of the style - he thinks Mozart ought to be trying harder (there's an interesting discussion about fugue in which he's very complementary about Mozart: th-cam.com/video/8_JccQK3KKU/w-d-xo.htmlsi=WlGY7juUi6zQX8UZ).
Your YT videos are not lecture-y. I sat in those lectures in music school. I find your posts excellent, good for non-musicians, and helpful for those classically trained.
I wish as a youth I'd heard like you in my classes.
Outstanding video! Totally agree with everything you said. Mozart's use of rhythm can be so subtle and yet so powerful
I appreciate your justification of the sequences and their rhythmic interest. I think Vivaldi parodies this in a violin concerto in D minor, RV 235. (I love listening to Carmignola's interpretation while reading the manuscript on Del Vivaldi's channel.) Almost the entire first parts of the first movement is made up of circle of fifths sequences. Then at the end, he breaks ritornello form by having the orchestra play completely unrelated material and ends the movement, almost as though laughing and saying, "Well, you wanted something new, right?" Ironically, though, he briefly quotes that closing material in the third movement (albeit with an added trill), which further convinces me this was parody. But the whole movement is filled with weird textural subtleties (or, in some instances, not as subtle). It's not surprising that the concerto would be a form in which composers would display their rhythmic mastery-the concerto master himself, as Chandler says, "did for rhythm what Bach did for counterpoint". I also have to disagree with Gould here. I do wonder if he was being controversial for the sake of being controversial.
And keep Loki!
This is a great video. I loved your point on sequences - that stretch of Brandenburg 5 really makes me feel I'm laying in a brook and all my worries are steadily dissolved. There's a hypnotic quality music can offer that can only be wrought by long stretches of repetition.
Those that don't like your presentation- please post links to your videos.
I am really struggling to rationalise how anyone could possibly have a problem with a cute dog chilling to a classical music discussion. A human needs to be completely hard hearted to make such remarks.
About this concerto in particular, it is actually one of my favourite Mozart concertos but at the same time when I first listened to Gould discussing this passage, I sort of agreed with him on a superficially intellectual level. But, after you emphasised the rhythmic importance of the passage, subtle nuances such as the breaking of the hemiola, inversion of rythms from long-short to short-long, it really clicked something in me. Added to that, the seemingly homogeneous and non dynamic way that Gould plays that passage (even if deliberately) speaks to how he (and I on first hearing) couldn’t comprehend the point of the passage on an intellectual level. This was a very fascinating discussion from which I learnt a lot! Thank you!
Glenn Gould's video tells us a great deal about Glenn Gould but little of relevance about Mozart. Television companies should be more careful about the 'experts' that they promote, but they never are. They want characters who can hold an uninformed audience. So lectures by various experts on a range of subjects on TH-cam are most welcome though rare. (Yale university public lectures, National Gallery [London] and some of the TED speeches (Evelyn Glennie's is superb) are among personal favourites. And Loki says nothing but tells us more about Mozart (of worth) than Mr Gould.
This is the best rebuttal of Gould's arguments I've heard. Great video!:-)
I was going to say the exact same thing. The best rebuttal of Gould's arguments indeed!
Thank you!
You could argue that Van Gogh's sunflowers was just the cliche of a bowl of flowers.
@@brianmidmore2221 ...or the Mona Lisa was just a cliche portrait...
Glenn Gould was a pompous self-centered narcissistic contrarian who liked to be intentionally divisive and say controversial things just to get a rise out of people and play the devil's advocate for ridiculous points of view...he was basically a big giant TROLL. He was the Alex Jones of his time. He once said that Mozart, who died at the incredibly young age of 34, "it is a shame that Mozart didn't die SOONER."
I say it is a shame that Glenn Gould didn't do the same. Instead we were cursed with decades of his pompous and ridiculous opinions and his non stop humming and singing as he butchered every performance he ever gave by turning it into an out of tune drunken karaoke parody of whatever piece he was playing. I would like anyone to show me where the vocal line is on the score in ANY of the pieces Gould plays for solo piano. Cause I sure HEAR IT. EVERY TIME.
I'm a professional symphonic musician (clarinetist). I love Glen Gould. I love this video. But I love Mozart the most! FWIW, my favorite of the piano concerti is the companion to the C minor, the A major, K.488, but then again, I AM a clarinetist. Speaking of which, a staple of my repertoire, C. M. von Weber's 1st clarinet concerto in F minor, basically pilfers the opening of K.491 for it's first theme.
I completely agree that Mozart is, first and foremost, an opera composer. A critic once accused me of being perhaps overly dramatic in my interpretation of the Clarinet Concerto, K.622, calling it a "stately and courtly" work. He thought I played it too much as if it were Beethoven. Well, considering the proximity of K.622 work to both "The Magic Flute" and the Requiem and the fact that Beethoven was already 20 years old, I think prima facie that would mean a rather dramatic interpretation might be completely in line with what the composer had in mind. Thanks!
“Interactive communication vs dynamic conflict” - superb juxtaposition! Your demonstrative analysis is wonderful; leave Gould to hum along with Sir Humphrey 🌝
Please don’t make any adjustments too the gifts you bring the internet. Specificity and quality takes time. TH-cam and similar platforms are constantly flooded with quick format infotainment which I am sure the people who seek it will have no problem finding. Rare gems like your channel are valuable. If anything go deeper, all the best and thanks for the great work.
What a treat, great content, from Loki to unpicking incredible craftsmanship given with soul satisfying simplicity - that's great art. My only argument about this super analytical approach is that these microelements are probably spontaneously created and captured on paper or on the spot during improvisation. And that's talent. Great we can analyse it and analyse it after hundreds of years, but has this resulted in our modern approach of composing something without any spontaneity adhering to absurd rules of dissonance that even when broken with incredibly clever tricks and reflect moments of genius, nobody understands and nobody wants to know about? Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed this video after a really difficult day at work and it made my day. Thank you very much indeed!
Thank you for your kind comment. I think analysis can always help us to know and love music better, and there are all sorts of amazing kinds of music being created even today!
Your style and dog are perfect, don't change!! I love the long, deep discussions.
For me, nobody plays Bach like Gould. I can't say if some of his more controversial interpretations were what Bach had intended but he sure does the finest job of them. Genius as he was, Gould made me shake my head in disbelief when I first heard him slating Mozart. He was entitled to his opinion...which is all it was...albeit that of a genius 😄 Also, I love your channel and have thoroughly enjoyed each video you have kindly presented to us. Loki belongs there too, I found it a bit ruff that someone would object 😂
Loki's reaction to Mozart corresponds to mine. Great addition for the channel!
We like Loki 🐶
Thank you for helping Mozart. I hope people who were convinced by Gould, that Mozart isn't that amazing, will watch your video.
I 💌Loki (and I'm a cat person)!
Also like the style and presentation of your videos in general 👍
Thank you!
I love this video. thank you so much! I've always thought that the profundity of Mozart's contrapuntal, harmonic, and rhythmic skill is seriously underrated, because he conceals it so well. I look forward to more videos on his music!
Yeah cliché’s are essential for a living practicing music culture. That is the vocabulary, the common patterns, that get shared across musicians.
An episode on the Beatles would be great. They have some fantastic harmonies
Let me grab me a cup or coffee. I had been waiting for this video!
Don't worry too much about changing anything that doesn't occur to you organically. Your videos make my world better. Us people who make content out of love and appreciation should remain skeptical of the demands of the audience. There have been people on these platforms who find their entire mental landscape morphed into whatever is getting views, reactions, and responses. It can be an insidious force if not met with equal parts reverence and irreverence (kinda like how Gould approaches the world if you pay close attention).
I'd argue that Gould occasionally forms fine-tuned (but incorrect) arguments so that people will be forced to think higher quality thoughts (generated within their own noggins) in order to disagree.
There is much wisdom here.
I absolutely lovely that someone on yt does this complex musical analysis. As a college student, its a studying tool that i can use towards understanding the subject in question. I absolutely love it!
Keep on making great videos like this one:)
Your in-depth, lecture format is superb, please stick with it.
Keep the jokes to a minimum, though (why do so many TH-camrs think they're comedians?)
Love the doggy, it's his home. Ignore haters.
Good points all and I’m a guitar player but my first venture into musicianship was on clarinet.
Big fan of your videos.
Guitar player in Georgia.
I thought I was the only guitar player here. Greetings from Brazil.
I was born before 1960.
I love music….Big Band, Swing, Rock, Classical…etc…
I used to be good on clarinet but I stopped playing in the early 1970’s.
One of the dumbest things I ever did. 😀
I’m not smart enough to have ever played Classical musical but I DO appreciate those that can.
Those were the masters.
Cheers from America.
:-)
You touch on this facinating question as to why great music is made up of commonplace elements yet 'speaks'. Talented people can make a phrase which is a simple as three blind mice some how speak to us but less talented people doing that just sounds like a bunch of notes.
Shakespeare was a lousy playwright because he used words, phrases, clauses, sentences, punctuation. And some of his poetry rhymes - how tedious. And he played to the pit - how vulgar. Gould is just being a smartass, like Bernstein, when he claimed that Beethoven couldn't write a decent melody (after pinching the slow movement of the Emperor for "There's a place for you" in West Side Story).
I wouldn't be without either of them though!
Both Bernstein and Gould seemed to be dishonest for the sake of being edgy.
"There's a place for you"? Please feel free to be snarky about Bernstein, but get the music right.
Loki is cool !
And please keep your style … it’s perfect.
Please note: Professor Loki has good scratch at 11:46
He really goes for it!
Please keep Loki present for as long as he’ll have us 😉
I watched that Mozart essay by Gould. Gould was an odd duck.
Your videos are great, and so is your puppy. Haters gonna hate
Any video with a dog in it is going to be better than the same video sans dog :)
Thank you for continuing on, this was very fun and refreshing to watch. Loki is best boy and a great assistant to the professor seems to me.
Hi 🙂! That's funny because now almost all comments revolve around Loki 🤣. Gould was a genius for sure but Mozart was by far an even much more greater genius ! I liked how you pointed all the elements proving Gould wrong. And I like your channel a lot. Cheers ! 🙂
Yes, I'm getting a bit jealous of Loki!
I love your format and your dog.
Lovely video, and you exactly explain why I love Mozart so much. And please do not listen to anyone who says Loki doesn't belong.
Loved your lecture. Thanks so much.
People seriously commenting on your dog ??
Keep lecturing
Haha! You could not resist mentioning the Neapolitan. 😁
I love that chord, and you do as well it seems.
I haven’t noticed any dog so far. Have noticed wonderful music and thorough knowledge of it nevertheless.
Another great video! Your enthusiasm for the music you are presenting is palpable. Thank you very much. As for Gould, he is always referred to as « eccentric. « Frankly, I think he was just plain nuts, a bit childish and a whole lot silly. Great finger dexterity, prodigious memory, but his understanding of quite a lot of music was shallow. His Beethoven is (to me) unlistenable. His performances could be shocking (Bach, and not just the Goldberg Variations; Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 1, for example), but hardly authoritative and not particularly enjoyable.
Thank you. He always divides opinion. For me, he's an indispensable figure: a marvellous, crazy, eccentric, profoundly creative person and a pianist of phenomenal gifts, but yes some of his performances are pretty unlistenable to. On the subject of Beethoven, he really only 'gets' late Beethoven. His recording of Op. 109 is very interesting: th-cam.com/video/tuNkBd_LL1s/w-d-xo.html
I agree with a lot of Glenn Gould's more bonkers takes, lol, probably more than most people, but he was definitely off-the-mark with Mozart. Side note but I don't think he's actually deliberately playing "badly" -- I think that's his genuine interpretation of how he wants to play his music. His recorded CDs of Mozart is exactly like this too, a kind of "Mozart on Meth". I don't think it really works; some of his interpretation of Mozart piano works sound genuinely insane (and I don't use that word lightly).
These discussions of music are fantastic. This music has been a huge part of my life, but I never understood any of the theory behind it. I really appreciate how you break it down. It's similar to close reading a poem. Very effective, very engaging. (And Loki's great!)
beautiful video and a worthy defense. i love glenns iconoclasm and believe there should be no sacred cows, everyone should use their own ears and minds and decide for themselves what they find meritorious.
now to unseal the indictment! - i agree that his case is at the very best unforgivably arbitrary, as you say you can indict many of glenns favorites (Bach and Strauss come immediately to mind) if you are going to say sequences area always laziness and lack of invention. i think this is really rooted in schoenbergs idea of developing variation being a more worthy/ethical way, the mark of a high minded composer, and the often concomitant slight or suspicion of sequence per se that often accompanied it. schoenberg attacked sequence in that way and i think that had a big effect on acolytes of the second Viennese school..
thank you for pointing out some of the merits of the passages gould roasted, my only complaint is you left out my favorite moment from the English pedagogue when he waxes purple about how wonderful it is “not to modulate” 😂
Fascinating comment! Yes, you're right: the problem with sequences is Schoenbergian (although, oddly W.A.M was Schoenberg's favourite composer apparently). I'll have to put the comment about modulation in another video!
Thank you. Despite watching about 20 hours of TH-cam content a week, I comment maybe once a year. I loved this spot - I love Mozart but didn't know this piece, and will definitely listen to the C minor with a lot more appreciation now. Looking forward to anything you have to say about the Beatles! And the dog stays!
My guess is that "return of the wizard" is a reference to the Wizard of Oz where they find he's just a small man who was generating a big image. I don't think it suits but that's my best guess.
Gould plays a nice piano but he's no Mozart.
Maybe not but he was still a genius!
Keep up the good work! Not too lekchury and I love the dog (cockapoo) Loki. He adds a lot. Not sure how exactly.
“Actually”, Gould laments some of Bach’s sequences too in his series of interviews with Bruno Monsaingeon. I believe it was in the context of fugue writing; Bach had to work at fugue writing and his early fugues can be tedious, is the argument.
Here is the video; the relevant discussion begins right after the opening piano: th-cam.com/video/exD8bhJP1eo/w-d-xo.html
Yes. Fascinating video. I think ultimately his point is that Bach worked hard to improve his craft (whereas he thinks Mozart took a more comfortable improvisatory route).
My interpretation of Gould's statement that "Mozart is a bad composer" suggests that Gould is not speaking literally but instead using the statement as a form of satire. You see it as an ironic commentary on how one might misunderstand or oversimplify Mozart’s music. He’s not only parodying such a shallow interpretation, but he’s also mocking himself within the satire. By making such a provocative statement, Gould may be exposing the limited perspectives some listeners or music analysts might have, while also poking fun at his own role as a critic or musician. Through this layered satirical approach, Gould could be highlighting the absurdity of trying to reduce a genius like Mozart to simplistic judgments, thereby critiquing both the audience and his own analytical authority. However i can be wrong...
I remember being a little shocked when I first heard Glen Gould say these things regarding Mozart's later works, even though Mozart was still a young man when he apparently made this poor quality music and poor choices in his works. He says he actually likes Mozart as we all should do especially if you love lyrical melody. Glen went on further and attacked The Beatles in another video which annoyed me further as I truly love everything they stood for but specifically their sense of gorgeous melody when we must remember popular music had so much stripped away during that impasse where classical music was at its worst point in time and the only music people were really listening too was Rock'n'roll and this was too formulaic using barely 4 chords but arranged into countless rhythmic patterns until The Beatles came along and introduced us all to New Tonal music showing the world that there was still so much to do and to dismiss them as bad and poor quality is utterly wrong. The Beatles threw classical music a lifeline in many ways. Thank god this happened or I can say most people would of never heard of Mozart and understood his pure brilliance. As for Glen I admire him and thoroughly enjoy his input 95% of the time.
You're right: he's very wrong about the Beatles and quite a few other things but we love him anyway.
The video: Mozart is a good composer.
The comments: Loki is a good boy.
tbh. loki lives in your house and the commenters don't so he wins. also, you saying all this reminds me of something that i read while i was writing my master's thesis, that i haven't been able to find since so i'm not completely convinced that i wasn't making it up or imagining it somehow. but that was slavoj zizek claiming that figaro is the villain of the marriage of figaro. (i also ended up reading more zizek, including the death of opera, which i think was one of my favourite Academic Texts that i've read, so god knows where he was coming from if he did say that.)
Zizek is always interesting. I've not yet read his 'Second Death of Opera'.
Thank you. A dog in the video might be disconcerting were it a husky, but Loki is perfect, marking the difference between a formal lecture and a deeply illuminating talk in a domestic setting. Even ordinary life can be conducted at a high intellectual level, with dogs and jokes too.
I think the distinction between "really great" and "only 'great' because an institution" is a false dichotomy. As you point out, one of the markers of the sort of stuff that we call great is that it endures; and it can only do that if it can survive different contexts, and audiences with different expectations. We do expect something special from the work of someone institutionalised as "great"; and if generation after generation keeps on finding different, but related, greatness, then it's presumably there. I more at home with literature than music, so I mention Shakespeare. I am sure that there are interpretations, in performance and in description, that would really surprise Shakespeare, but they can still make the plays live in a way that grows out of the scripts, and that is in some sense congruent with the meanings we've always found there. And while we're here: I'm beguiling my retirement with properly reading the Iliad with a few friends, at about 50 lines a week. No poetry has ever been more composed out of cliches than stuff compose in the oral formulaic tradition; and yet every week we find wonders. The makers who keep on being thought of as great somehow create works that have a capacity to bear a great range of interpretation and receptions, beyond what could have been anticipated when they were new. I don't understand how it happens, but it's also like the way myths persist, even as their use and meaning changes.
Lovely comment. Thank you. Which version of the Iliad are you reading?
@@themusicprofessor We're reading it in Greek. I learned Ancient Greek long ago (imperfectly--I was a lazy student) and in retirement I got it back, and taught a few friends so they could read with me. Homeric Greek is actually quite easy, because the writing is very repetitive and formulaic, and only a few parts of the rich grammatical system are used most of the time. I'm not flexing, but it really is worth the effort because if you read it at, as I say, 50 lines a week, you take it very slow and you see what surprising things are going on. One member of our little Zoom group, who is a folklorist, never read the Iliad because she wanted to save it to see if she would get to read it in Greek. And so it came to pass. We read a version with all the help in the world, right there on the page, so it really isn't a major effort, and compared with doing sudoku or crosswords, the reward is incomparable.
But, as to translations: I think Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey is wonderful (blank verse, and yet a real page-turner). She's just published her translation of the Iliad, which is a very different poem, and I haven't spent much time with it. To tell the truth, I find reading most translations a bit of a chore. And compared with music theory, Homeric Greek is a doddle (he says, knowing nothing about music theory but feeling intimidated).
What you said about Gould enjoying Mozart even as he argues against the music is exactly how I feel about The Beatles. I've thought The Beatles deserved much less acclaim than they receive since I was about twelve years old. But when I listen to something like "Blackbird", I notice my body enjoying it when I'm not thinking about it. So I just avoid listening to The Beatles so I don't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance, jajaja.
That’s funny, Gould didn’t like the Beatles either. He preferred Petula Clark! really!
Love the lecture style videos with Loki!
Your correct about Mozart, and I could care less what man had to say about Mozart, he was an eccentric........ When you heard Bach, or Brahms, you heard Gould......
exactly. sometimes you get a little of Bach or Brahms with your Gould…
As much as I think Gould is being hyperbolic, I don't disagree entirely with his assessment that a lot of Mozart sounds like "office memos". Same, however, could be said about Bach, too, a composer who also recycled a lot of his material. The main difference between them is stylistic: Mozart's style is usually far lighter than that of Bach's, and that's why I personally like Bach more than Mozart, even though Bach's fodder isn't any better than Mozart's.
Great that you have come to the defence of this marvellous work.
Interesting though how Gould brings out some of the inner voices in the parts he plays.
First things first: Loki stays! Wall of text follows now... It seems to me that one of the pitfalls of being a genius (in scarequotes) is the irresistible urge for overblown iconoclasm. The bigger the target the better. Beethoven has apparently been a particularly attractive one: Another commentator noted Bernstein vs. Beethoven on which you made a video. John Cage preferring traffic noise over Beethoven (paraphrased) is another quasi-famous example. It's not a genius monopoly either, on the contrary. Semi-ignorant so called intellectuals often grind their axes on well known and loved targets to amplify their false image of wisdom, or authority, or expertise etc. and so on. One example, though probably unfamiliar to the audience of this channel, is particularly relevant: Sadettin Kaynak was a composer of Turkish music active in the firsts half of the 20th century. His stature in that particular tradition is comparable to that of Mozart and others of similar significance. Yet he has been the target of those semi-ignorant charlatans ever since his own day and age. That all said, my own warmth towards Mozart wasn't always there either; not that I'm a genius or (thankfully!) a semi-ignorant pseudo-intellectual, but a composer and ever a student of music in general. The point of the matter was that I was simply not good enough to appreciate Mozart! I needed to mature a bit and learn to discern what may not be necessarily apparent at first. Works for almost everything :) Thank you and keep up the good work.
Yes and Beethoven himself was certainly not innocent in this respect and neither was Mozart. There are some very famous quotes by them on other composers and musicians which are pretty funny to read.
I compose too and I as everyone else have composers I simply don't get well along with and one of than is Chopin. It has to do with your approach to the music and how you experience the musical flow in time. I am not going to make a long paragraph of exactly why I am not particularly fond of his music, but one thing might be just the opposite of Gould's critique: Although there are certainly clichés here too (which I find embarrassing), the music is short and has a very simple form and unlike a composer like Mozart or Beethoven, there is no particular emphasis on it. Instead the expression is here and now and seem exaggeratedly melodramatic and emotional and that makes me lose the concentration after a very limited number of bar. It's just boring for me. Nothing happens.
@@NidusFormicarum It essentially boils down to utmost subjectivity doesn't it? You are not ashamed to put it that way honestly (credit to you) yet some people prefer wrapping it up in seemingly yet untruthfully higher meanings of all sorts. After all these years I still have composers I can't get into from all eras, from Boccherini to Xenakis to Ferneyhough. What I've managed to teach myself is that it's _me_ who for some reason or other can't get _them_ *or* simply their music isn't to my completely personal, subjective taste :)
How could anyone mind Loki?!