Dear Mr. Bruce Cross, I always liked Glenn Gould, but I forgot how important he is for understanding music and thinking about art. Thank you very much.
Yes. Especially now with the endless possibility of very niche audiences for exotic or eccentric forms - even for Mr Norfolk with his Bruckner symphonies.
When I worked at Tower Records Classical, and the place was getting too crowded, I'd put on Schoenberg String Quartets. Cleared the room in a jiffy. I developed a curious fondness for them.
When I worked closing shift at Tower Classical, our clear-the-store go-to was the then recently released CD of Florence Foster Jenkins. Had we gone the Schoenberg route, we might have cleared the store, but the staff would have wanted to hear the music to its double bar.
So, Glenn, thank you for everything, not only for the best music I ever heard, but also for my fast progress in English 😁. I adore all brillliant Gould's explanations. Really grateful for sharing this, Mr. Cross❤️.
I found his thoughts on composition and nationalism to be transfixing. On how creativity is moving away from various places of unavoidable isolation and into an accessible, ubiquitous electronic/information/recording age.
Fascinating as always. On very rare occasions Glenn Gould can get very verbose, slightly affected and somewhat pretentious. Not so in this broadcast recording. I found everything he spoke about to be fascinating, on point and still relevant today. Insightful and foresightful. A gem of a talk.
It is interesting that the CBC did not broadcast this fascinating interview. I think it was because Gould's negative take on Stravinsky could have created a problem, considering the work Stravinsky and Craft were doing with the CBC Orchestra at the time. As far as the date, he makes a reference to a hypothetical Richter live record: "That was Richter on November 16, 1964." So I think that was the date of the interview. True, Gould had made his last recital a few months earlier, but he did not think of it as irrevocable yet.
Not many people would speak out against Stravinsky because he has too many sycophants and yea Gould was probably silenced because of just that, Stravinsky's frail ego wouldn't be able to handle it.
@@stalavosvergrimm9664 At least Stravinsky never had to sue a major 20th century author because in the author’s novel he was being equated with a degenerate composer who sold his soul to the devil. At least Stravinsky never felt intense jealousy because another composer was getting more performances than he was. Talk about frail egos, Schoenberg was the World Champion in that field.
Gould the music critic, said here that the Rite of Spring was the work of a child and in another video said that Mozart became a bad composer. I understand why the CBC didn’t broadcast these opinions.
@@bb1111116 yeah, i think he just liked to play the excéntric rebel sometimes, no one (specially such an intelligent and erudite person like Gould) would Say that Mozart became a Bad composer for real, just to raise people's hair, or that the most influencial Work of the Century was a Childs Work, and then defend awful trash like schoenbers atonal piano music, he simply liked to trash the most famous and respected composers, like Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, chopin, etc.
What Gould missed when discussing the Bruckner imitator tucking away recordings, is that recording media become obsolete very quickly. We can still listen to the recordings of some of the most famous musicians of the early twentieth-century precisely because these musicians were popular in their day. Their recordings are transferred from one medium to another while still possible: shellac to vinyl to tape to CD and so on. The Bruckner imitator's recordings are not going to enable him to emerge from obscurity in two centuries because in two centuries they will be unplayable. He'd have much better luck simply preserving his scores on paper. Music notation changes at a much slower rate.
I find Gould has extraordinary insights into Schoenberg. I don't really see the move towards dodecaphonic and non-tonal to be completely drastic when you think about how musical harmony developed from 1700 to 1900. I've always felt there is still quite a lot of tonality within Schoenberg's non-tonality. But what Gould says about Rite of Spring I find utter nonsense - it's a masterpiece that still blows me away now as it did 40 years ago on my first hearing. But that's what I love about Gould - he just says what he thinks. I also agree with his views on Mozart in another video.
When he rips on Le Sacre, I think Gould is doing exactly what he accuses Stravinsky of -- being an "enfant terrible" just to stir things up. I agree, I love listening to Gould talk about music.
Possibly one of the most succinct musical thinkers and speakers of the twentieth century, no matter how one might otherwise feel about his genial music making.
Schoenberg may be the most misunderstood of all great composers. His music is thought of as inaccessible, uncommunicative and difficult. The exact opposite is true. Like Stravinsky, Bartok and Debussy, Schoenberg was a fabulous melodist and orchestrator and wrote some of the most emotionally available music of the century. His music does need repeated listening, but once one does "crack" his style, it is tremendously rewarding.
@@ncrean66 In fact the thing about this need for repeated listening is, that it applies also to other music. It's quite obvious, when you think of Max Reger. But it's also true for Brahms, Beethoven, Bach a.s.o.
@@Sulsfort Really ? Should we finally have said it - Beethoven may be the most misunderstood of all great composers. His music is thought of as inaccessible, uncommunicative and difficult. The exact opposite is true. Like Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven was a fabulous melodist and orchestrator and wrote some of the most emotionally available music of the century. It does need repeated listening, but once one does "crack" his style, it is tremendously rewarding..
Schonberg is most irrefutably difficult - to perform, and to hear. Berg admitted this in his essay, "Why is Schonberg's Music so Difficult?".It is often communicative, depending on the piece, but not generally accessible. Merely saying he is these things is not by itself persuasive.
Yes. Early Stravinski was a Russian national composer. What would Petrushka be without its Russian musical and thematic setting, for example? The later Stravinski, the neoclassist, seems very French to me. French, that is, of the era in which Stravinski lived there. Pulcinella is a good example of this. I remember reading Camus stories in my college French class and imagining a film of 'La Greve' set to Stravinski's Pulcinella. I doubt that I was aware at that time of Stravinski's Paris interlude.
The seeds of the break with tonality are sown by the maricle of tempered tuning. J.S.Bach let the chromatic cat outa the bag by exploiting/exploring the expressive possibilities of all those pesky subversive notes outside key. So by composing harmonically advanced music unmatched untill the late 19th century Bach unintentionally created an unspoken Faustian pact among composers (all of em) such that the entire trajectory of the history of western art music could accurately be characterised as a high speed power dive into higher and higher levels of chromaticism that made the 20th century crisis in tonality inevitable. ☯️ Dodecaphonic music provides fascinating insights into tonality. So now we know the size of the swimming pool we're in. This is very useful info for a jazz pianist.
Fascinating and revealing interview, but in many ways not surprising, knowing what we know now of Gould. His thought on composers' conference are quite amusing.
The most fascinating discourse on Schoenberg from a lad just passed 30. I think Schoenberg, like Gould, had an oppositional/defiant streak in his character. Schoenberg had strange mathematical ideas. He believed in numerology. There again, Isaac Newton believed in alchemy. Who am I to judge?
What Gould says about Scheonberg's later realization to use "the system" could be used in a way to create semi-conventional tonal sonorities - and these techniques he taught quite successfully to Webern and Berg - and they indeed, in some of their works, really made that "flexibility" of "the 12-tone system" quite apparent. (Although they both wrote some very "challenging music" as well, along the way - the pointilistic pointillism of Webern, for instance). Other composers also learned how to do this - Krenek is one of them - his first Piano Sonata, does not sound like it used a 12-tone system as it actually sounds rather romantic, for instance. With respect to the notion of "Schoenberg's Theories", one has to not make the mistake that Gould talks about, and mistakingly observe the 12-tone theory was an end in itself. Schoenberg's template, in his early 12-tone works, he still considered thinks to be in the Tonic form; and the Dominant form, and so forth. And Op. 31, Variations for Orchestra, sounds like Brahms with some very wild notes, despite its construction via the 12-tone techniques. But overall, as a teacher, he also was quite aware of the enormity of remarkable methods that had been at the heart in all the great works of the centuries of common practice, and even extending back to the renaissance. As such, Schoenberg's insight into compositional process, are quite remarkable - for instance, his books on Fundamentals of Musical Composition, and especially "The Musical Idea - it's Logic and Presentation", which was largely written, but he passed away before getting it published. Fortunately, his protege Dr. Patricia Carpenter, an extraordinary woman in her own right, along with her colleague and protege, Severine Neff, took it upon themselves to take the manuscript and translated it from German into English, and present Schoenbergs most remarkable insights about "compositional craft". This work remarkably and practically deals with the interrelationship of the parts to the whole, and stems from the tradition of the 19th century of Musical Organicism. And it makes it clear that Schoenberg was one of the greatest musical minds of the 20th century, to be sure, and yes, truly devoted to teaching - to transmitting the massive understanding of the largely tonal period of 3 to 4 centuries of musical composition, from the European tradition, and presenting it in such a way, that it could be passed on to future generations of composers - and yes, it's not a popular notion these days, but he felt that one must master the techniques that came before, so that one became in full control of the musical materials...and anyone who has spent time composing knows that without that kind of exhaustive training, it's very easy to find oneself boxed into a "compositional corner", where it feels very much like the materials are in control of you! His Harmony text is also extraordinary, as is his innocuous "Structural Functions of Harmony: - all of which were the consequences of his teaching in Los Angeles to Composers as well as "non-composers" the basic skills and concepts of composition so as to understand the "backside of the musical tapestry" of a work of common practice for a "performer" to come to a much deeper and less superficial understanding, and just playing "on auto-pilot" without wondering why does Beethoven break the sequence at such and such a point and go this way, as opposed to that way? And he would have his students explore trying the other alternatives to see what the consequences were or would not be - and reveals a great mind of the great composers that make up the large majority of music that the "modern" performer plays. The books he wrote on composition, he was strongly insistent that "weren't theories", but rather guidelines - not rules - but principles to come to understand how we got from Fux to the edges of tonality in the Liszt/Wagner era - and his immersion to explore "dodecaphonic" music, and devising a system, as Gould says, that later in his life, Schoenberg himself that "there were many more pieces to be written in C Major" Also, extremely useful is the similarly "innocuous book" titled "Models for Beginners in Composition", which was specifically designed for the "non-composer" musician, to understand all the elements of form and musical process that had been tried and true for centuries - and he thought it important that performers of standard repertoire (and not so standard rep as well!), should have a "hands-on" understanding from undertaking a certain minimal but essential amount of compositional training and developing those "muscles" - which truly take some time to develop and strengthen. What he says about Stravinsky was terrific - I have long felt similarly about much of the superficiality, and as John Waters might say, the "shock value" of his "approach", which is based on the converse of Schoenberg's approach - to use "familiar-sounding materials" (chords/sonorities/drones/melodic fragments/cells), in "unfamiliar ways" (superimposing two dominant seventh chords a step apart; or doing a rhythmic ostinato that has deliberately random sounding irregular accents, so as to "break" the sense of a familiar time-signature, and so-forth. And he not written The Rite, he likely would not have had the profile that that one work did create for him; the other works, written very much similar ways, were, I think Gould is right here, sort of meant to be obnoxious and garish and to get under one's skin, of course, with a few wonderful exceptions along the way. And the observations others have mentioned about "the future of music" - with electronics and media - were remarkably prophetic, as 6 years later, he would hear Wendy Carlos' "Switched-On-Bach", which he did an entire show on it, and unhesitatingly called it the greatest record ever made - because as he talks about, there was tape music, and music concrete, and some rudimentary use of lab-equipment for "electronic music", but it wasn't until Wendy Carlos' SOB, and it going platinum, and still is the best selling classical record of all time, she put Moog's instrument on the map and changed the course of music and electronic music forever - and not for nothing, he wrote an entire full page of liner notes for her follow-up album, The Well Tempered Synthesizer, where he extols her performance of the 4th Brandenberg as the best performance of the work, "Live, canned, or intuited..." - look up Gould and the Moog - someone has put that radio documentary he did online as well....it's really astounding as well. This "interview" is a remarkable treasure, thank you so much Bruce for sharing it with us all!
You obviously haven't listened to much Schoenberg! There's quite a bit of variety in his music. Check out his serenade, a largely neoclassical which contains a distinctly not neoclassical (and gorgeous!) Song without words. Also one of his early masterpieces, Gurrelieder.
Listening to Gould talk about music is akin to listening John McEnroe talk about tennis. Their vision and genius is breathtaking and their beliefs are firm. I never thought Stravinsky as anything but great.
Gould is SO wrong about Stravinsky. I can't tell you how many people I know from so many walks of life who loved La Sacre on first hearing and still consider it their favorite piece. They certainly don't love it for its shock value, which it doesn't have anymore. How shocking can it really be if Disney thought it was great for one of his cartoon movies? Beethoven had 3 very different style periods, does this mean he just didn't know what he was doing? Beethoven was probably more shocking for his time than Stravinsky was for his.
I wonder who was that man in Norfolk he references around 23:00. I never liked Bruckner but out of sheer curiosity I do want to hear that man’s private recordings and generations on I do indeed want to wonder about him through his music.
Ludwig Diehn, apparently. Can someone track down his music? It seems TH-cam is exactly what he was planning for. I love Bruckner's music, and I love obscure music.
@@brucecross1164 wow, he evidently funded the music school at Old Dominion? Just looked him up, that’s a very touching story. Thanks so much, you are a treasure with these rarities!
I have another video in which Gould discusses Ludwig Diehn some more: "Glenn Gould: Dialogues on the Prospects of Recording". th-cam.com/video/UHOYic7Q0Wo/w-d-xo.html
@@GoldenScarab45 I was interested to read that his music did indeed receive performances. Gould was a bit selective with his portrayal, I think, in order to support his argument.
@@michaelowens5394 I haven't been able to find any recordings of his music. There is a sample in the background of the other video of mine I mention above.
Very interestingly, exactly what Glenn Gould doesn’t like about the rite of spring is exactly what I love about it. Barbaric, brutal and truly savage, “to be shocking”. The rite of spring is highly structured but also structureless compared to the works that Gould holds in such high regard. It constantly evolves with little repetition. Gould preferred music that followed classical forms more carefully but he also got a thrill out of attacking something that lots of people like, and on that level I totally get him. For example, as regards a different genre, I have no shame in shoving my view in people’s faces that indie rock is one of the worst genres on the planet and I will relentlessly criticise it for that. It’s unfortunate that Gould doesn’t elaborate further on the rite of spring and why he thinks of it as childish beyond what he said. What he says about recordings, however, is extremely prescient and would prove to not only be true but a vital aspect of how now we have revitalised older forms - through recording technology.
It is ironic, indeed, that Glenn Gould doesn't seem to recognize his own "enfant terrible" personality. It's sort of shocking that he would presume to say that Stravinsky's motivation for writing his music was objectionable. That's what many would criticize in Gould's career, and one needn't look farther than his recordings and essays of Mozart's piano sonatas. Gould was a brilliant genius. He was also a gas bag.
Gould admits he never had seen the Rite on the stage. Anybody with Gould’s musical acumen should have known that the Rite is a ballet and should be contemplated as such. A fine and interesting interview, despite the 30 year old’s shortcoming here.
Re: "indie rock is one of the worst genres on the planet". "Indie", as far as I can tell, means "independent of a recording contract" and thus, as a recording artist, unvetted. If you're never hired as, oh, I don't know, say, a waiter, does that make you an "indie waiter"? I suspect it more likely makes you unemployed. I may have never heard "indie rock" myself, so I don't know, but if it's lousy, that shouldn't be surprising. Re: "What he says about recordings, however, is extremely prescient ". I beg to differ here. Gould's ideas about recording were the opposite of prescient. They were cramped and constricted precisely because he couldn't see beyond the constraints of his own time. That makes them interesting as historical documents; it doesn't make them relevant.
@@sandrofazzolari8833 The ballet is a ballet; the suite is a suite. I've never seen the ballet either. I have seen the suite. Gould and I are both entitled to judge the suite. My feeling about the suite (other than that I love it) is that if were really just the epater-le-bourgeois gesture that Gould suggests, it would not have endured well past a century. It has endured, and it has flourished.
Around 35' when talking about Richter, he hypothesizes a recording of a Richter performance of "November the 16th, 1964". Does that suggest this was recorded later in 1964 than you propose in the description? I'm not suggesting that exact date, but it seems more plausible that he'd muse about a contemporaneous Richter concert, or a recent one, than to pick a future date.
Es fascinante; y dicen que los músicos -en comparación con otros artistas- son intelectualmente limitados... a estos yo les diría que vean este documento.
@@muslit It's a close call and depends where and when one listens. Martinu, a much-performed composer in mid-C America, was accused of plagiarising Petrushka at an earlier stage and was hugely influenced by it (and other related works like The Soldier's Tale and Les Noces); Kapralova was independently, and with different effect, inspired by Petrushka, and these are 2 major Czech composers of the period. But the rhythmic ideas of Le Sacre are so easy to attribute in music, a child can spot them, whereas the Petrushka ideas are harmonic and colorant ones and it may not be so obvious that they entered the canon at such-and-such a time.
@@GeorgeHenderson For me the harmonies of Petrushka are far more obvious than the ones in Le Sacre. The rhythmic ideas in Le Sacre were revolutionary, for the first time raising rhythm to the same importance as harmony.
Think of the opening solo of bassoon and the first section with the remarkable and unique usage of wind instruments until the entry of the strings. That is revolutionary. Show me another example of wind orchestration to this extent before sacre. We all know the historical accounts on who was present at the world premiere of Sacre and what the reaction of the audience was and who were the composers to cherish the value and uniqueness of the work.
Muslit In western "classical" music: we have to consider, african, indian, japanese music, etc. (all rhythmically - and not only rhythmically, obviously - just unbelievable.)
I am always struck at the cognitive-coherence and thematic continuity, in the speech of the educated/literate/skilled/talented people of a period of time that waned by the 1980s, and has continued to decline.
The contrast is truly striking, I could not agree more. Have you watched his bit on how Mozart became a bad composer ( th-cam.com/video/JauII1jCG6Q/w-d-xo.html ) ? The way his agile, but unagitated rhetoric keeps a lucid, overarching thought architecture clearly in his and our sights over a timespan no contemporary interviewer could be bothered to listen to is even more enriching and frankly pleasurable there. I sense the same disconcerting contrast in coherence of speech and thought between the past and the present in interviews in my native tongue, German, by the way. This phenomenon goes beyond the confounding effect of cruder, less patient interviewing techniques employed today, I think. Our standards as a civilization are palpably deteriorating.
He (meaning Gould?) was extremely prescient. Looking up the word, it is an adjective, “having or showing knowledge of events before they take place.” Okay, I’ll bite. How was he prescient?
It's so often confused 12tone music to be the most dissonant one. Schönberg has composed a lot of dissonant works that are *not* 12tone music. The 12tone system is a very random prescription for writing atonal music. More a theoretical idea than of any practical use.
Ludwig Diehn. I have another video in which Gould discusses Ludwig Diehn some more: "Glenn Gould: Dialogues on the Prospects of Recording". th-cam.com/video/UHOYic7Q0Wo/w-d-xo.html
Glenn Gould has been fascinating to me..I believe he had a very neurotic personality which was confused for eccentricity. An amazing pianist who's playing demands your full attention, and even though I have always preferred Chopin over Bach he has brought a new meaning to me on the music of Bach...I think his neurotic personality contributed to his genius as well as his early death..publicaly I believed he did not admit that his neuroticism was of any important factor and I often wondered if he struggled with it personally...I can totally understand where he is coming from on his view of audiences as a whole and his comfort with being alone in a recording studio...as opposed to Barenboim's idea of the necessity.of needing an audience to receive...it is very interesting to draw those differences on this subject. Another thought I had while listening to Glenn speak, was the possibility that he was using some type of substance or drug.I know that may seem crazy and a ridiculous stretch but having been an addict to narcotics myself I seem to recognize this type of behaviour where one who is under the influence, will over analyze and reach very deep on the meaning to a subject, again I know to many of you this is a stretch but I'm only going by my own personal experiences having conversations with substance users.
You're actually spot on about Gould's drug use. He would literally self medicate (whether he was so during this interview I can't say). Although strictly a prescription drug user, never of illicit medications, it undoubtedly contribute to (and quite possibly caused) his death. Here's a quote from an McLean's article: "By the end of his life he was also ingesting a varied cocktail of pills for blood pressure, anxiety, sleep disorder and general unease. In addition to drugs such as Valium, obtained by prescription from various doctors, sometimes unbeknownst to each other, Gould took all manner of over-the-counter painkillers, sleep aids, vitamins and dietary supplements. His self-medicating cycles were idiosyncratic and unpredictable, involving drugs taken to offset the effects of other drugs, the addition of new drugs to counter symptoms that emerged from the last drug, and so on. " (Full Article) www.macleans.ca/culture/books/the-key-to-his-genius/#:~:text=Since%20the%20early%201950s%20Gould,sleep%20disorder%20and%20general%20unease.
There is no doubt Gould was very eccentric. Wearing only winter clothes, humming, his obsession with his stool and so on. It has been suggested that he had Aspergers. I find his ideas thought provoking, but often illogical and often simply wrong. I dislike his Bach intently; I find it one-dimensional and cold: mannered and over-stylized, rather like this interview. The mind-blowing technique is not enough.
Yes and no to the drug usage. What I mean is that it's public knowledge that he took numerous drugs and even in interviews from the 70's, some you can see on youtube, he's clearly high but I wonder if his drug taking started this early. Also Glenn was extremely articulate naturally making it possible that he is sober. He also pre scripted interviews and much like his recordings did a lot of editing. I think he applied the same high standard to what he said that he applied to his music making.
"Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations" by Otto Friedrich. A book. I know it's unfashionable to read an actual book, but Gould read many. This one by Friedrich is a great work.
The Schoenberg that is regularly performed are his tonal and atonal works. His serial works, not so much. I would have to disagree with Gould when he says that Stravinsky was not a revolutionary. Stravinsky was certainly a revolutionary concerning rhythm, and the Le Sacre du Printemps is revolutionary in its treatment of rhythm, as Boulez and others have pointed out, which Gould says nothing about. He also doesn't speak about Schoenberg's neoclassical tendencies. Furthermore, I would hardly imagine anyone being 'shocked' by Stravinsky's Symphony in C, or the Rake's Progress, or the Octet - all neoclassical works. If Gould was unable to hear the Russian-ness in Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, or Petrushka, or Firebird - full of Russian folk tunes - he was deaf (see R. Taruskin's Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions). In the 60 years since this interview took place, Stravinsky's importance in 20th century music is more solidified than ever, certainly at least in academic circles.
@@alejandrosoza9574 Concerto for Violin, Variations for Orchestra, Concerto for Piano, String Quartets no. 2 and 3, The String Trio, Woodwind Quintet, and others.
The rite of Spring also demonstrates incredible technical command over orchestration and harmonic relationships, and has many memorable melodic ideas(many which are actually russian folk tunes, but he gives them his own treatment)
How to digest all this? It seems clear when a composer choses a path to educate, proselytize his listeners by advocating inovative techniques, the composer may lose his soul as well as his audience.
3:00 Exactly! Much like the great scientists of the early 20th century, Schoenberg's understanding of music repertoire and music theory was limited by the time he was in, and now in the 21st century we can both appreciate the value of his works (in music theory) while seeing its limitations.
It is an object lesson that applies to culture in its entirety. The difference with Schoenberg was that he had no access to materials (such as the Renaissance ones referred to) and his limitation, such as it was, was not one born of arrogance or intellectual incuriosity. This contrasts with the very stupid confidence of so many people in so many areas of current culture that their insights - if they can be so called - represent eternal verities, based on very narrow - and voluntarily so - references.
First, I find it interesting that other than an offhand reference that "these later works may be more unfamiliar," and before that, "works influenced by Schoeberg," Gould doesn't discuss Stravinsky's serial pieces at all. And, contra Gould, they were influenced by far more than just Schoenberg, starting with Craft getting Stravinsky to dip his toes in the serialist waters and him then engaging in other ideas from second-generation serialists like Krenek. Later th-cam.com/video/rW3nyib0Z8w/w-d-xo.html, he claims that it's Western composers who push for the avant garde, ignoring the likes of the atonal-era Penderecki and Ligeti. True, neither was Soviet, but both were behind the Iron Curtain. And, of course, this was before the prominence of Schittke.
I don't necessarily agree with his evaluation of Stravinsky, but the way he interprets the various phases of Stravinsky's career is fascinating, and his aesthetic judgments are too well informed to be dismissed as "absolutely foolish" simply because we happen not to share them.
Glenn is certainly opinionated! He is not always correct but he is always thought-provoking. Anyone who can assign Stravinsky to "less than great" has a wonderful sense of self-assurance. He is certainly intelligent and well informed but acts as if he was put in charge of the universe. If he was so smart, how come he died at 50? His love of Schoenberg's music puts him in a very small company of enthusiasts; a perspective we enjoy 60 years after his interview.
Mozart was clearly not as smart either he died when he was 35.. Opinions are what make people into individuals and not sheep....Having said that there is a big difference between performers and composers.Just a thought :)
You complain about his sense of self- assurance by daring to say the less than great Stravinsky but then go in a similar fashion towards Schoenberg. As if he wasn’t either critical to the latter in the interview
And yet, Stephen, there are many, myself and some of my friends included, who maintain that Schoenberg was one of the great composers of the century. I deeply love, not just respect and find fascination with, Schoenberg's music for its power, human communicativeness and emotional and spiritual message.
And if one sets aside initial prejudices and listens at first repeatedly, works like the First Chamber Symphony, Pierrot, Five Pieces, the Serenade, Moses und Aron und the Variations for Orchestra will surely make a very deep impression.
Stravinsky is one of the greatest musical minds of a century, and is among the most influential musicians of all time. Greatness is not a fitting term for such a master, he is beyond that and not even Gould is in a position to claim anything else!
I disagree with Gould that Stravinsky's neoclassicism was merely a form of nose-thumbing or shock. Stravinsky used forms and motifs of the past in a playful way, but this was tied to his strong sense of humor and wit (a quality I don't get from Schoenberg's music, by the way). And this does not account for works like Symphony of Psalms that are not parodistic in any way. Would Gould say that that work is not an authentic musical statement?
I suppose Schoenberg is playful in a fairly dark way. Rhythmically certainly, using the rhythm minuets and gavottes in an ironically serialist way. The Ode to Napoleon is rather sarcastically playful for instance
Gould is speaking of Ludwig Diehn. There is further discussion of this composer in another video "Glenn Gould: Dialogues on the Prospects of Recording". th-cam.com/video/UHOYic7Q0Wo/w-d-xo.html
Wouldn't it be Ironic if Gould's friend from Norfolk, Virginia is only remembered historically as that guy that Gould was talking about? If it is indeed Ludwig Diehn, wouldn't it be ironic if he was only remembered for his University, and not for his compositions. The best laid plans of mice and men, how often they go awry.
Amazing how little Gould knew about Schoenberg and his musical imagination, passions and learning. Everything he says is the exact opposite of what emerges when you really get inside the Viennese roots of Schoenberg's music. The latter never wanted to trash tonality, he extended it continuously. He always wrote what he imagined, often relying on his unconscious intuition and often radically contradicting his own theories. He was especially secretive about his method of composition with twelve tones while he constantly taught historic music, tonal and contrapuntal (Schönberg's pupil at the time, Webern, made the first edition of Isaak's music, so much for renaissance music)
He likes to be very direct with his judgements. Think of him as an artist in his own time in the center of the Cold War, not far from the end of the Second World War. Same way as he looks upon the turn of the century (19-20.)
His tone and the speed of his speach suggest density of thought, but after 5 minutes it just feels like a jumble of words without a clear message. I would be hard pressed to reformulate anything, except that Schoenberg was less dogmatic than is usually thought, (but only thanks to a quote from Schoenberg himself).
Gould is mostly expressing ideas he’d formulated before, and to a significant extent, articulated publicly before. I would be more impressed with his ability to think on his feet if in his characterization of Schoenberg’s compositional intent he’d been able to summon the term for which he kept fumbling but which kept eluding him, the term “didactic”.
To me, jazz is serious music. However, unlike 'classical' music, the soul of jazz is improvisation. Moreover, recorded jazz is always a disappointment. Recordings of jazz always seem like sketches of what a 'real' jazz performance would be. That's because jazz without a live audience misses the immediacy and the reciprocal feedback that only performance before an audience can provide. Were Gould a jazz musician, he would be completely wrong about live versus electronically recorded music. It's an interesting comparison, I think.
Gould expressed some interesting points, however, his attempt at analyzing Stravinsky's life (especially while the composer is alive) and chalking up Le Sacre to "a child-like tantrum" is simply reprehensible.
It's one thing to have preferences and another to dismiss or speak negatively in the superlative. The late G. Gould occasionally exaggerates here for no good reason.
@@brucecross1164 do you happen to know where to find any info/recordings of his? I kmow theres another gould brodcast where he mentions him and plays a bit of a recording but thats all i could find
@@brucecross1164 as far as I could tell there is an archive of recordings at the school he founded in Virginia. Also an archive of scores there too. I may have to look into what kind of access us granted to the public, as I'm not too far from Virginia myself
Gould was definitely Italy a genius, but as.you hear in this interview he had some strongly held, and misinformed opinions often expressed with repulsive pretentiousness. I remain thankful that he introduced me to Schoenberg's op. 11, the Alban Berg sonata, and Krenek's 3rd sonata. And, of course, the Goldberg Variations (though I'm much happier with Angela Hewitt's 2 versions than either of his.
Unfortunately, the second-guessing of the word program inserted Italy (after 'definitely') making my sentence sound nonsenacle. I as has happened before not become apparent until I Sent it.
@@brucecross1164 It's Patricia Moore. She interviewed GG for the Radio-Canada International (RCI) Russian section, broadcast in Moscow around Jan/Feb 1965. Recorded Nov. 27, 1964
Why should he necessarily be a "pioneer" specifically? He didn't say that he wasn't brilliant, or that his work wasn't profound, just that Prokofiev hadn't pioneered anything himself. There are stark similarities between even Firebird and Rimsky Korsikov's works. I don't have any fondness for Gould in particular, but saying that someone was not a pioneer is not a slight, but rather a categorical distinction. He is an important, highly influential, and unique composer in all of history. But he was in fact highly adaptable to his life circumstances. Which if you know the biography of Stravinsky, seems like an objective description of the man.
There's more Schoenberg music that, not being 12 tone, and being very good indeed, can be listened to for pleasure than there is "difficult" Schoenberg 12 tone music. Be that as it may, much of Berg's 12 tone music can be listened to for pleasure, even if you can't stand Schoenberg's; the Lulu Suite and the Violin Concerto are a good place to start.
I do not agree. I have played his piano music to audiences regularly and performed his orchestral works as well. Always with a positive reaction of the audience. 100 years or more do count. Works of music need to age, like wine and cigars.
I love listening to Gould talk almost as much as I love to hear him play.
What a photograph.
GOATs of XXth century: Bernstein (best conductor), Gould (best pianist), Stravinsky (best composer)
Dear Mr. Bruce Cross, I always liked Glenn Gould, but I forgot how important he is for understanding music and thinking about art. Thank you very much.
20:33 oh my is it crazy to hear him talk about the future of music, and even crazier that he's mostly right
Yes. Especially now with the endless possibility of very niche audiences for exotic or eccentric forms - even for Mr Norfolk with his Bruckner symphonies.
When I worked at Tower Records Classical, and the place was getting too crowded, I'd put on Schoenberg String Quartets. Cleared the room in a jiffy. I developed a curious fondness for them.
They're great, but my favorite is the whisper chorus from Moses und Aron.
@nicholas schroeder. Yet another fine example of how music can be motivational!
Ah those were the days😂🤣☯️😼
When I worked closing shift at Tower Classical, our clear-the-store go-to was the then recently released CD of Florence Foster Jenkins. Had we gone the Schoenberg route, we might have cleared the store, but the staff would have wanted to hear the music to its double bar.
So, Glenn, thank you for everything, not only for the best music I ever heard, but also for my fast progress in English 😁. I adore all brillliant Gould's explanations.
Really grateful for sharing this, Mr. Cross❤️.
Bruce Cross, you are magnificent. Thank you so much for sharing all this precious material of Gould.
It gives me great pleasure to share my collection. I'm glad you are enjoying it.
Gould was a virtuoso not only of music but also of ideas and expressing them in words.
I learned theory from a book by Shoenberg. Excellent book. He teaches you how to think.
Thank you so much for all videos from Glenn Gould talking about Arnold Schoenberg. Priceless.
The last ten minutes are the best. Fascinating views on recording vs performing.
I found his thoughts on composition and nationalism to be transfixing. On how creativity is moving away from various places of unavoidable isolation and into an accessible, ubiquitous electronic/information/recording age.
@@TrevorduBuisson Gould wrote brilliantly in essays entitled "The Prospects of Recording" and "The Well-tempered Listener" and others.
Fascinating as always. On very rare occasions Glenn Gould can get very verbose, slightly affected and somewhat pretentious. Not so in this broadcast recording.
I found everything he spoke about to be fascinating, on point and still relevant today.
Insightful and foresightful. A gem of a talk.
Wow high quality for 1962
It is interesting that the CBC did not broadcast this fascinating interview. I think it was because Gould's negative take on Stravinsky could have created a problem, considering the work Stravinsky and Craft were doing with the CBC Orchestra at the time.
As far as the date, he makes a reference to a hypothetical Richter live record: "That was Richter on November 16, 1964." So I think that was the date of the interview. True, Gould had made his last recital a few months earlier, but he did not think of it as irrevocable yet.
Not many people would speak out against Stravinsky because he has too many sycophants and yea Gould was probably silenced because of just that, Stravinsky's frail ego wouldn't be able to handle it.
@@stalavosvergrimm9664 At least Stravinsky never had to sue a major 20th century author because in the author’s novel he was being equated with a degenerate composer who sold his soul to the devil. At least Stravinsky never felt intense jealousy because another composer was getting more performances than he was. Talk about frail egos, Schoenberg was the World Champion in that field.
Gould the music critic, said here that the Rite of Spring was the work of a child and in another video said that Mozart became a bad composer.
I understand why the CBC didn’t broadcast these opinions.
@@bb1111116 yeah, i think he just liked to play the excéntric rebel sometimes, no one (specially such an intelligent and erudite person like Gould) would Say that Mozart became a Bad composer for real, just to raise people's hair, or that the most influencial Work of the Century was a Childs Work, and then defend awful trash like schoenbers atonal piano music, he simply liked to trash the most famous and respected composers, like Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, chopin, etc.
What Gould missed when discussing the Bruckner imitator tucking away recordings, is that recording media become obsolete very quickly. We can still listen to the recordings of some of the most famous musicians of the early twentieth-century precisely because these musicians were popular in their day. Their recordings are transferred from one medium to another while still possible: shellac to vinyl to tape to CD and so on. The Bruckner imitator's recordings are not going to enable him to emerge from obscurity in two centuries because in two centuries they will be unplayable. He'd have much better luck simply preserving his scores on paper. Music notation changes at a much slower rate.
I find Gould has extraordinary insights into Schoenberg. I don't really see the move towards dodecaphonic and non-tonal to be completely drastic when you think about how musical harmony developed from 1700 to 1900. I've always felt there is still quite a lot of tonality within Schoenberg's non-tonality. But what Gould says about Rite of Spring I find utter nonsense - it's a masterpiece that still blows me away now as it did 40 years ago on my first hearing. But that's what I love about Gould - he just says what he thinks. I also agree with his views on Mozart in another video.
When he rips on Le Sacre, I think Gould is doing exactly what he accuses Stravinsky of -- being an "enfant terrible" just to stir things up. I agree, I love listening to Gould talk about music.
Never heard this before!!!
Downloaded instantly!
lovely, tks
I wonder if Gould would have composed more had he lived longer than 50 years old. He most certainly would have become a great conductor.
"one of the keys to Schönberg..." :D (0:37 min)
Priming
Utterly brilliant. Thank you.
This is great, appreciate you sharing with us. Was aware these interviews existed but had trouble finding them through the CBC.
Possibly one of the most succinct musical thinkers and speakers of the twentieth century, no matter how one might otherwise feel about his genial music making.
Thank you Bruce!
My favourite vocalist and bete noire of hapless sound engineers.
Schoenberg may be the most misunderstood of all great composers. His music is thought of as inaccessible, uncommunicative and difficult. The exact opposite is true. Like Stravinsky, Bartok and Debussy, Schoenberg was a fabulous melodist and orchestrator and wrote some of the most emotionally available music of the century. His music does need repeated listening, but once one does "crack" his style, it is tremendously rewarding.
If he really was a fabulous melodist etc you would not write the comments about need for repeated listening.
@@ncrean66 In fact the thing about this need for repeated listening is, that it applies also to other music. It's quite obvious, when you think of Max Reger. But it's also true for Brahms, Beethoven, Bach a.s.o.
@@Sulsfort Really ? Should we finally have said it - Beethoven may be the most misunderstood of all great composers. His music is thought of as inaccessible, uncommunicative and difficult. The exact opposite is true. Like Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven was a fabulous melodist and orchestrator and wrote some of the most emotionally available music of the century. It does need repeated listening, but once one does "crack" his style, it is tremendously rewarding..
Schonberg is most irrefutably difficult - to perform, and to hear. Berg admitted this in his essay, "Why is Schonberg's Music so Difficult?".It is often communicative, depending on the piece, but not generally accessible. Merely saying he is these things is not by itself persuasive.
I respect your viewpoint. But, his music goes over my head.
Yes. Early Stravinski was a Russian national composer. What would Petrushka be without its Russian musical and thematic setting, for example? The later Stravinski, the neoclassist, seems very French to me. French, that is, of the era in which Stravinski lived there. Pulcinella is a good example of this. I remember reading Camus stories in my college French class and imagining a film of 'La Greve' set to Stravinski's Pulcinella. I doubt that I was aware at that time of Stravinski's Paris interlude.
The seeds of the break with tonality are sown by the maricle of tempered tuning. J.S.Bach let the chromatic cat outa the bag by exploiting/exploring the expressive possibilities of all those pesky subversive notes outside key. So by composing harmonically advanced music unmatched untill the late 19th century Bach unintentionally created an unspoken Faustian pact among composers (all of em) such that the entire trajectory of the history of western art music could accurately be characterised as a high speed power dive into higher and higher levels of chromaticism that made the 20th century crisis in tonality inevitable. ☯️ Dodecaphonic music provides fascinating insights into tonality. So now we know the size of the swimming pool we're in. This is very useful info for a jazz pianist.
Great material!
Fascinating and revealing interview, but in many ways not surprising, knowing what we know now of Gould. His thought on composers' conference are quite amusing.
The most fascinating discourse on Schoenberg from a lad just passed 30. I think Schoenberg, like Gould, had an oppositional/defiant streak in his character. Schoenberg had strange mathematical ideas. He believed in numerology. There again, Isaac Newton believed in alchemy. Who am I to judge?
I want to hear Glenn Gould's friend's "Bruckner pastiche" symphonies, that he talks about in this interview. Anybody know the name?
I’d like to know too.
Wonderful!
It always seemed to me that Schoenberg made theories, but it remained to Anton Webern to make music through them.
What Gould says about Scheonberg's later realization to use "the system" could be used in a way to create semi-conventional tonal sonorities - and these techniques he taught quite successfully to Webern and Berg - and they indeed, in some of their works, really made that "flexibility" of "the 12-tone system" quite apparent. (Although they both wrote some very "challenging music" as well, along the way - the pointilistic pointillism of Webern, for instance). Other composers also learned how to do this - Krenek is one of them - his first Piano Sonata, does not sound like it used a 12-tone system as it actually sounds rather romantic, for instance.
With respect to the notion of "Schoenberg's Theories", one has to not make the mistake that Gould talks about, and mistakingly observe the 12-tone theory was an end in itself. Schoenberg's template, in his early 12-tone works, he still considered thinks to be in the Tonic form; and the Dominant form, and so forth. And Op. 31, Variations for Orchestra, sounds like Brahms with some very wild notes, despite its construction via the 12-tone techniques. But overall, as a teacher, he also was quite aware of the enormity of remarkable methods that had been at the heart in all the great works of the centuries of common practice, and even extending back to the renaissance. As such, Schoenberg's insight into compositional process, are quite remarkable - for instance, his books on Fundamentals of Musical Composition, and especially "The Musical Idea - it's Logic and Presentation", which was largely written, but he passed away before getting it published. Fortunately, his protege Dr. Patricia Carpenter, an extraordinary woman in her own right, along with her colleague and protege, Severine Neff, took it upon themselves to take the manuscript and translated it from German into English, and present Schoenbergs most remarkable insights about "compositional craft".
This work remarkably and practically deals with the interrelationship of the parts to the whole, and stems from the tradition of the 19th century of Musical Organicism. And it makes it clear that Schoenberg was one of the greatest musical minds of the 20th century, to be sure, and yes, truly devoted to teaching - to transmitting the massive understanding of the largely tonal period of 3 to 4 centuries of musical composition, from the European tradition, and presenting it in such a way, that it could be passed on to future generations of composers - and yes, it's not a popular notion these days, but he felt that one must master the techniques that came before, so that one became in full control of the musical materials...and anyone who has spent time composing knows that without that kind of exhaustive training, it's very easy to find oneself boxed into a "compositional corner", where it feels very much like the materials are in control of you!
His Harmony text is also extraordinary, as is his innocuous "Structural Functions of Harmony: - all of which were the consequences of his teaching in Los Angeles to Composers as well as "non-composers" the basic skills and concepts of composition so as to understand the "backside of the musical tapestry" of a work of common practice for a "performer" to come to a much deeper and less superficial understanding, and just playing "on auto-pilot" without wondering why does Beethoven break the sequence at such and such a point and go this way, as opposed to that way? And he would have his students explore trying the other alternatives to see what the consequences were or would not be - and reveals a great mind of the great composers that make up the large majority of music that the "modern" performer plays. The books he wrote on composition, he was strongly insistent that "weren't theories", but rather guidelines - not rules - but principles to come to understand how we got from Fux to the edges of tonality in the Liszt/Wagner era - and his immersion to explore "dodecaphonic" music, and devising a system, as Gould says, that later in his life, Schoenberg himself that "there were many more pieces to be written in C Major"
Also, extremely useful is the similarly "innocuous book" titled "Models for Beginners in Composition", which was specifically designed for the "non-composer" musician, to understand all the elements of form and musical process that had been tried and true for centuries - and he thought it important that performers of standard repertoire (and not so standard rep as well!), should have a "hands-on" understanding from undertaking a certain minimal but essential amount of compositional training and developing those "muscles" - which truly take some time to develop and strengthen. What he says about Stravinsky was terrific - I have long felt similarly about much of the superficiality, and as John Waters might say, the "shock value" of his "approach", which is based on the converse of Schoenberg's approach - to use "familiar-sounding materials" (chords/sonorities/drones/melodic fragments/cells), in "unfamiliar ways" (superimposing two dominant seventh chords a step apart; or doing a rhythmic ostinato that has deliberately random sounding irregular accents, so as to "break" the sense of a familiar time-signature, and so-forth. And he not written The Rite, he likely would not have had the profile that that one work did create for him; the other works, written very much similar ways, were, I think Gould is right here, sort of meant to be obnoxious and garish and to get under one's skin, of course, with a few wonderful exceptions along the way.
And the observations others have mentioned about "the future of music" - with electronics and media - were remarkably prophetic, as 6 years later, he would hear Wendy Carlos' "Switched-On-Bach", which he did an entire show on it, and unhesitatingly called it the greatest record ever made - because as he talks about, there was tape music, and music concrete, and some rudimentary use of lab-equipment for "electronic music", but it wasn't until Wendy Carlos' SOB, and it going platinum, and still is the best selling classical record of all time, she put Moog's instrument on the map and changed the course of music and electronic music forever - and not for nothing, he wrote an entire full page of liner notes for her follow-up album, The Well Tempered Synthesizer, where he extols her performance of the 4th Brandenberg as the best performance of the work, "Live, canned, or intuited..." - look up Gould and the Moog - someone has put that radio documentary he did online as well....it's really astounding as well.
This "interview" is a remarkable treasure, thank you so much Bruce for sharing it with us all!
To my ear Alban Berg was the one who reconciled that technique with common emotional experience.
@@scottryanjohnson5145 thank you for your comments.
You obviously haven't listened to much Schoenberg! There's quite a bit of variety in his music. Check out his serenade, a largely neoclassical which contains a distinctly not neoclassical (and gorgeous!) Song without words. Also one of his early masterpieces, Gurrelieder.
Listening to Gould talk about music is akin to listening John McEnroe talk about tennis. Their vision and genius is breathtaking and their beliefs are firm. I never thought Stravinsky as anything but great.
Gould is SO wrong about Stravinsky. I can't tell you how many people I know from so many walks of life who loved La Sacre on first hearing and still consider it their favorite piece. They certainly don't love it for its shock value, which it doesn't have anymore. How shocking can it really be if Disney thought it was great for one of his cartoon movies? Beethoven had 3 very different style periods, does this mean he just didn't know what he was doing? Beethoven was probably more shocking for his time than Stravinsky was for his.
I wonder who was that man in Norfolk he references around 23:00. I never liked Bruckner but out of sheer curiosity I do want to hear that man’s private recordings and generations on I do indeed want to wonder about him through his music.
Ludwig Diehn, apparently. Can someone track down his music? It seems TH-cam is exactly what he was planning for. I love Bruckner's music, and I love obscure music.
@@brucecross1164 wow, he evidently funded the music school at Old Dominion? Just looked him up, that’s a very touching story. Thanks so much, you are a treasure with these rarities!
I have another video in which Gould discusses Ludwig Diehn some more: "Glenn Gould: Dialogues on the Prospects of Recording". th-cam.com/video/UHOYic7Q0Wo/w-d-xo.html
@@GoldenScarab45 I was interested to read that his music did indeed receive performances. Gould was a bit selective with his portrayal, I think, in order to support his argument.
@@michaelowens5394 I haven't been able to find any recordings of his music. There is a sample in the background of the other video of mine I mention above.
Very interestingly, exactly what Glenn Gould doesn’t like about the rite of spring is exactly what I love about it. Barbaric, brutal and truly savage, “to be shocking”. The rite of spring is highly structured but also structureless compared to the works that Gould holds in such high regard. It constantly evolves with little repetition. Gould preferred music that followed classical forms more carefully but he also got a thrill out of attacking something that lots of people like, and on that level I totally get him. For example, as regards a different genre, I have no shame in shoving my view in people’s faces that indie rock is one of the worst genres on the planet and I will relentlessly criticise it for that. It’s unfortunate that Gould doesn’t elaborate further on the rite of spring and why he thinks of it as childish beyond what he said.
What he says about recordings, however, is extremely prescient and would prove to not only be true but a vital aspect of how now we have revitalised older forms - through recording technology.
It is ironic, indeed, that Glenn Gould doesn't seem to recognize his own "enfant terrible" personality. It's sort of shocking that he would presume to say that Stravinsky's motivation for writing his music was objectionable. That's what many would criticize in Gould's career, and one needn't look farther than his recordings and essays of Mozart's piano sonatas. Gould was a brilliant genius. He was also a gas bag.
Gould admits he never had seen the Rite on the stage. Anybody with Gould’s musical acumen should have known that the Rite is a ballet and should be contemplated as such. A fine and interesting interview, despite the 30 year old’s shortcoming here.
Re: "indie rock is one of the worst genres on the planet". "Indie", as far as I can tell, means "independent of a recording contract" and thus, as a recording artist, unvetted. If you're never hired as, oh, I don't know, say, a waiter, does that make you an "indie waiter"? I suspect it more likely makes you unemployed. I may have never heard "indie rock" myself, so I don't know, but if it's lousy, that shouldn't be surprising. Re: "What he says about recordings, however, is extremely prescient ". I beg to differ here. Gould's ideas about recording were the opposite of prescient. They were cramped and constricted precisely because he couldn't see beyond the constraints of his own time. That makes them interesting as historical documents; it doesn't make them relevant.
@@sandrofazzolari8833 The ballet is a ballet; the suite is a suite. I've never seen the ballet either. I have seen the suite. Gould and I are both entitled to judge the suite. My feeling about the suite (other than that I love it) is that if were really just the epater-le-bourgeois gesture that Gould suggests, it would not have endured well past a century. It has endured, and it has flourished.
Around 35' when talking about Richter, he hypothesizes a recording of a Richter performance of "November the 16th, 1964".
Does that suggest this was recorded later in 1964 than you propose in the description?
I'm not suggesting that exact date, but it seems more plausible that he'd muse about a contemporaneous Richter concert, or a recent one, than to pick a future date.
god the way gould talks about rite of spring really brings an eye roll
Es fascinante; y dicen que los músicos -en comparación con otros artistas- son intelectualmente limitados... a estos yo les diría que vean este documento.
Fascinating!
In contrast to Gould, I would say that Petrushka is in some ways a more important and influential work than Rite of Spring.
I think the rhythmic innovations in the Le Sacre du Printemps were far more influential than anything in Petrushka, as great as Petrushka is.
@@muslit It's a close call and depends where and when one listens. Martinu, a much-performed composer in mid-C America, was accused of plagiarising Petrushka at an earlier stage and was hugely influenced by it (and other related works like The Soldier's Tale and Les Noces); Kapralova was independently, and with different effect, inspired by Petrushka, and these are 2 major Czech composers of the period. But the rhythmic ideas of Le Sacre are so easy to attribute in music, a child can spot them, whereas the Petrushka ideas are harmonic and colorant ones and it may not be so obvious that they entered the canon at such-and-such a time.
@@GeorgeHenderson For me the harmonies of Petrushka are far more obvious than the ones in Le Sacre. The rhythmic ideas in Le Sacre were revolutionary, for the first time raising rhythm to the same importance as harmony.
Think of the opening solo of bassoon and the first section with the remarkable and unique usage of wind instruments until the entry of the strings. That is revolutionary. Show me another example of wind orchestration to this extent before sacre. We all know the historical accounts on who was present at the world premiere of Sacre and what the reaction of the audience was and who were the composers to cherish the value and uniqueness of the work.
Muslit
In western "classical" music: we have to consider, african, indian, japanese music, etc. (all rhythmically - and not only rhythmically, obviously - just unbelievable.)
I am always struck at the cognitive-coherence and thematic continuity, in the speech of the educated/literate/skilled/talented people of a period of time that waned by the 1980s, and has continued to decline.
The contrast is truly striking, I could not agree more.
Have you watched his bit on how Mozart became a bad composer
( th-cam.com/video/JauII1jCG6Q/w-d-xo.html ) ?
The way his agile, but unagitated rhetoric keeps a lucid, overarching thought architecture clearly in his and our sights over a timespan no contemporary interviewer could be bothered to listen to is even more enriching and frankly pleasurable there.
I sense the same disconcerting contrast in coherence of speech and thought between the past and the present in interviews in my native tongue, German, by the way. This phenomenon goes beyond the confounding effect of cruder, less patient interviewing techniques employed today, I think. Our standards as a civilization are palpably deteriorating.
That photo!
Probably the best defense for schoenberg I've heard.
He was extremely prescient.
He (meaning Gould?) was extremely prescient. Looking up the word, it is an adjective, “having or showing knowledge of events before they take place.”
Okay, I’ll bite. How was he prescient?
@@robkunkel8833 The OP was probably referring to Gould's predictions of future music, etc. Apparently, he believes his predictions were accurate.
I agree that firebird is a better composition than rite of spring...
Why?
Nope. Petrushka is.
It's so often confused 12tone music to be the most dissonant one. Schönberg has composed a lot of dissonant works that are *not* 12tone music.
The 12tone system is a very random prescription for writing atonal music.
More a theoretical idea than of any practical use.
Any idea who the composer from 'Norfolk, Virginia" was or is???
Ludwig Diehn. I have another video in which Gould discusses Ludwig Diehn some more: "Glenn Gould: Dialogues on the Prospects of Recording". th-cam.com/video/UHOYic7Q0Wo/w-d-xo.html
Glenn Gould has been fascinating to me..I believe he had a very neurotic personality which was confused for eccentricity. An amazing pianist who's playing demands your full attention, and even though I have always preferred Chopin over Bach he has brought a new meaning to me on the music of Bach...I think his neurotic personality contributed to his genius as well as his early death..publicaly I believed he did not admit that his neuroticism was of any important factor and I often wondered if he struggled with it personally...I can totally understand where he is coming from on his view of audiences as a whole and his comfort with being alone in a recording studio...as opposed to Barenboim's idea of the necessity.of needing an audience to receive...it is very interesting to draw those differences on this subject. Another thought I had while listening to Glenn speak, was the possibility that he was using some type of substance or drug.I know that may seem crazy and a ridiculous stretch but having been an addict to narcotics myself I seem to recognize this type of behaviour where one who is under the influence, will over analyze and reach very deep on the meaning to a subject, again I know to many of you this is a stretch but I'm only going by my own personal experiences having conversations with substance users.
You're actually spot on about Gould's drug use. He would literally self medicate (whether he was so during this interview I can't say). Although strictly a prescription drug user, never of illicit medications, it undoubtedly contribute to (and quite possibly caused) his death. Here's a quote from an McLean's article:
"By the end of his life he was also ingesting a varied cocktail of pills for blood pressure, anxiety, sleep disorder and general unease. In addition to drugs such as Valium, obtained by prescription from various doctors, sometimes unbeknownst to each other, Gould took all manner of over-the-counter painkillers, sleep aids, vitamins and dietary supplements. His self-medicating cycles were idiosyncratic and unpredictable, involving drugs taken to offset the effects of other drugs, the addition of new drugs to counter symptoms that emerged from the last drug, and so on. "
(Full Article) www.macleans.ca/culture/books/the-key-to-his-genius/#:~:text=Since%20the%20early%201950s%20Gould,sleep%20disorder%20and%20general%20unease.
Gould took a lot of drugs, both over the counter and prescription. Including Valium. Is that a narcotic?
There is no doubt Gould was very eccentric. Wearing only winter clothes, humming, his obsession with his stool and so on. It has been suggested that he had Aspergers. I find his ideas thought provoking, but often illogical and often simply wrong. I dislike his Bach intently; I find it one-dimensional and cold: mannered and over-stylized, rather like this interview. The mind-blowing technique is not enough.
Yes and no to the drug usage. What I mean is that it's public knowledge that he took numerous drugs and even in interviews from the 70's, some you can see on youtube, he's clearly high but I wonder if his drug taking started this early. Also Glenn was extremely articulate naturally making it possible that he is sober. He also pre scripted interviews and much like his recordings did a lot of editing.
I think he applied the same high standard to what he said that he applied to his music making.
"Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations" by Otto Friedrich. A book. I know it's unfashionable to read an actual book, but Gould read many. This one by Friedrich is a great work.
The Schoenberg that is regularly performed are his tonal and atonal works. His serial works, not so much. I would have to disagree with Gould when he says that Stravinsky was not a revolutionary. Stravinsky was certainly a revolutionary concerning rhythm, and the Le Sacre du Printemps is revolutionary in its treatment of rhythm, as Boulez and others have pointed out, which Gould says nothing about. He also doesn't speak about Schoenberg's neoclassical tendencies. Furthermore, I would hardly imagine anyone being 'shocked' by Stravinsky's Symphony in C, or the Rake's Progress, or the Octet - all neoclassical works. If Gould was unable to hear the Russian-ness in Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, or Petrushka, or Firebird - full of Russian folk tunes - he was deaf (see R. Taruskin's Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions). In the 60 years since this interview took place, Stravinsky's importance in 20th century music is more solidified than ever, certainly at least in academic circles.
What are some of his serial works, if I may ask?
@@alejandrosoza9574 Concerto for Violin, Variations for Orchestra, Concerto for Piano, String Quartets no. 2 and 3, The String Trio, Woodwind Quintet, and others.
The rite of Spring also demonstrates incredible technical command over orchestration and harmonic relationships, and has many memorable melodic ideas(many which are actually russian folk tunes, but he gives them his own treatment)
@@alejandrosoza9574 look at the works composed after schoenberg’s death. Requiem canticles an similar works of the period
@@muslit these are 12 tone works but not serial. Can they be considered serial as those of the post wwii era?
If this was never broadcast, where did you find it? Thank you so much for this!
For a time, CBC had it up on an archival web site, and I liberated it from there.
@@brucecross1164 That means you're awesome!
@@brucecross1164 ... Nice job. Thanks.
@@charlotterose6724 I agree 🙏
Great question, Charlotte; thanks for asking it.
The last notes of Symphony in C are very haunting. An incredible end to one I think.
sorry for the question since i'm still watching the video, and i am curious which composer are you referring to?
@@Dancingjulien can only refer to Stravinsky
@@Dancingjulien yes. Igor.
How to digest all this?
It seems clear when a composer choses a path to educate, proselytize his listeners by advocating inovative techniques, the composer may lose his soul as well as his audience.
I can't agree with a so broad a generalization, though it would be interesting to hear you defend it in the specific case of Schoenberg.
A wonderfully provocative thought
En la foto parece decir Mira otro genio ademas de mi
3:00 Exactly! Much like the great scientists of the early 20th century, Schoenberg's understanding of music repertoire and music theory was limited by the time he was in, and now in the 21st century we can both appreciate the value of his works (in music theory) while seeing its limitations.
I remember once reading how In the 1920s it was fashionable to say you understood Einstein and enjoyed Schoenberg.
It is an object lesson that applies to culture in its entirety. The difference with Schoenberg was that he had no access to materials (such as the Renaissance ones referred to) and his limitation, such as it was, was not one born of arrogance or intellectual incuriosity. This contrasts with the very stupid confidence of so many people in so many areas of current culture that their insights - if they can be so called - represent eternal verities, based on very narrow - and voluntarily so - references.
First, I find it interesting that other than an offhand reference that "these later works may be more unfamiliar," and before that, "works influenced by Schoeberg," Gould doesn't discuss Stravinsky's serial pieces at all. And, contra Gould, they were influenced by far more than just Schoenberg, starting with Craft getting Stravinsky to dip his toes in the serialist waters and him then engaging in other ideas from second-generation serialists like Krenek.
Later th-cam.com/video/rW3nyib0Z8w/w-d-xo.html, he claims that it's Western composers who push for the avant garde, ignoring the likes of the atonal-era Penderecki and Ligeti. True, neither was Soviet, but both were behind the Iron Curtain. And, of course, this was before the prominence of Schittke.
Great
Thank you for posting this. Very interesting insights into Schoenberg but what he says about Stravinsky and The Rite is absolutely foolish.
I don't necessarily agree with his evaluation of Stravinsky, but the way he interprets the various phases of Stravinsky's career is fascinating, and his aesthetic judgments are too well informed to be dismissed as "absolutely foolish" simply because we happen not to share them.
Glenn is certainly opinionated! He is not always correct but he is always thought-provoking. Anyone who can assign Stravinsky to "less than great" has a wonderful sense of self-assurance. He is certainly intelligent and well informed but acts as if he was put in charge of the universe. If he was so smart, how come he died at 50? His love of Schoenberg's music puts him in a very small company of enthusiasts; a perspective we enjoy 60 years after his interview.
Mozart was clearly not as smart either he died when he was 35.. Opinions are what make people into individuals and not sheep....Having said that there is a big difference between performers and composers.Just a thought :)
You complain about his sense of self- assurance by daring to say the less than great Stravinsky but then go in a similar fashion towards Schoenberg. As if he wasn’t either critical to the latter in the interview
And yet, Stephen, there are many, myself and some of my friends included, who maintain that Schoenberg was one of the great composers of the century. I deeply love, not just respect and find fascination with, Schoenberg's music for its power, human communicativeness and emotional and spiritual message.
And if one sets aside initial prejudices and listens at first repeatedly, works like the First Chamber Symphony, Pierrot, Five Pieces, the Serenade, Moses und Aron und the Variations for Orchestra will surely make a very deep impression.
Stravinsky is one of the greatest musical minds of a century, and is among the most influential musicians of all time. Greatness is not a fitting term for such a master, he is beyond that and not even Gould is in a position to claim anything else!
I disagree with Gould that Stravinsky's neoclassicism was merely a form of nose-thumbing or shock. Stravinsky used forms and motifs of the past in a playful way, but this was tied to his strong sense of humor and wit (a quality I don't get from Schoenberg's music, by the way). And this does not account for works like Symphony of Psalms that are not parodistic in any way. Would Gould say that that work is not an authentic musical statement?
thank you Michael! I agree 100%. Worth listening tho
I suppose Schoenberg is playful in a fairly dark way. Rhythmically certainly, using the rhythm minuets and gavottes in an ironically serialist way. The Ode to Napoleon is rather sarcastically playful for instance
Most people do not enter the concert hall to be educated. They never have.
Any idea who was this mysterious composer in Norfolk Virginia?
Gould is speaking of Ludwig Diehn. There is further discussion of this composer in another video "Glenn Gould: Dialogues on the Prospects of Recording". th-cam.com/video/UHOYic7Q0Wo/w-d-xo.html
@@brucecross1164 Wow, thanks! I hardly expected an answer to this!
I can’t find any of his music. Just a school named after him which is quite ironic.
Why he does not talk about "OEDIPUS REX".
I don't think Gould understood Stravinsky's music at all.
I agree with you.
He understood it only too well, the frolicking of a rich child who never was touched by the real suffering of life.
Wouldn't it be Ironic if Gould's friend from Norfolk, Virginia is only remembered historically as that guy that Gould was talking about? If it is indeed Ludwig Diehn, wouldn't it be ironic if he was only remembered for his University, and not for his compositions. The best laid plans of mice and men, how often they go awry.
Amazing how little Gould knew about Schoenberg and his musical imagination, passions and learning. Everything he says is the exact opposite of what emerges when you really get inside the Viennese roots of Schoenberg's music. The latter never wanted to trash tonality, he extended it continuously. He always wrote what he imagined, often relying on his unconscious intuition and often radically contradicting his own theories. He was especially secretive about his method of composition with twelve tones while he constantly taught historic music, tonal and contrapuntal (Schönberg's pupil at the time, Webern, made the first edition of Isaak's music, so much for renaissance music)
Gould calling Stravinsky petulant. Now that’s rich.
It’s very far fetched to say that Schoenberg didn’t know renaissance music. Gould makes some big assumptions.
He likes to be very direct with his judgements. Think of him as an artist in his own time in the center of the Cold War, not far from the end of the Second World War. Same way as he looks upon the turn of the century (19-20.)
His tone and the speed of his speach suggest density of thought, but after 5 minutes it just feels like a jumble of words without a clear message. I would be hard pressed to reformulate anything, except that Schoenberg was less dogmatic than is usually thought, (but only thanks to a quote from Schoenberg himself).
Gould is mostly expressing ideas he’d formulated before, and to a significant extent, articulated publicly before. I would be more impressed with his ability to think on his feet if in his characterization of Schoenberg’s compositional intent he’d been able to summon the term for which he kept fumbling but which kept eluding him, the term “didactic”.
@Christiaan Baron It is called “brilliance.”
To me, jazz is serious music. However, unlike 'classical' music, the soul of jazz is improvisation. Moreover, recorded jazz is always a disappointment. Recordings of jazz always seem like sketches of what a 'real' jazz performance would be. That's because jazz without a live audience misses the immediacy and the reciprocal feedback that only performance before an audience can provide. Were Gould a jazz musician, he would be completely wrong about live versus electronically recorded music. It's an interesting comparison, I think.
Gould expressed some interesting points, however, his attempt at analyzing Stravinsky's life (especially while the composer is alive) and chalking up Le Sacre to "a child-like tantrum" is simply reprehensible.
Could it be this was recorded on November 16th of 1964 (36:04)?
Yes, I think so. Someone else suggested that rather than picking a random date, Gould might have chosen that very day of the interview.
It's one thing to have preferences and another to dismiss or speak negatively in the superlative. The late G. Gould occasionally exaggerates here for no good reason.
23:45 if only he mentioned his name it all would have come true!
Alas the music of Ludwig Diehn is still unknown.
I was scouring the comments hoping this guy was real
@@brucecross1164 do you happen to know where to find any info/recordings of his? I kmow theres another gould brodcast where he mentions him and plays a bit of a recording but thats all i could find
I have looked, without success. I'd be happy to hear from anyone who has found recordings of his music.
@@brucecross1164 as far as I could tell there is an archive of recordings at the school he founded in Virginia. Also an archive of scores there too. I may have to look into what kind of access us granted to the public, as I'm not too far from Virginia myself
Gould was definitely Italy a genius, but as.you hear in this interview he had some strongly held, and misinformed opinions often expressed with repulsive pretentiousness. I remain thankful that he introduced me to Schoenberg's op. 11, the Alban Berg sonata, and Krenek's 3rd sonata. And, of course, the Goldberg Variations (though I'm much happier with Angela Hewitt's 2 versions than either of his.
Unfortunately, the second-guessing of the word program inserted Italy (after 'definitely') making my sentence sound nonsenacle. I as has happened before not become apparent until I Sent it.
So have they ever figured out who the interviewer is?
No, I don't think so.
@@brucecross1164 It's Patricia Moore. She interviewed GG for the Radio-Canada International (RCI) Russian section, broadcast in Moscow around Jan/Feb 1965. Recorded Nov. 27, 1964
Who am I to disagree with Glen Gould, nevertheless I disagree with him about Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
I quite disagree with Glenn Gould.
Haha Gould the original hot take machine. Rite of Spring is actually bad, Firebird is a masterpiece.
Gould’s judgments about Stravinsky have not aged well.
Stravinsky NOT A PIONEER???? Glenn.... get a grip... Le Sacre? Are you mad? Please Glenn... He was really clueless here.
Why should he necessarily be a "pioneer" specifically? He didn't say that he wasn't brilliant, or that his work wasn't profound, just that Prokofiev hadn't pioneered anything himself. There are stark similarities between even Firebird and Rimsky Korsikov's works. I don't have any fondness for Gould in particular, but saying that someone was not a pioneer is not a slight, but rather a categorical distinction. He is an important, highly influential, and unique composer in all of history. But he was in fact highly adaptable to his life circumstances. Which if you know the biography of Stravinsky, seems like an objective description of the man.
Sorry but 12 tone serialism is hot garbage as a compositional technique. You can make good atonal music but not that way.
Schoenberg music is always defended. It's never actually listened to for pleasure.
There's more Schoenberg music that, not being 12 tone, and being very good indeed, can be listened to for pleasure than there is "difficult" Schoenberg 12 tone music.
Be that as it may, much of Berg's 12 tone music can be listened to for pleasure, even if you can't stand Schoenberg's; the Lulu Suite and the Violin Concerto are a good place to start.
I do not agree. I have played his piano music to audiences regularly and performed his orchestral works as well. Always with a positive reaction of the audience. 100 years or more do count. Works of music need to age, like wine and cigars.
Gould talks a lot but doesn't say much.