Glenn Gould: Richard Strauss Burleske (Part 1 - Interview)

[Frederikamusic]

among other things, 2:41 got absolutely charming.

[30inventionman]

The diminished chord is a plague in music. It can act is a cadence in the chord family

[mikezzzaaa3]

I question whether this piece is any type of parody at all. If the original title was scherzo furioso this suggests that the piece was originally not a "piss take" but merely a scherzo.

[grosdootie]

pretentious Gouuuld

[dmdml]

Many thanks for sharing this!

[onxtcz]

the guy interviewing him should shut up

[Temptezt]

dam this is hard if english is a foreign language for you...

[beauleeful]

I Don't understand music. But just the way he speaks makes me fascinated.

[evemurphy04]

Glenn Gould was Canada's greatest intellectual/musical creation and a true innovator in communications.

Thank you for posting videos that are so hard to find!

[jimmbo13]

What I find most amazing is how layered his analysis of the music is, its depth is astounding, ranging from the biographical to that of theory...

[jmanthirtyseven]

what an absolutely brilliant man

[sprygeoffreya17]

When gould talks, you could record, or take him down shorthand, set this in print with no editing whatsoever, and produce brilliant text on music, or whatever he is talking about.

[Schizm512]

Liszt is fantastic in his moments.

The figure that he plays is, however, totally ridiculous! made me laugh, christ i love Gould!!

[karpopper]

yeah right i call bs

i think you need to be able to play it first there Holden Caufield

[kingstravinsky101]

thank you glenn, liszt is silly!

[faraz1729]

What video is this from?

[p0lyph0ny]

I think it is from his CBC television program on Strauss, which is part of the (out of print, VHS) Sony Classical Glenn Gould Collection. This part is entitled "Mostly Strauss."

[silvion]

Did he really call Lizst the silliest figure in music?

[Haeronthegreat]

No, he was just basically giving the idea that Liszt was always prepared to show off with stupid ideas like Strauss' tinkly figure, and that Strauss was parodying this.

[junggai]

I think that whatever negative light Gould may have given to Schoenerg's "indulgences" should be taken in the context of his stunning recordings of Schoenberg's piano music. If Gould was merely brushing off Schoenberg's music, the way he plays this music certainly makes an oppositely compelling case.

[p0lyph0ny]

"I don't think there's any great contradiction in loving Strauss, for instance, and loving Schoenberg, who was in a sense his arch-enemy. I can't see any reason that one love has to cancel out another. I think that's one of the great mistakes people make today, and especially the avant-garde people make, when they try to decide who's in, who's out, who's with, and who's not. That's a great mistake, and I wish they'd stop it -- it's all so silly." -Glenn Gould (interview with John McClure)

[Pogouldiwitz]

And just to clear up the whole "pretensions" dispute, I will agree that the way I was using the word was a bit arcane. Actually, I was borrowing "having pretensions" from Aaron Copland's short tome about music. He was using it in reference to Beethoven. The way he used it there didn't leave me with the feeling that using "pretensions," in that way, implied anything negative.

[Theodora1989]

How absolutely wonderful!

[tofuhead]

i cried at the end.

[simoamendola]

Me too....

Thank you for sharing..

[freelancerkthnx]

As much as I like the way he takes a different approach to some things, when it comes to music he is so pompous in his analysis, but his understanding and explanation of some things here relating to music development through history are just excessively simplified and sometimes not even correct...

[jurmu11]

Name one incorrect thing that he says in this video.

[freelancerkthnx]

The idea that the development of the harmonic languages of Mahler and Schoenberg (and as he implies, atonality in general) occured 'simply by a certain sense of indulgence' is the point that I regard as specifically incorrect and overly simplified. As for the other musical things he speaks about, I agree he clearly knows what he is talking about, but he often turns a subjective judgement of a particular composer or piece into a simple correct or incorrect interpretation which I find pretentious.

[jurmu11]

I think your point is fair. "Simply by a sense of indulgence", especially when referring to Schoenberg, is definitely a tossed off statement. I think the case for some sort of neurasthenic, fin-de-siecle type decadence or indulgence could be made for Mahler's harmony, but it certainly wasn't "simply" indulgence. In fact, I think acase could be made that Strauss himself was a bit of an indulger in the harmonic sense, but Gould insists upon calling him a bulwark of tonality.

[jurmu11]

Interestingly, he labels Brahms an academic Romantic despite the fact that Schoeberg, about whom he always spoke with authority, referred to 'Brahms the Progressive' in a lecture from the early 30s. I guess he didn't share Schoenberg's opinion.

Gould's view of the early 20th century's music is definitely a bit odd and seemingly contradictory in a lot of places.

Maybe he didn't know as much as he thought, maybe he was influenced by the era, or maybe it's just part of his shtick.

[jurmu11]

He's more convincing when talking about academic harmony, but even then he's a little strange. I think his unusually informal academic upbringing left some holes in his overall education that he tried to plug on his own through reading and solo study, and his musical ideas are a reflection of some desultory reading on musicology and philosophy.

Also interesting is the moral sense he seems to impart to musical issues, such as what he sees as the indulgence of stretching tonality to its limit.

[Pogouldiwitz]

This is just a general reply. I think what Gould means when he uses the term "indulgence" is that he believes that those two composers had serious pretensions of being original. As opposed to Strauss who was perfectly happy composing within the confines of tonality. I don't think he was intentionally trying to sound negative in regards to Mahler and Schoenberg. As we all know, Schoenberg was one of Gould favorite composers.

[jurmu11]

He admired Schoenberg's 12-tone system, so why would he use a pejorative like "indulgence" in this presentation to mean "having pretensions of originality" when, in fact, he acknowledged the very real originality behind it?

[Pogouldiwitz]

You're confusing having pretensions, i.e. aspirations, with being pretentious.

[jurmu11]

Pretensions aren't aspirations. One who shows pretension is pretentious. I am not confusing anything. I think you are. Look in the dictionary.

[Pogouldiwitz]

I did. A little one called The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language.

Def. 2: An intention; an aspiration. LME--L18.

Gould even implies that Mahler and Schoenberg were revolutionaries, i.e., had aspirations, or pretensions, of being original.

[hartford799]

To follow your logic, when Gould says "indulgence", he means "they have aspirations". This doesn't pass the smell test.

By "indulgence", Gould means "indulgence". He is using the term indulgence in the sense that George Santayana uses it in "The Last Puritan", a novel that Gould admired. The novel is a condemnation of the spirit of willful decadence that characterized the art of the

[hartford799]

art and society of the turn of the century. Gould always used it as a reference. It doesn't matter that he enjoyed Mahler and Schoenberg's music, he still resents the fact that they overshadowed Strauss through what Gould really sees as "indulgence". He spent much more time on Strauss's music in his career than he did with Schoenberg's and Mahler's combined.

Freelancer and jurmu are right. Gould knew exactly what he was saying. If he meant aspiration, he would have said it.

[hartford799]

Having said that, this really is a knuckleheaded statement by Gould. Some fans of Gould like to try to justify every thing he said, and they end up simply misrepresenting what he says. This is the man that said Mozart died too late instead of too early. He makes pat judgements about music all the time based on his own musical tastes which he rarely supports with anything more than a brush off. He was a great pianist, a provocative thinker about technology, but no great musicologist.

[Pogouldiwitz]

Gould's dislike of Mozart piano and orchestral works is well known but are you that uptight that you actually took an obviously facetious remark seriously?

Yes I will agree that there was an obvious negative intimation in Gould's use of "indulgence." Okay. Are we happy now?

[Viviseckshunist]

Jumping into this debate a year late, but nonetheless: I happen to own a copy of "The Glenn Gould Reader", a collection of his writings, and I should say that he does in fact support his remarks about Mozart and other composers with sound and detailed musicological arguments.

[LutenistDeMari]

Stop arguing. He's quoted the Oxford dictionary and you know you are wrong.

[hartford799]

Fuck you, lutenist. He's admitted that he used the word in a ridiculous sense that a Finn wouldn't have understood. His main point is nonsense anyway. You can quote obscure definitions of words out of the OED all you want, but it doesn't make up for the nonsensical reinterpretation of the words out of Gould's mouth.

Stick your lute up your ass and stay out of lexicographical discussions with ME, moron.

[LutenistDeMari]

'Fuck you' not the most eloquent repost. Perhaps you need to go back to a dictionary and find some other way of expressing yourself.

[hartford799]

jurmu, You are right, pretensions aren't aspirations. pogouldiwitz's explanation of "having pretensions" and the adjective "pretentious", are fatuous. Very rarely, "pretension" is used to indicate aspirations, but this isn't really consistent with the etymology of the word, and it usually does have a pejorative character. I don't like to see the language abused by people making specious arguments, so please don't alter your understanding of the word "pretensions".

[Pogouldiwitz]

Abuse? I have the utmost respect for the English language. For God sakes, it's the second definition for the word in the OED.

[hartford799]

If you went up to a person and said "I hear you have pretensions of being a writer," that person WILL be offended. The "pre" in pretension indicates that a judgment of worth has been made "before" it can be evaluated, hence the pejorative nature of it that you noted.

I can't imagine learning Finnish, so I appreciate the fact that you are able to understand the nuances of words like "pretentious". Don't be intimidated by casuistry.

[Pogouldiwitz]

Just because one is unfamiliar with one of the ways a word is used doesn't mean that the user of the word doesn't have the write to use it in that way. Last time I checked, the folks at Oxford University have a pretty decent reputation in regards to matters of the English language.

[Ynger63]

He plays so beautiful at the end...

[adistar]

the slow mvt is wonderfully played. Perfect harmonies.

[weikko79]

This is pretty interesting. I've never seen this before, so thanks for sharing this!