Glenn Gould's Critical View of Mozart | Generated by AI
Question: How does Glenn Gould comment on Mozart’s music?
Answer:
Glenn Gould, the renowned Canadian pianist, had a notably ambivalent and often critical view of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music, particularly the composer’s later works. He expressed these opinions provocatively in interviews, writings, and a famous 1968 television segment titled How Mozart Became a Bad Composer.
Gould argued that Mozart’s compositional quality declined in his maturity. He believed the early works (such as the first half-dozen piano sonatas, early concertos, and symphonies) were superior—praising their inventiveness, purity of voice leading, structural coherence, and textual consistency. In contrast, he criticized later pieces for relying on clichés like sequential passages, walking basses, running trebles, and predictable cadences, which he saw as unenterprising and banal.
A key provocative statement from Gould was that Mozart “died too late rather than too soon,” implying that the composer’s death at age 35 spared music from further decline. He specifically targeted works like Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor (K. 491), calling out its sequential progressions as formulaic, and described late Mozart’s craftsmanship as overly dependable yet lacking innovation.
Despite this criticism, Gould’s relationship with Mozart was complicated: he recorded all the piano sonatas (though some performances were eccentric and controversial) and admitted admiration for certain pieces, such as the third movement of the C minor concerto (calling it “the Mozart of our dreams”) and specific sonatas like K. 284 and K. 333.
His comments often carried a humorous, satirical edge, using alter egos in broadcasts to debate himself, but they were genuinely held and intended to challenge conventional reverence for Mozart.
References:
- https://blogs.loc.gov/music/2020/04/the-unpopular-opinions-of-glenn-gould-or-how-mozart-became-a-bad-composer/
- https://www.openculture.com/2020/10/glenn-gould-explains-why-mozart-was-a-bad-composer-in-a-controversial-public-tv-show-1968.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wLMdi8R4qg (Full 1968 TV segment: How Mozart Became a Bad Composer)
- https://www.azquotes.com/author/22110-Glenn_Gould (Collected quotes, including “Mozart died too late rather than too soon”)
- https://glenngould.com/music/mozart-piano-sonatas-vol-1/ (Gould’s notes on early sonatas)