GG listeners

[Thayer A <A.Thayer@rhbnc.ac.uk>]

Dear F_minor,

Thanks very much for all the interesting replies to my e-mail. I would like
to make a few points about what exactly I mean't in it and my intentions of
sending it. I hadn't expected to cause quite so much controversy.

Firstly I would like to apologise to all those who took offence at my
reference to "non-musicians" and clear it up that I never intended to sound
as if I was indulging in musical snobbery (I don't claim to be any kind of
great musician myself) . I was merely interested in what exactly speaks
through the music, to those who have never had the training to hear, what
trained musicians learn to hear as "quality" and "greatness" in performance.
I quite agree with the point in one reply that anyone who can genuinely
appreciate Classical Music properly is a musician (if in a slightly
different way) as much as any performer. Sorry if I caused genuine offence
to anybody.

When I drew the parallels between Gould and Helfgott, I was hoping that the
replies I received would read much as they do. I am very much glad to hear
that there are plenty of "untrained musicians" out there, who can really
appreciate playing quality as much as publicity. I hope people understand
that when I compared the two pianists I was not so much reflecting my own
views, as objectively examining one possible theory relating to to the sheer
size of Gould's success. I by no means wished to suggest that Gould is an
overblown publicity stunt (he is my favourite pianist along with Horowitz)
but wanted to find out what makes him popular among others and look into one
possible theory, which I am glad to see has been fairly well disproved.

Thanks very much for all the comments,

Andrew Thayer.