Re: Mozart was a bad composer...

["Bradley Lehman" <bpl@umich.edu>]

>Our reading for the day is taken from the interview "Of Mozart and related
>matters: Glenn Gould in conversation with Bruno Monsaingeon".  It is found
>in the _Glenn Gould Reader_ p. 32-43 [originally in _Piano Quarterly_, Fall
>1976, the forty-second Year of Our Glenn].
>(...)
>And given what we know about GG himself often scripting his interviewers'
>questions...it's probably fair to say that the words in Monsaingeon's
>"mouth" are reliably GG's.  GG certainly doesn't refute them in this
>"interview."


And here's the "proof" that GG wrote both sides of this interview:

_Glenn Gould: Selected Letters_, p. 224, a letter to David Rossiter
(Manager, Classical Dept, CBS Records, England), 6/26/1975.

(...) I'm extremely biased in favour of the Mozart set (the 5th and last
volume, as you probably know, is a convention release) despite, or perhaps
even because of, the fact that I'm really not all that fond of Mozart.  The
albums have, of course, raised alarm among the North American critical
fraternity and I'm reasonably confident that, given the infinitely greater
conservatism of their British colleagues, you'd have the scandal to end
scandals on your hands, and that's why I suggested that perhaps a bit more
listener-preparation is in order.  In any case, in a year or so, the 5
albums will be brought together in a package and I'm going to write a major
essay, quite possibly using a "conversation with" form, and attempt to
explain that as RVW said of the 4th Symphony "don't know if I like it but do
know that I meant it". (...)

[That major essay is then the Monsaingeon "interview" for _Piano Quarterly_
Fall 1976, as quoted earlier.]

Bradley Lehman, bpl@umich.edu