Gould/Chopin

[f h <boyboy_8@yahoo.com>]

I have long felt curious about his almost Chopin-less
output.  I am really only going to guess here, having
not read what Gould said in print or interviews about
his opinion.  I have a somewhat love/disinterest in
Chopin and always have.  As a romantic poet of the
piano, Chopin has expressed musical ideas which, at
the best, are superb.  At his worst, he sounds like a
broken record.  It's not so much that you can hear
those chords coming like the proverbial train around
the mountain, or you can see Chopin bringing his
pieces to a conclusion as if he was strapped with
crazy glue into the composers seat, fixed and fixated
with the forms he had either created or developed.  I
think that Chopin suffers worse than say, Schubert,
for a composer who had an opportunity to express
himself from a wider pallet and lost track of this
ambition and instead found himself almost sounding
like a caraciture of himself.  I know that this is a
bit harsh, but after a few hours of listening to many
Chopin pieces in a row, you will get a gist of what
I'm getting at.  Where other composers, especially
Beethoven, searched for ever new forms and
complexities to elaborate on, Chopin was quite happy
showing you how many different ways that a heart could
be worn on one's sleeve.  Fine enough but there is
much more to be said in music.  He abandoned symphonic
and chamber music expressions where he most certainly
had the musical mind to explore these and other forms.
 All in all, perhaps, Gould felt a bit let down or
even bored with Chopin, because from an intellectual
point of view, or better put, from a contrapuntalists
point of view, Gould might have felt that there was
very little there in Chopin that needed exploring.  As
I say, it's just speculation on my part.

Regards,

Fred


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