Why did Glenn Gould look down upon the Romantic period in general?

[classicalnhiphop]

Why did he dislike Rachmaninoff and most of Chopin or scriabin's stuff?
just curious

[landru]

It is only my opinion, but I believe that he adored complex contrapuntal music - music that is played out horizontally so to speak in several voices. The composers you mention, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, are very lyrical with complex vertical harmonies and most of the time a single voice dominates. He definitely could play them, but they didn't hit that sweet spot for him - I bet they seemed boring to him.

Now, he loved Schoenberg, of all people! Why? Because it was a horizontally complex music to him and even if it was atonal, he could pick out the voices of the tone rows is my guess.

[j_menz]

Wagner counts as Romantic, and he liked him.....

[thesixthsensemusic]

I wouldn't go as far as to say he looked down upon the Romantic period at all. IMHO he just disliked a significant portion of the standard Romantic repertoire because it did not fit in with his musical preferences.

He was very critical of what he described as 'musical hedonism', stuff like Chopin and Liszt for example, that drew a lot of inspiration from Bel Canto opera (Bellini, Donizetti, Cherubini etc.). I don't know what he defined as such, but my guess'd be it's the theatrical, melodramatic approach to music.

He did record Chopin's 3rd piano sonata, and it is one of the most clinical and un-sentimental recordings I ever heard of any Chopin piece, although not a bad one by any means either.

The above might IMHO also explain why he did revere Brahms, as his music was Romantic in sound but stylistically closer to the Viennese Classics of Mozart and Beethoven.

It also might explain why he (except for a few chamber music works) didn't record Schumann, even though not being very closely related to Bel Canto opera Schumann was a composer who very much preferred the melodramatic aspect of music, albeit in a different way compared to Chopin and Liszt.

On the other hand, Glenn Gould was a very complex personality and, albeit not crazy, highly eccentric. He adored Wagner and Wagner is like the ultimate form of melodrama, so he also seems to have been slightly self-contradictory at times in his work and opinions.

[kalirren]

I get the impression that Glenn Gould wasn't very lyrical.  He might have had the same sort of blind spot for lyrical romanticism that I have for Gershwin.

[awesom_o]

Glenn Gould wasn't very lyrical. 

Nonsense!

Nobody ever played this as lyrically as Gould!

[thesixthsensemusic]

Nonsense!

Nobody ever played this as lyrically as Gould!

How about Julius Katchen?

[awesom_o]

Personally, in that work, I feel that Katchen's rubato disturbs the musical flow. Gould's version makes more musical sense to my ears. I also prefer Gould's quality of sound and find it to be less percussive.

[worov]

Gould did record Scriabin.



Check it out :

Now to answer the original question "Why did Glenn Gould look down upon the Romantic period in general?",  well maybe for the same reason that some people look down upon upon the baroque periode in general. To each their taste.

[dima_76557]

Why did Glenn Gould look down upon the Romantic period in general?

I don't think he did. He may have felt disgust because of what most make out of that kind of music, and he probably wasn't able to find the right compromise between his own taste and the taste of the public/establishment for most of that music. He is known to have "hated" Schubert's music (in some sense also a Romantic) more than anything else, for example, but when Richter played it in a concert in his presence, he was moved.

[asiantraveller101]

Wagner counts as Romantic, and he liked him.....

And he liked Richard Strauss too.