Today’s video is a little bit of a departure from my habit thus far—I stumbled across a brilliantly fascinating and slightly infuriating video of Glenn Gould criticizing Mozart the other day, so I decided to do a reply in which I directly address Gould’s points.
Mozart is one of those composers that one tends to take for granted as a fixed part of the musical canon, but in reality, he certainly has his detractors. Gould himself had rather a love-hate relationship with Mozart, and his criticism of a passage from Mozart’s C minor Concerto is so convincingly argued that I really needed to make a reply, just for my own peace of mind!
Whether, like me, you love Mozart’s music despite any weaknesses in his compositional technique, or if you are a Mozart skeptic like Gould, hopefully, this video will illustrate some of the subtleties that I think make his music really special.