Necessary things Quotes by Glenn Gould

Theirs [the Beatles] is a happy, cocky, belligerently resourceless brand of harmonic primitivism... In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulged amateurishness of the musical material,…

— Glenn Gould

I cannot bear assaults of any kind, and it seems to me that the Beatles essentially were out to affront and to assault.

— Glenn Gould

Mozart died too late rather than too soon.

— Glenn Gould

Whenever one honestly defies a tradition, one becomes, in reality, the more responsible to it.

— Glenn Gould

The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder.

— Glenn Gould

Beethoven's reputation is based entirely on gossip. The middle Beethoven represents a supreme example of a composer on an ego trip.

— Glenn Gould

I detest audiences - not in their individual components, but en masse I detest audiences. I think they're a force of evil. It seems…

— Glenn Gould

Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt had no idea of how to write for the piano.

— Glenn Gould

“I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public…

— Glenn Gould

Concert pianists are really afraid to try out the Beethoven Fourth Concerto if the Third happens to be their specialty. That's the piece they…

— Glenn Gould

When I broke 20, I said to myself, 'I will give concerts until I'm approximately 30.' And I made it a year and a…

— Glenn Gould

By the time I was six, I made an important discovery that I get along much better with animals than humans.

— Glenn Gould

My moods are inversely related to the clarity of the sky.

— Glenn Gould

I don't know what the effective ratio would be, but I've always had some sort of intuition that for every hour you spend in…

— Glenn Gould

To me, the ideal artist-to-audience relationship is a one-to-zero relationship. The artist should be granted anonymity.

— Glenn Gould