Glenn Gould Quotes

There's a very curious and - and almost sadistic lust for blood that overcomes the concert listener, and there's a waiting for it to happen: a waiting for the horn to fluff; a waiting for the strings to become ragged; a waiting for the conductor to forget the subdivide, you know? And it's dreadful!

- Glenn Gould

I'm fascinated with what happens to the creative output when you isolate yourself from the approval and disapproval of the people around you.

- Glenn Gould

Isolation is the one sure way to human happiness.

- 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 had such success with on Long Island, by George, and it will surely bring them success in Connecticut. So first there's tremendous conservatism. And then stagnation sets in. Or it certainly did in me.

- Glenn Gould

I think there's a fallacy that's been concocted by the music teachers' profession, to wit: that there's a certain sequence of events necessary in order to have the revealed truth about the way one produces a given effect on a given instrument.

- Glenn Gould

I love the early sonatas; I love the early Mozart, period. I'm really fond of that moment when he was either emulating Haydn or Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or anybody but himself. The moment he found himself, as conventional wisdom would have it, at the age of 18 or 19 or 20, I stop being so interested in him.

- Glenn Gould

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

- 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 half late, but, nevertheless, that's what I did. When I broke 30, I said, 'I think I should be recording until I'm about 50.'

- Glenn Gould

Until I was about 13, somehow I managed to assume that everyone reacted to everything just about as I did. I took it for granted that everyone shared my passion for overcast skies. It came as quite a shock when I discovered that there were actually people who preferred sunshine.

- Glenn Gould

I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano... The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off.

- Glenn Gould

It's true that I've driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but on the other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it.

- Glenn Gould

I detest audiences. Not in their individual components but en masse... I think they are a force of evil.

- 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 don't much care for the sunlight or bright colours of any kind.

- Glenn Gould

I find myself more genuinely drawn to the essence of Beethoven in Schnabel than I ever have been by anybody.

- Glenn Gould

Perhaps the most important thing that technology does is free the listener to participate in ways that in all previous periods of listening were governed by the performer.

- Glenn Gould

The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.

- Glenn Gould

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

- 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

I treat recorded tapes the way a film director treats his rushes.

- Glenn Gould

Behind every silver lining, there's a cloud.

- 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

One does not play the piano with one's fingers: one plays the piano with one's mind.

- Glenn Gould

Fingers don't have much to do with playing the piano. The idea that they do must be unlearned.

- Glenn Gould

At concerts I felt demeaned, like a vaudevillian.

- Glenn Gould