62 Quotes by Glenn Gould

The prerequisite of contrapuntal art, more conspicuous in the work of Bach than in that of any other composer, is an ability to conceive a priori of melodic identities which when transposed, inverted, made retrograde, or transformed rhythmically will yet exhibit, in conjunction with the original subject matter, some entirely new but completely harmonious profile.

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

[Bach is the] reason I became a musician

The final, unfinished fugue from The Art of Fugue is the greatest piece of music ever composed.

The nature of the contrapuntal experience is that every note has to have a past and a future on the horizontal plane.

I don't approve of people who watch television, but I am one of them.

The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men, and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations.

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

The mental imagery involved with pianistic tactilia is not related to the striking of individual keys but rather to the rites of passage between notes.