If you have “A state of Wonder”, the interview on disc 3 does illuminate a few of Gould’s artistic decisions. But the comparative lack of notational guidance from Bach allows a performer room for a personal interpretation.
Beethoven, by contrast, overdetermines the piece, so fidelity to all of the marking requires a pianist of great skill to negotiate a fine line. Still it is tempting to be faithful to the original intent of the composer, in the belief that some of the genius will be revealed.
Winters is clearly posessed of this belief–his response to this research paper is " Not Smart Enough to use a Metronome? Beethoven Finally Proven Wrong!". Apparently “geniuses” are incapable of making mistakes, and since Beethoven was a “genius”, the paper is laughable.
The New Yorker published an essay on Mozart and Salieri that attacks the very notion of “genius.”
Above all, the myth of the murderous Salieri assists in the deification of the genius, who cannot be brought down except by the intervention of a diabolical force. Mozart’s death becomes a kind of Passion, in which Salieri plays the role of Judas or Pontius Pilate, delivering the Son of God—“Amadeus” means “lover of God”—to the sacrifice from which he will rise again, in the religious rite of the concert hall.
The danger of the word “genius” is that it implies an almost biological category—an innately superior being, a superhero. It is probably no accident that the category of “genius,” an obsession of the nineteenth century, coincided with the emergence of the pseudoscience of race, which held that certain peoples were genetically fitter than others. At the same time, “genius” easily becomes a branding term used to streamline the selling of cultural goods. The perils of the term become clear when the authorship of a work is uncertain. In 1987, the musicologist John Spitzer published an amusing and edifying article about the Sinfonia Concertante for Winds, K. 297b, which was long thought to be by Mozart. In its heyday, the Sinfonia was said to be “truly Mozartean” and as “monumental as a palace courtyard.” Once uncertainty about the attribution set in, the piece was called “cheap and repetitive.” The notes themselves had not changed.
It’s almost as if Winters is caught between his notion of genius, and the ordinary realities of the world.
The gist of his argument seems to be:
Beethoven is a genius. Geniuses don’t make mistakes. Beethoven is wise enough not to require the impossible from his musicians, and yet his markings seem to do just that. Therefore, the world must be wrong,
(As for the timing problem, this can be disproven by examining the diaries of opera goers. A concerto needs a stopwatch, but an opera that lasts for the expected two hours instead of Winter’s proposed four is readily confirmed)
