It all began when I stumbled upon a surprising revelation—some people, including legendary pianist Glenn Gould, weren’t fans of Mozart. I was skeptical and maybe a little defensive at first—like come on, how dare him? Ready to sabotage his argument and him, I decided to first watch his infamous television lecture, How Mozart Became a Bad Composer. But instead of finding material for a rebuttal, I discovered Gould’s opinion was a nuanced, masterful analysis—a critical gem in musical discourse. ...

It was not only Mozart that Glenn Gould clashed with: Leonard Bernstein with Glenn Gould. Photo by Don Hunstein, 1957; Courtesy of Sony Classical [Glenn Gould’s] April 1962 performance of Brahms’ first piano concerto, with the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein conducting, gave rise to an extraordinary situation in which Mr. Bernstein disagreed with Gould’s interpretation so vehemently that he felt it necessary to warn the audience beforehand. (Cait Miller) ...

In Glenn Gould’s critical commentary on Mozart’s especially late piano concerti, he nevertheless adores Mozart’s early works: In his early works Mozart came very close to realizing the possibilities for experiment that would exist within even the most stylized form. His early sonatas concertos and Symphonies were extraordinarily flexible and inventive to a degree that he never quite equaled later on. My Mozart preference is for the work of his teenage years and as far as the piano sonatas are concerned those which he wrote during and shortly after his visit to Paris, which took place during his 22 year. These are glorious pieces lean fastidious and possessed of that infallible tonal homing instinct with which the young Mozart was so generously endowed. and despite everything that I’ve been saying in these last few minutes, I love them. (Glenn Gould from “How Mozart Became a Bad Composer”) ...

So, what is the concerto that Glenn Gould criticized so harshly? It’s Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor (K.491). Mozart composed K.491 during the winter of 1785–86 (FYI, Mozart was 30 then and he died five years later), a period when he was also devoting to the creation of his late operatic masterpieces, such as Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and later Die Zauberflöte (in other words, concerti appointments are the composition chores he was possibly trying to get over with). ...

Glenn’s commentary on Mozart (How Mozart Became a Bad Composer) is inspiring, even beyond its musical context. Glenn is an original thinker—eloquent and masterful—yet he didn’t spend a single moment making his audience’s experience easier. The speed of his thoughts, the density of his information, and the impromptu free flow of his words were mesmerizing, even as he buried his argument beneath layers of complex ideas. Though Glenn seemed to critique Mozart harshly, beneath the surface of his sharp words and seemingly scathing remarks lay a deep respect for Mozart’s genius. His solid musical foundation was unmistakable, and though not explicitly stated, his exceptionally high regard for Mozart as one of the greatest composers shone through. ...

The famous Bach interpreter Glenn Gould (who is considered as among the most famous and celebrated pianists of the 20th century), famously commented negatively on Mozart. In 1968, Gould presented a segment of the weekly public television series Public Broadcast Library. His topic was “How Mozart Became a Bad Composer.” (source: OpenCulture) Glenn monologued a 40min critical masterclass, accompanied by a piano—filled by piano snippets dissecting Mozart to the core, and Glenn’s sparkling satrical humor. Here’s an organized transcript of it with the original show link of YouTube. ...

Linfeng visited SUFE to give a talk on his job market paper “Crowdsourcing Digital Public Goods | A Field Experiment on Metadata Contributions”. He interviewed for School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence though I think he is more of an economist. Abstract This study explores why people choose to contribute metadata, which is data about data. Using a field experiment conducted with more than 3,000 authors of AEA journal articles, our control message reduces the uncertainty about the future value of metadata, whereas those from the treatment conditions additionally make the private or social benefits of metadata salient. Surprisingly, we find that participants in the control condition provide significantly more metadata compared to those in the treatments. This suggests that simply knowing that metadata will have value is sufficient to motivate people to contribute. Our results also highlight the importance of interface design in online field experiments. ...

Following the blog about Birdwatch’s mechanism design, here’s some latest news about it: Community Notes, formerly known as Birdwatch, is a feature on X (formerly Twitter) where contributors can add context such as fact-checks under a post, image or video. It is a community-driven content moderation program, intended to provide helpful and informative context, based on a crowd-sourced system. Notes are applied to potentially misleading content by a bridging algorithm not based on majority rule, but instead agreement from users on different sides of the political spectrum. ...

Here’s an interesting paper about crowdsourcing annotation of tweets. Given a twitter post containing possibly misleading information, the Birdwatch project aims to crowdsource comments on the OG tweet. One problem is to choose among the annotations one most credible annotation to display. Birdwatch: Crowd Wisdom and Bridging Algorithms can Inform Understanding and Reduce the Spread of Misinformation Stefan Wojcik et al. Arxiv link. Background So, about Birdwatch: Birdwatch is Twitter’s community-driven approach to identify misinformation. It encourages users add informative clarification notes to Tweets. ...

The Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50, is a short work by the French composer Gabriel Fauré written in 1887. It was originally a piano piece, but is better known in Fauré’s version for orchestra and optional chorus (Wikipedia). It’s so popular that it has multiple main-stream versions: an OG piano version, a choral version (here), (and of course) adapted ballet, and a most widely played orchestra version. The piece began with a expressive, almost-conversational flute solo. The tempo is slow, so making the solo super challenging. Compare this Waldbühne 2018 version and the following you can hear the subtle difference—which the principal flautist has, run out of breath… ...