“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.”

— Glenn Gould

"So You Want To Write A Fugue", Glenn Gould Reader p240

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Glenn Gould 8

Canadian pianist 1932–1982

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“We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other”

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“Pytheos made a mistake by not observing that the arts are each composed of two things, the actual work and the theory of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in the individual subject, while the other the theory is common to all scholars.”

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