Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Glenn Gould IQ?

I don't think anyone knows his actual score (or whether he even took an intelligence test).

However, it generally isn't hard to estimate someone's intelligence if you can hear him speak extemporaneously. For instance, vocabulary is very strongly correlated with intelligence, and someone with a robust vocabulary is probably pretty intelligence. By that principle, we can infer that Glenn Gould must be quite brilliant because his vocabulary and diction are off the charts. I would guess that his IQ is no less than 130, and probably north of 140.

I don't know where you heard this, but it is almost certainly bunk. Standard IQ tests are measures of academic intelligence only. They predict success in school, and that's basically it. They do not measure anything outside of this (that includes musical ability), and that is precisely one of the main criticisms of them. Beethoven, for example was bad at math and there was nothing particularly exceptional about is vocabulary to suggest genius. If he were to take a modern day IQ test he would almost certainty score lower than most of the people on these forums. Are we to think of him as any less of a genius? Hardly.

Furthermore, you can't derive IQ based on writings alone. We have absolutely no idea what the IQ of Mozart, Shakespeare, Aristotle, or any of these guys was, especially Socrates (who did not actually write anything down for the benefit of posterity).

Intelligence is definitely correlated with musical talent. Sure, there may be some relatively unintelligent people with extraordinary musical gifts (such as autistic savants or Williams syndrome suffers), but on the whole, smarter people will develop their musical abilities much more quickly than unintelligent people.

It seems most people are forgetting that it's not just the person's ability, but how he does on a test that he has to sit for.

That can make a difference, and I think it seems pretty likely it would have made a big difference for someone like him.

Probably because he had never been taught it, rather than because he was not capable of it.

Some people are naturally better at taking tests in general than others or have learned it as a skill. I've never seen any of the courses for SATs or other tests but I can't help think they probably teach more about test taking than what you will be tested for. I was always good at test taking and ended up taking the SAT in 7th grade because I was always scoring in the 90th percentile on the IOWA every year. Exactly why the school systems felt 7th graders should try the SAT at all is beyond me. I don't remember my scores but in the comparisons to the scores of high school seniors who took the test that year I did halfway decent and the only preparation I did for the test was bring a pile of sharpened #2 pencils. I never bothered taking it again because I didn't need to so I'm not sure what 5 more years of school would have done to my score.

usually, when people talk about high IQ they associate it with physicians and mathematicians, rarely to musicians.


I think there's not a high correlation between musical prowess and high IQ

Actually I know some people with a very high IQ who are very musically untalented and tried to learn an instrument but never went beyond the basics, and in some cases not even that... Maybe they lacked motivation? I have to admit that this always surprised me somehow. On the other hand though they say that Beethoven for example was bad at maths and Mozart was bad at spelling...
Maybe it is safer to say that musically talented people are intelligent rather than the other way around, but I have no proof for that... It is just an opinion.

i think you will find him great at some things , horrendous at others. There are many forms of intelligence and that is a weakness of IQ tests not to mention the cultural biases they tend to exhibit although I doubt that would affect a Canadian.

learning to play the basics of an instrument, is hardly a problem a person with high IQ would have.

Some people with a high IQ are very insecure. Maybe their insecurity is a problem. They convince themselves they can't do it, although they could. Just an idea...

IQ doesn't account for hand eye co ordination. A bunch of things musicians need to cultivate do not register on an IQ exam.

Agree completely.

Remembering that "IQ" refers just to a particular kind of "intelligence," not intelligence in general, I think musicians who we know to also have certain kinds of academic inclination and ability (emphasis on "certain kinds of") could be predicted to have very high IQ's, because the ability that we've seen them demonstrate overlaps with the kind of thing that is required for "IQ." IMO the great intelligence that we've seen from Gould happens not to overlap at all with it, and if anything is in contrast to it.

I think in understanding a subject of any sort one has to comprehend the fact that anyone commenting or supporting that subject is exactly that, subjective and comes with an agenda whether conscious of it or not. Rarely does any single person, including various research "experts" study a subject or profess new theories on a subject in a completely objective way.

So too did the creator of the so called I.Q. test Alfred Binet. He was much like many of the turn of the century "scientists" that were obsessed with the University Theorems of Eugenics and the rabid genetic and racial advancement beliefs. Binet indicated as such in stating that upon hearing Francis Galton's teachings, the creator of the Eugenics theory and cousin to Darwin, he was inspired to create tests for mental faculties to identify superior as well as feeble minded people for the purpose of societal classifications based on the said tests.

So its true that there are many quadrants of intelligence and tests now for each of those quadrants, i think if one approaches them with a more altruistic intent than the originators i don't there's any harm in them... its just simply not the summation of a person's being and entire existence.

I would just like to point out that an Intelligence Quotient and Intelligence are NOT the same thing. People keep talking as if the two are synonyms. They are, most certainly, not.

+1

Or actually +2 since I sort of said it twice.

Can you please elaborate a bit more on what Intelligence Quotient and Intelligence are intrinsicly?

While we're waiting on his answer, here's my swing at it.

"IQ" measures only a limited portion of what we regard as intelligence. This can be expressed in many different ways, all of which are very subjective. The way I'd put it is, it measures a certain kind of linear thinking (they call it "logic"), and relies a great deal on verbal ability (i.e. language stuff) and certain aspects of visual perception.

Plus -- and I seem to be the only one here who thinks this matters -- it is a measure of how someone does on this particular kind of test when they sit down and take it during a specified span of time. This means that in addition to the above, it depends on sustaining concentration, and on giving a dam about the whole thing.


I think all of the above would be biased against someone like Gould. He had a quirky kind of intelligence, not a standard or linear kind, and if anything he seemed to be inclined toward coming up with different answers and different kinds of reasoning than "normal." Plus, I think his attitude about performing on a test of this sort would have been, more or less, take this test and shove it.

Highly abstract thoughts according to current day computational neuroscience require much less computation than for example movement calculations or visual interpretation. I have a huge distaste for the use of the word intelligence since it falsely implies that we know what we're talking about.

Ah the 'Gouldtalk', he's just playing. What I get out of his talks though is a warmth towards music. His attitude is more or less - "Okay, we know we all love music, lets have a little theatre over here, I'll play this role you'll play that role.". I don't think he takes it all too seriously.

You aren't the only one. Someone else already talked about it as a measure of test-taking skill. Which it is, and which most of us know.

However, that skill in taking tests may be correlated to other things. After all, in some ways, the entire mainstream version of what education means these days is really about passing tests, isn't it? Taking it into the realm of piano-playing, what are all those graded programs like ABRSM and the whole competition circuit about, if not about passing tests?