Politics & Power Quote by Morton Gould

Gould is taking a quiet swing at the highbrow reflex that treats “serious” music like a private language. “It’s not a special taste” reads as a refusal of the idea that concert culture should function as a gated community, where appreciation requires credentials, a dress code, and the right kind of hush. He’s arguing that American composition, in particular, ought to carry the accent of the street: direct, legible, and alive to ordinary experience.

The cab driver isn’t a literal target demographic so much as a cultural litmus test. In mid-century America, the cabbie is the city’s roaming witness: working-class, pragmatic, endlessly exposed to the churn of news, slang, and late-night confession. If your music can’t “say something” to that person, Gould implies, it may be saying too little, or saying it in a way that confuses difficulty with depth. The line also prods at the insecurity of American classical music, long tempted to import European prestige. Gould flips that aspiration: the point isn’t to be approved by a rarefied tradition; it’s to be in conversation with the country you’re actually living in.

Subtextually, it’s a defense of craft and communication over posture. Gould, who moved easily between concert halls, radio, Broadway-inflected idioms, and orchestral showpieces, is staking out a civic model of artistry. Not populism as pandering, but accessibility as respect: art that assumes the listener is busy, smart, and worth addressing without a translator.