This post reveals the extreme bias towards performers and performance, rather than composers and composition, that is so characteristic of the classical music establishment.
For your information I was in that establishment for years, am a product of it, and find it a disgusting and snobbish System whose purpose is to enforce uniformity of thought and obliterate individuality of artistry. I wonder what the film composers here would think if they heard the sarcastic and arrogant dismissal of all film music that was normal at the University music department I attended. Film music is in fact the only truly vital music being done right now with symphony orchestras. The concert music field is a government-subsidized snob festival that exists mainly as a fashion statement for the rich. So don't think that you are on a higher plane, illuminating the poor wretches who never understood what music truly is because they didn't graduate from a narrow-minded academic thought-control institute.
In your post you keep on stating digital music is cut off from musicians.
IS A COMPOSER A MUSICIAN?
Answer that question. No? Yes?
And if so, why is it wrong for that musician to want to use samples, rather than live performances, because he can control every element precisely, the way a painter is able to control the exact nature of his colors and brushstrokes?
I do not view music as mainly overrated "virtuosi" showing off in a concert hall and "Oh, by the way, the music was written by so-and-so." I view what the composer does as the essence of music, and that is IMAGINATION of sound within his mind. That is the true music. And however it can be most perfectly realized is the best music.
Also, as for Glenn Gould's eccentricity - WHO CARES??? So your attitude is, "well that guy is a weirdo, so I am not having anything to do with him." That makes me WANT to have something to do with him, because I am bored stiff by normal people. And he was a serious composer, and would certainly LOVE samples as being a means of directly realizing the imagination of sound within his mind.
I find your whole point that this thread is "disturbing" because it takes music away from live performance absolutely wrong. Because live performance is NOT the definition of music. It is simply a recreation of what a composer imagined. And often a very poor recreation.