142. Variations project: Bach Goldberg Variations

Sunday, December 8th, 2024 @6pm | JS Bach: Goldberg Variations in collaborative performance (prerecorded)

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142.

Salon Concerts at Klavierhaus
Jed Distler, artistic director

presents

JS Bach: Goldberg Variations
in collaborative performance (prerecorded)

In memory of Joe Patrych
August 1955 - December 2023

Isabella Eredita Johnson, artistic advisor
Daniel Berman, editor
Laurie Durante, program notes
Jed Distler, introduction

Sunday, December 8th, 2024 @6pm

Live at Klavierhaus
790 11th Avenue
New York, NY 10019

$20 suggested donation

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Johann Sebastian Bach
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

Aria, 1. Michael Lewin
2-4. Vivien Schweitzer
5-6. Rachel Cheung
7. Daniel Berman
8. Nuno Marques
9. Erasmia Voukelatos
10. Dina Pruzhansky
11-12. Kosjenka Turkulin
13. Yifei Xu
14. Yuxin Li
15-16. Geoffrey Burleson
17-18. Beatrice Long
19-20. Sachiko Kato
21-22. Nina Tichman
23. Lauren Reed
24. Sean Chen
25-26. Eric Clark
27. Makiko Hirata
28. Cullan Bryant
29. Min Joo Yi
30. (Quodlibet) Daniel Berman
Aria. Marc-Andre Hamelin

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The Goldberg Variations

If music is the form of feeling, as Suzanne Langer once said, then what alchemy does a theme and variations conjure?

The Goldberg Variations are a singular phenomenon in multiplicitous forms. It is a theme and variations rarely attempted by Bach, and it stands outside Bach's diurnal life as kapellmeister, perfector of counterpoint, and prodigious genius. Born in insomnia, the Goldberg takes flight in dreams with a subtle, barely perceptible mathematical tapestry. teases the conscious mind out of itself. It reminds me of the beautiful shapes and geometry created by the Fibinacci sequence.

Its origin story, apocryphal as it may be, is almost as wondrous as its outcome. According to Johann Nikolaus Forkel, an early biographer of Bach,

The Count was often ill and had sleepless nights. At such times, Goldberg, who lived in his house, had to spend the night in an antechamber, so as to play for him during his insomnia. ... Once the Count mentioned in Bach's presence that he would like to have some clavier pieces for Goldberg, which should be of such a smooth and somewhat lively character that he might be a little cheered up by them in his sleepless nights. Bach thought himself best able to fulfill this wish by means of Variations, the writing of which he had until then considered an ungrateful task on account of the repeatedly similar harmonic foundation. But since at this time all his works were already models of art, such also these variations became under his hand. Yet he produced only a single work of this kind. Thereafter the Count always called them his variations. He never tired of them, and for a long time sleepless nights meant: "Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations." Bach was perhaps never so rewarded for one of his works as for this. The Count presented him with a golden goblet filled with 100 Louis d'or. Nevertheless, even had the gift been a thousand times larger, their artistic value would not yet have been paid for.

The idea of Bach doing this personal favor for this count and his student, crafting a magnum opus at once so mesmerizing and so invigorating as to restore his friend to soundness is just so moving and inspires us to be caring and kind people as Bach was. The work is lengthy, 30 variations or 31 if we count the aria stated at the beginning. Scholars have noted that every third variation is a canon followed by a genre piece and an arabesque. The musicology is fascinating here and points to that subtle pattern mentioned earlier. The fact that 31 is a prime number is just one of the many fascinating riddles and hints in this wondrous work. As a layperson I am intrigued by the way the piece plays on the conscious and subconscious mind and reassures us that variations are inexhaustible but there is an underlying unity there as well.

This piece appears to be Bach's foray into heterodoxy in an otherwise very canonical life. Even his use of the aria, taken from that record of domestic bliss, the Anna Magdalena notebook. seems like a talisman, a show of good faith that he was personally committed to this venture. In a life committed to God and writing so often in that Protestant vein, here is another side to Bach where you could imagine him smilingly saying, with Prospero "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." Perhaps what we are witnessing is the historical shift from the very public sphere of the baroque into the more private musings of early classical music, and this quality of freshness may be one of the reasons the Goldberg Variations are so beloved.