Rockport Music - Angela Hewitt, piano - GOLDBERG VARIATIONS: ARIA WITH 30 VARIATIONS, BWV 988

GOLDBERG VARIATIONS: ARIA WITH 30 VARIATIONS, BWV 988

Johann Sebastian Bach (b. Eisenach, Germany, March 21, 1685; d. Leipzig, July 28, 1750)

Composed 1741; 83 minutes

“The Count once said to Bach that he should like to have some clavier pieces for his Goldberg, which should be of such a soft and somewhat lively character that he might be a little cheered up by them in his sleepless nights.”

This often-told legend suggests Bach wrote his Goldberg Variations for an insomniac patron. Count Keyserlingk reportedly wanted ‘soft and somewhat lively’ music played by his harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, during sleepless nights. According to Bach’s first biographer, Johann Forkel (1802), the Count was so pleased with the Variations’ sedative-hypnotic effect that he rewarded Bach with a gold goblet filled with one hundred gold coins. “Bach was, perhaps, never so well rewarded for any work as for this,” Forkel muses, noting the hundred Louis d’or filling the goblet.

The more likely story: In November 1741, Bach visited Count Keyserlingk, the Russian ambassador to the Saxon Court in Dresden. Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (baptized 1727–1756), a prodigy from Danzig, was then employed by the Count. While the 13- or 14-year-old virtuoso could have played the Variations, it is unlikely Bach designed such demanding music for one so young. When Bach published the work just before traveling to Dresden, he did not include a dedication to the Count, which would have been a rare oversight in the 18th century. More plausibly, Bach gifted the newly printed music to the Count, and Goldberg’s subsequent nocturnal performances sparked the legend surrounding the Goldberg Variations.

Evidence suggests Bach wrote the Goldbergs for musical reasons, not as a commission. For years, he had been developing a huge project, Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice), a printed legacy of his own artistry. He began cautiously in 1726 with a single Partita, testing the market. The Six Partitas, BWV 825-30 (1726-31), became Clavier-Übung I. Four years later came Clavier-Übung II, containing the Italian Concerto, BWV 971, and Ouverture in the French Style, BWV 831. Clavier-Übung III (1739) focused on liturgical organ music and was Bach’s most ambitious such publishing project. Fifteen years after starting the series, he released the fourth and final part. Though not numbered Clavier-Übung IV, its title page was formatted in the same manner as the earlier volumes, confirming the Goldberg Variations as the cycle’s crowning achievement.

The 30 variations display remarkable diversity: some are song-like, others dance-like. Every third variation is a two-part canon, each part imitating and overlapping the other. As the variations progress, so do their intervals: unison (Variation 3), at the second (Var. 6), the third (Var. 9), continuing up to a canon at the ninth (Var. 27). Instead of the expected canon at the tenth in Var. 30, Bach writes a humorous quodlibet, weaving popular tunes into the Goldberg theme. The resulting dense four-part texture, with embedded folk melodies, reveals Bach’s ability to parody his own learned writing.

In between the canons are character pieces and virtuoso variations, some designed for one manual, others for two, as indicated by Bach’s Latin performing directions. The virtuoso variations build in brilliance towards the conclusion and precede the canons. Their character aligns with the toccata, while their spirit recalls what Domenico Scarlatti called an ‘ingenious jesting with art’ in his 1738–39 keyboard sonatas. Bach’s character pieces include two trios, a stretto, a gigue, a fughetta, two arias, an alla breve, the quodlibet, and, at the center of the cycle, a grand French overture. All three genres reveal diversity through their unity throughout the cycle since Bach builds each variation on the bass line and harmonies of the theme, rather than on the melodic line alone—the only harmonic change being the shift from major to minor at key points. Bach thus creates an encyclopedic synthesis of the canonic and variation techniques he refined throughout his career, with 32 pieces of music mirroring the 32 bars of the Aria. Many variations build cumulatively, reinforcing a sense of return when the 32-bar Aria reappears.

When Bach published the Goldberg Variations in Nuremberg, his elaborate title page modestly titled them: “Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations for the two-manual harpsichord. Composed for Music Lovers, to refresh their spirits.”