J S Bach Goldberg Variations
/Book Review: JS BACH NINE CANONS from the GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BWV 988
FOURTEEN CANONS on the first eight notes of the ground of the GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BWV 1087
Arranged for lyres or other instruments by J S Clark
Reviewers Note: After volunteering to review this new music edition set by JS Clark, I realized that all of the pieces are for two or more voices. Because I do not have lyre colleagues nearby, I was only able to play the single lines. John Clark’s introduction to this collection and how he came to compile it is fascinating, and much more interesting than anything I could say. That said, I highly recommend finding other musicians and working through the content.
John Clark’s INTRODUCTION:
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Sometime in the mid-1990s I was asked to contribute lyre music to a conference held in Emerson College, Sussex on the theme of Cosmic Music. I contacted a few friends, all of whom were very able players, and we performed the Nine Canons that run like a red thread through the Goldberg Variations. This was the beginning of the lyre ensemble called Naked Piano that went on to perform a wide variety of music, both contemporary and classical, for several more years.
Printed in Bach's lifetime as the final part of his Clavier-Übung series, the Aria mit verschiedenen Veraenderungen or Goldberg Variations, as they came to be known, were not always as popular as they are in our time. Although the Goldberg Variations had been recorded before, both on harpsichord as well as on piano, it was Glen Gould's first recording in 1956 that brought the music to the attention of a wider public and allowed it to be gradually seen as part of the standard keyboard repertoire.
In spite of my very modest keyboard ability, I had a very deep interest in Bach's music, and for many years I had explored it not only on piano but also on lyre with other friends and colleagues. I found myself particularly drawn to the Goldberg Variations because of the (now widely discounted) story about their origin, related by Nikolaus Forkel (1749-1818) in his seminal work on the life of Johann Sebastian Bach published in 1802. He describes how the Variations were commissioned by Count Hermann Carl von Keyserling who was the former Russian Ambassador to the court in Dresden and who had a very young protégé, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1726), who had been a pupil of Bach. The Count was frequently ill and had many sleepless nights:
"Goldberg, who was living in his house, was obliged to pass the night in the next room at such times and to play something to the Count during his insomnia. Once the Count mentioned to Bach that he would like to have some keyboard pieces from Goldberg with a delicate and lively character such as might cheer him up during his sleepless nights."
Perhaps this description of the music as having a "delicate and lively character" piqued my interest, since this description could equally be a characterization of the tone and timbre of the modern lyre. Perhaps I was also intrigued that one member of the same Keyserling/Keyserlingk family had been involved with Bach, and another member, hundreds of years later, in 1924, with the inauguration of a new organic approach to agriculture proposed by Rudolf Steiner.
It also has to be said that, as a music therapist, I had a professional interest. Was Bach trying to create a composition for the Count that could alleviate his insomnia therapeutically? At the hand of the lovely song by Henry Purcell, An Evening Hymn, I was well aware of the belief current in that time, that during sleep, as the body lay in the bed, the soul would repose in the arms of God. Were these variations, with their nine canons, a musical journey through the heavens of Dante, a substitute for the nightly heavenly journey the insomniac Count could not make? Moreover, was the structure of the 32 movements of the Goldberg Variations perhaps inspired by Dante's Paradiso with its 33 chapters? Was there a hidden 33rd variation? These and many other questions led me to create and offer a series of three lectures about the Goldberg Variations.
No manuscript holograph copy of the Goldberg Variations has ever been found, but in 1974, Bach's own printed copy came to light in Strasbourg. In it, on a blank page at the end of the copy, he had added 14 short perpetual motion puzzle canons based on the first eight notes of the ground of the Aria.
It is widely thought that these fourteen canons, found at the end of Bach's own printed exemplar, represent a signature to this final part of the Clavier-Übung, in cabbalistic number-letter substitution with the letters B-A-C-H (2+1+3+8)-14.
The second part of this edition has a performing score in six parts with the solutions to the canons divided into four movements. Metronome marks are suggestions only.
J.S.Clark
2024 Monassa, Ireland