Jibber Jabber About Bach's Goldberg Variations Aria
The Best Moments
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
I'm Johann Sebastian Bach, and I'm glad to welcome you to the best moments of the Goldberg Variations. You'll hear one quiet aria travel through thirty variations and return at the very end, and by then it sounds like an old friend you know well. Come and test yourself in the Trainer , where my fellow composers and I help you recognize our pieces as soon as they begin to play.
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A Very Dressed-Up Beginning
I open the whole work with a slow, dignified dance called a sarabande, in G major, and the melody is so heavily decorated that it looks like it got dressed for a wedding. What you don't know yet is that I care less about that tune than about the thirty-two-note bass line underneath it, which is the real theme of everything that follows.
The Black Pearl Takes Its Time
I wrote Variation 25 in G minor and marked it adagio, which is my polite way of telling the player to sit down and get comfortable. Wanda Landowska called it "the black pearl", and with its long, winding, chromatic melody, and as generally the longest piece in the set, I can't say she was wrong.
A Party at the End of the Road
I saved a little prank for the last variation, the Quodlibet, where I mix two folk tunes, "Kraut und Rüben" and "Ich bin solang nicht bei dir g'west", into one light-hearted medley. By the pattern a serious canon at the tenth should have stood there, but I chose a sing-along instead, and I never wrote down where the tunes came from, so you'll have to take my word that people knew them.
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When the last variation has faded, I bring the aria back exactly as you first heard it. The notes haven't changed at all, but after thirty variations you hear them differently, the way a familiar room looks new after a long journey. I always hoped the ending would feel like coming home rather than like stopping. Did you enjoy learning about the best moments of the Goldberg Variations? I hope a few of them stayed with you, whether it was the slow, decorated beginning, the long and shadowy Variation 25, or the cheerful medley of folk tunes near the end. There is still a lot more to explore in this work. Every third variation is a canon, and each one moves a step further than the one before it, which is a pattern you can listen for once you know it's there. My own copy, which was found in 1974, holds fourteen more canons built on the same bass line, so that humble bass keeps surprising people long after I wrote it. I never gave the work the name it carries today. I published it in 1741 as part of my Clavier-Übung, and the name Goldberg comes from a story that Johann Nikolaus Forkel told in 1802. The story goes that the work was connected to a count and a young harpsichordist, but nobody knows for certain how much of it is true. You may also like to hear how different players treat the same notes. Glenn Gould recorded the work in 1955 and again in 1981, and listening to both is a good way to see how one person's view of a piece can change over a lifetime. If you'd like to keep going, click on the links below and let the music lead you further into the Goldberg Variations. I'd be glad to think of you listening again, because I wrote this music to be returned to.