What is it about the Goldberg Variations?
Colin Booth introduces his recording of Bach's late masterpiece
Bach's Goldberg Variations is an iconic work, not just for Early Music enthusiasts, but for those who love keyboard music in general (you may have noticed that it can even be played on the piano, with a bit of 'fudging'!). It can give huge pleasure to players and listeners alike, and is available in countless recorded versions. So why offer yet another?
As any harpsichordist will, I had 'dipped into' the Goldbergs for many years. Also, over several decades I had heard a number of famous players performing them live (sometimes with very mixed success!), and had supplied instruments for other harpsichordists to use when recording the work. There were enjoyable sessions with David Roblou, Colin Tilney, and more recently, David Wright and Steven Devine. This certainly got the work under my skin, and hearing their 'take' on it was a help in assessing and refining my own views - and also I might add, in confirming where the most consistently tricky passages lay.
At the same time I had been working for more than a decade on Did Bach Really Mean That? Deceptive Notation in Baroque Keyboard Music. The Goldbergs feature quite a lot in this book. They raise a number of important interpretative problems, and demonstrate, perhaps more than any of Bach's other keyboard works do, how that great genius struggled to notate his advanced musical ideas. He was not always able to leave a score which presented those ideas unambiguously, and was also, more than is often realised, as dependent as his contemporaries were, upon 18th century conventions. These allowed him to write some of the music in a simplified notation, where a literal performance would have given only half the story, or produced results which would have surprised the composer - perhaps as much as some present-day performances would!
If suggestions in the book for what in some instances Bach really may have meant were put into practice, some passages from the Goldbergs were going to sound different from the way they had 'traditionally' been heard - that is, since the major revival of interest in it, during the 1950s. It would be helpful to offer a recording, so that listeners could hear these passages played with conviction, and hear them over repeated hearings, which for many would be necessary, to overcome the mental imprint of a well-established version - if this were to happen at all.
Does this matter? Some may say that so long as a performance gives pleasure and satisfaction, that is the only justification it needs. For the awkward brigade, however, the performance of Early Music demands an ongoing quest for the truth: we probably never will know everything about how the music was originally performed, but we must continue to try to find out, with the aim of revealing the music, not as the player might choose it to sound, but as far as possible, the way the composer expected it to sound. All players will, in any case, sound different, so there is no risk of this quest leading to impersonal performances. In recent decades, the work of uncovering these truths has been carried on by players and directors, as well as scholars. Did Bach Really Mean That? together with a series of recordings, demonstrate my own passionate involvement in the search.
This all sounds rather earnest. In fact, over time my view of the Goldberg Variations came to be quite the opposite of earnest. A mood of gaiety and wit seemed to pervade many of the variations (even some of the strictly contrapuntal canons, which form a third of them), and aspects of performance technique which are dwelt upon in Did Bach Really Mean That? seemed to this player to help to bring this mood to the surface and make it immediately audible.
One factor was tempo. There were no metronomes, and hence no metronome markings, in Baroque music. The speed at which a player chooses to perform a piece of 18th century music should depend not just on a personal whim, but on a quick analysis of factors like the time signature (and the values of notes used within it), and style. These elements were the basic guide used by composers to indicate tempo, and if we disregard them it is possible that important aspects of the music may be disguised. Wit, of course, is naturally associated with a lively tempo. But it is often best communicated if it is SLOW enough to allow space for such fractional hesitations and nuance as the score suggests. Even gaiety can lose its force if rushed. Above all, in complicated music of a contrapuntal nature, clarity of line is all-important, and excessive speed cannot avoid reducing that clarity.
On the other hand, of course, very different moods are present in the Goldbergs too. Here again, in the 18th century, the word adagio (for example) had not yet become synonymous with extreme slowness, and excessive gravity in the pre-Romantic period might well have been regarded as self-indulgent and strange. In slow pieces the music should be affecting, but not gratuitously emotional. And the tone-production of a harpsichord dictates that a certain pace must be maintained in order not to interrupt the flow of a melodic line.
Another performance feature which I have long felt to be both crucial and under-employed, is the use of unequal rhythm where none appears on the page. There is much evidence for just how widespread and pervasive the 'swinging' of fast music and 'lilting' of slow music was in the Baroque period - throughout Europe. But we live in a very cautious age, and most players today fight shy of a bold use of this eminently expressive technique, which can add vitality and stylishness to music of a dance-like character, or an elegant pathos to more sombre pieces. These elements of performance when used in my recordings of other composers have attracted favourable comment, and there is no good reason for Bach to stand wholly apart from them. Nor is his stature diminished by performing his music in what one believes is something like an 18th century way, even if this may involve less use of extremes in the playing. These thoughts, together with an examination of that 'traditional' approach to the Goldberg Variations which was mentioned earlier, and a discussion of Bach's use of ornamentation, are elaborated in the CD booklet notes.
Of course, we live in a very different world from that inhabited by J.S.Bach, and there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way to play his music. Nor should anyone today claim to have some unique 'hotline' to his expectations. The hope is, however, that listeners may find this performance of a classic piece to be musically and emotionally successful, while it is sincerely intended to be not just personally convinced, but historically justified.
J.S.Bach: Goldberg Variations SBCD210