HELEN 10/31: Here we are on the last day! I am ready to play the final iteration of the Aria. I played two variations on October 17, in order to put myself on the Variation that corresponded to the day. I’ve kept up and enjoyed this, although I have been stymied by how difficult some of these are. Occasionally, after suffering through and thinking “I vaguely know how this one goes” (remarkable, given how many times — 50? 60? — I have listened to this whole work, not to recognize what emerges from the hands!) I will wake up the next morning and hear it in my mind at full, accomplished speed and voicing, most probably Glenn Gould in 1955.
I am also trying to finish Philip Kennicott’s book on the Goldberg, something that I fear I won’t accomplish by day’s end, but serves as a worthy companion to the project.
How are y’all doing?
GRACE 10/31: I completely agree, Helen, that the variations were so often much more difficult than I anticipated. It really feels like a pedagogical exercise at each level – it’s so easy to get lost in the theory and the fingerings that you can completely lose sight of the voicing, which is in itself made that much more challenging by the frequent use of crossed hands!
CRAIG 11/2: Finished up the Goldberg Variations after getting ahead, then behind, and playing 5 in a day, not counting the recap aria. I was amused to see this blank page right after that:
Seems like it was just daring me to record how I felt about finishing! (Though after turning the page, I realized that there really were prewritten Bemerkungen | Comments | Remarques in the next pages.)
I really enjoyed playing these — more at that end than at the beginning. I suppose that’s a good sign. I think most of you are pretty well-acquainted with these — I’d of course heard of them, but hadn’t really listened to the Gould (or any other) recordings. So, I did that at the end as a wrap-up, which was really fun.
Did you all have any favorites, or is it more like one big piece to you…all parts of the whole? I guess I’d say that the final measure of Variation 13 takes me somewhere every time. That’s quite a moment.
HELEN 11/4: I’m fond of Variation 13, too, and I find its conclusion fast and yet graceful.
I’m partial to the conclusion of Variation 15. This variation in minor, called by Wanda Landowska “the black pearl,” attracts a few paragraphs from Kennicott. He writes, “The music gets lost in grief, becomes almost static in its self-absorption, with every motion and event localized, as if the subject who sings this dirge can no longer see outside the immediacy of pain.”
CELIA 11/5: I did read through all of the Goldberg in September – I was going to do it a second time last month but did not get through the whole thing.