Goldberg Variations: finishing up

 My Goldberg Variations project is done, for now.  Recordings have been made for each track, and the collection has been mastered by a kind friend.  I've listened to the whole set, and made some small adjustments.  Eventually I'll make a few CDs for friends who are especially interested.  But this was not particularly intended for wide distribution, so that will be the extent of it.

The main thing I've learned through this experience is what a beautiful work this is.  There is something to love on every page, something to linger over, enjoying again and again.  While many players tend to take some of the variations at very fast tempos, probably for the virtuoso show-off effect, there are wonders to be discovered by taking them more slowly, and the result is not necessarily less interesting.

I've gotten to know my limitations, and those of the keyboard I'm playing.  The keyboard worked much better for this project than I expected; while there were a few places where I had to do some careful thinking about tempo and dynamics, my ideas about how the work would sound could usually be realized.

I didn't always reach my goals.  There are places where my hands did not produce what my ear wanted to hear.  For now, I'm continuing to work on the set, still hoping someday to be able to play from start to finish.  This was the "lite" version, without repeats; someday I'd love to be able to play the whole thing with all the repeats taken.  But for now, this recording will do.

The Goldberg Variations: How it's going

My quest to record the Goldberg Variations continues.  I'm about to begin work on Variation 9, having started from Variation 30 and working backwards.  The work is going slowly, but there's no hurry.

Each variation seems to have its own special "thing" that needs extra work.  Variation 16, the French Ouverture, for instance, has at least two issues to be considered.  One is over-dotting.  By convention, in this music, a dotted note is held longer than the written value, and the short note following is correspondingly shorter.  Here's the question: sometimes the right and left hands both have dotted rhythms at the same time, with different written lengths of the dotted note, and different written lengths  of the following shorter value.  Here's an example, from the first edition published by Balthasar Schmid:

In the first measure, the right hand has a dotted quarter followed by an eighth note; the left hand, on the second beat, has a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note.  Should the eighth note in the right hand be played as written, or should it be shortened to the same value as the sixteenth note in the left hand?  A similar situation appears in the second bar, where the left hand has a dotted quarter followed by an eighth note, and the right hand, on the second beat, has a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth.

I've heard it done both ways, but in this recording I'm choosing to over-dot the quarter notes, and play the eighth notes that follow them as sixteenth notes.

Another issue with this variation has to do with the ornaments in the second section.  Here's the Schmid edition:

In the second measure after the double bar, the turn appears on the first eighth note, not the second, and that is where I'm playing it.

In Variation 13, I'm thinking a lot about phrasing and fingering.  Originally I'd been playing things mostly legato, but I've discovered it helps to break the right hand into shorter groups, and play some parts of the left hand somewhat detached, especially the last three eighth notes of the bar in the lower voice.  Endurance is also a concern; the right hand needs occasional moments to rest from the flowery ornamentation, more so in my case because of the spring-loaded keys.  Where can the line breathe?

Variation 12, the Canon at the Fourth, is one of my favorites.  Here the relationships between the voices are the focus, as they feed into each other, alternately singing out and accompanying.

Variation 11 has been one of the toughest, largely because of choreography and fingering.  The hands often overlap, and it's necessary to decide exactly which hand plays what when.  Slow practice is the key here.

The ornaments in Variation 10 have needed some TLC.  When one hand plays two voices at once, and one of those voices has a trill, with or without a termination or a lead-in, some decisions have to be made.  How many repetitions will the trill have?  Will the notes in the other voice be held through the ornament, or cut short at some point?  Which fingers will do what?  Will repetitions of the Fughetta subject be ornamented the same way as the original, or will they be different?

One way or another, I'm learning a lot with this project!

The Goldberg Variations: The Music

The Goldberg Variations (the link is to the Wikipedia article, which has much worthwhile detail) show one example of the way Bach took a simple form and added additional structure to it to create something much larger and more complex.  The only requirement of a theme and variations is that the variations should have a clear relationship to the theme, and usually there's an obvious progression from one variation to the next in terms of rhythmic activity and complexity.  Here is a link to a YouTube video of a variation set by Bernardo Pasquini, on a theme known as La Folia, performed by organist George Becker, MD.

In Bach's set, though, the variations take a much wider variety of forms, which helps sustain interest for the immense length of the work.  The variations can be subdivided into groups of three; each group consists of a dance movement or genre piece, an arabesque, and a canon.  Among the genre movements are a French Ouverture and a Fughetta; the final variation is a Quodlibet.

The canons begin at the unison, and proceed by steps up to a ninth (an octave and a second).  By convention, all of the canonic voices should use similar articulations and ornamentation, though players don't always observe this rule.

One of the problems with Bach, which is also one of his great advantages, is that he does not write in as much detail as one might expect to find in a modern score.  Articulations, tempo marks, and dynamics are much less frequent, and, at least in some cases, have different meanings than they would have in a work by a modern composer.  Ornaments (e.g. trills) may have changed their meanings somewhat.  This is a problem because different people interpret Bach in different ways, and each of us tends to be attached to our own way of doing things.  One teacher told me never to play Bach for an audition, because no matter how you choose to play it, you will most likely offend someone on the committee.  But the lack of detail is also an advantage, because as a performer you don't have the option simply to play what is written; it demands interpretation.  You have to express yourself when playing Bach, because you have no other choice.  You can (and, in my view, should) use relevant historical sources available to you to guide your choices, but that does not change the fact that you are making choices.

Historical performance has tended to be a moving target, with each new generation of scholarship challenging the conventional (but perhaps less well founded) practice of its day.  Unfortunately, those of us who are not experts get left behind; we may use older editions, may not be familiar with all of the relevant sources, and may have missed out on developments such as the rediscovery of Bach's preferred tuning system.  This makes it intimidating to write about Bach's music; the odds are high that you are showing off your ignorance.  An important project to know about is the Open Goldberg Variations, which includes a fine recording by Kimiko Ishizaka, and an open edition of the score; you will need to scroll down the page after clicking the link, in order to find the link to download it from IMSLP.

Another worthwhile source, also on IMSLP, is the first edition proof with Bach's corrections.  This is the edition published in 1741 by Balthasar Schmid.  It's quite readable, and there are some notable differences between it and, say, the Bach Gesellschaft edition.

I make no representations about following historical practice in my home recording.  I've certainly done some reading and listening on the subject, and will continue to do so, but for the last word in historically informed practice, select another recording.

This blog is mainly about personal experience.  While there will certainly be links to historical/musicological information at times, the best sources for that are historians and musicologists.

A quick check of various websites found 81 recordings of the Goldbergs on piano, 23 on harpsichord,and one on clavichord.  As of this writing, the "Goldberg Variations Discography" article in the English Wikipedia mentions 101 recordings on piano (including one on jazz piano), 53 on harpsichord (including one on harpsichord and clavichords), and 6 on organ.  There are probably many more.  The two lists don't entirely coincide; I included some non-commercial recordings in my count, and missed a lot of the ones Wikipedia includes.  Many of these recordings are wonderful.  Some are more historically informed than others.  A few are cringe-worthy.  All of the performers can say they have recorded the Goldberg Variations.

 

The Goldberg Variations: The Instrument

There's little question that the Goldberg Variations were written for a French double harpsichord, that is, one having two manuals.  Both the range (going down to the G two octaves and a fourth below middle C) and the instructions about using one or two keyboards make that reasonably clear.

Pianists, however, have appropriated them, exactly as they've done with Bach's other keyboard works.  In the early to mid 18th century the distinctions between the repertoire for the harpsichord, clavichord, organ, early fortepiano, and so on weren't set in stone, and a player could play pretty much any keyboard piece on any keyboard instrument on which it was possible to play it.  This could include some tasteful editing and arranging if necessary.  I suspect, however, that the interest of some pianists in this work is much more tied to the fancy hand-crossing and the opportunities for virtuoso display provided by some of the variations.

There have been a number of arrangements and transcriptions made of the Variations, for organ, string trio, recorder consort, and saxophone quartet among others.

So, for my project, I'll be recording the Goldberg Variations on ... a Yamaha DGX-505 keyboard.  This is an old keyboard, top of the line in its day, with spring-loaded keys, and lots of features that don't interest me.  It has many voices, and I ignore most of them.  Its piano sound is only an approximation of an acoustic piano, of course, but I still like it, and for this project it's the only voice I will use.  I don't like the harpsichord voice.  Yamaha never forgets they are making musical instruments, and one result is a keyboard I can use, even twenty or thirty years after it was made, without being constantly distracted by its shortcomings.  I have done some recordings (not of the Goldbergs) using the organ voices, and I've played through a variation or two using the harp voice.

The spring-loaded keys present a challenge.  They demand a different approach to technique than a standard piano action.  A standard piano action requires more force to press a key down than to hold it.  Spring-loaded keys, however, take much more energy to hold down a key.  This can lead to injury when holding a note with one of the little fingers while playing something else with the same hand.  So far, I've been able to get the results I was hoping for; we'll see how that holds up as the project goes along.

One advantage of a digital keyboard for home recording is the total lack of room noise.  No key clicks, creakings of the chair, or swear words from the keyboardist need interrupt.  In addition, there's no need to be concerned about housemates who might be disturbed by early-morning recording sessions: the headphones keep the sound right where it belongs.

Recording on a digital keyboard does dictate some artistic choices.  For instance, every trill has to be measured, because you will clearly hear every repetition, whether you like it or not.  When your hand has to jump from one place to another, on time is late; you have to be in position before it's time to play the note, because otherwise you may get an unwanted accent.  Accuracy matters; a piano can be somewhat forgiving of a finger that hits two keys at once, as long as only the right one sounds.  On this digital instrument, forget it: if you touch a key, you will probably get a sound.  There's less margin for error.

While there is a pedal that can be used with this keyboard, it's basically a foot switch, and it tends to move around too easily.  I don't use it.  That calls for some careful thought about articulation, and taking some hints from my harpsichordist friends, because there's simply no way to play some of the legatos many pianists like.  This means sometimes a note won't be held its full value, and often the final note of a tie will be replaced with a rest.  That also helps protect the little fingers from the chance of injury mentioned above. 

To date, I have at least one recording made of each variation from 16 through 30.  Variation 16 poses some special issues; maybe I'll write about them later.  I've been working backwards through the set to help build the ability to play Variation 28 after having gone through all of the other ones.  For now, I'm recording them without repeats.  Once I have a complete recording of the whole set, I'll think about whether to go back and do one with the repeats taken.

Progress.

The Goldberg Variations: Recording

This post is mainly about (primitive) recording technology.  Professional recording technicians will certainly cringe; I'll make a long story short, and say there are good reasons to pay for a studio and an expert engineer if you have the money.  If you don't, my experience might interest you.

I take a very practical view of recording technology.  Ever since I found, in an issue of Maximum Rock & Roll many years ago, a statement to the effect that bands have released CDs which were recorded using the Voice Recorder on Windows(tm), I've been intrigued by the possibilities.  Today, I'm using Audacity under Linux Mint; while there are other options available, this is the easiest at the moment.  To record the audio to begin with, I use a Zoom H1 digital recorder, plugged into the headphone jack via a splitter.

Here are some lessons learned so far:

It's been tempting to edit to a "final" take right away, but I've learned the hard way it's not a good idea.  For one thing, dynamics are important not only within a variation, but from one to the next.  When you amplify the takes as they are made, you can't make that comparison; the computer will amplify a "softer" track up to a level similar to the "louder" one before or after it.  While you can re-amplify the tracks when you put them all together, that will change the level of the background noise, too, which will be distracting.  So, while I'll do basic editing (cutting out the unwanted stuff) early on, adding amplification and other effects will have to wait until the whole set is done.  I had added noise removal on the recordings of several variations before I realized it was making my keyboard sound bad.  I'll re-record them.  Lesson learned.

There's a recording-studio adage that says everything that happens in a studio should be recorded.  I've found it's true.  At first, I used to record each take as a separate file, constantly getting up to start and stop the recording device.  Now, I just let it run, and if I need to go over a section slowly, or repeat something, I record that too.  Most of it will be deleted after the final take(s) is(are) done, but there's less chance of missing something good.  It's also easier to concentrate on the music.

Usually I leave some blank space before beginning to record a section, which will make it easy to find when I'm editing.  It's a test of patience; usually after messing something up I want to dive right back in and play it again.  But counting off a few blank measures in the tempo of the piece helps to keep some perspective.

A home recording can be many things, and before anything else it's a way to hear my own playing.  Does it sound the way it should?  Are the rhythms right?  What about the ornaments?  The articulations?  Do I like it at this tempo, or would it be better faster (or slower)?  While there is an understandable urge to produce something and publish it, a home recording is first and foremost a practice tool.  While I'm playing, my ear can lie to me about what I'm doing.  An unedited recording, however, comes closer to the truth.

Will you ever hear what I'm creating?  I'm not sure.  But if I don't hear it, there won't be much worth sharing.

 

The Goldberg Variations: The Project

I've had my eye on the Goldberg Variations by J. S. Bach for some time.  I have recordings of individual variations that I made in 2013, and I was working on the Quodlibet as far back as 1998.

Right now, when there's so much general craziness, and I'm staying home more than I otherwise might, is a great time to go back to them, and you're invited along for the ride.  Hopefully, the journey will be entertaining and instructive; you'll learn from some of my mistakes.

The Goldberg Variations are, among other things, a big piece; a complete performance, with repeats, takes around an hour and a half.  These days, it seems to be common to leave out one or both repeats in the Aria and some, or all, of the variations.  This is a practical move; an intermission really doesn't work with this piece, and an hour and a half is a long time to sit without a break.  If none of the repeats are taken, the piece becomes a manageable forty-five minutes long, more or less.  Getting through the whole thing is still a feat of endurance.  My athletically-inclined friends fill my social media feeds with accounts of the marathons they run and the weights they lift, and exhortations to take on big projects.  Here's mine.

A big project needs a work plan, and I'm tackling this in stages.

• Locate, and listen to, a number of recordings of the work, on piano and on harpsichord. 
• Beginning from the end, more or less, make individual recordings of each variation, and two of the Aria.  For now, I'm recording them without repeats.
• Put my recordings onto a CD and listen to the whole set several times, taking note of things such as the relative loudness of the different tracks, the effectiveness (or not) of using noise reduction and other recording technology, the relative tempos of the different variations, and so on.
• Re-record anything that seems to need it at this point, using the best-practice information from the previous step.
• At this point, there will be an end product: a CD.  But it won't be done.
• Record the variations in sets of two or three, and gradually increase the numbers of variations in each set.
  
• Eventually, play the whole thing start to finish.
• Then do the whole thing over with the repeats.  Or not.

There is considerable overlap between stages.  Right now I'm on the first two.

These are some of the results I'm hoping for:

• Better playing, especially on this keyboard
• A recording I can give to my family, friends, etc.
• Thorough knowledge of this wonderful work
• Improvements in my recording technique, especially editing with Audacity

So far, I have recordings of Variations 21-22 and 25-30, and I'm working on 23 and 24.

More news as it happens.

Decomposing

Today I did something I never expected to do. I pulled out all of my old notebooks, including compositions from my very first scribbles (I was five) all the way through my first two years of college. I went through each of them, carefully tore out most of the pages, and tore them in half. Then I delivered them to the recycle bins downstairs.

Every composer in the Western tradition, loosely speaking, writes every note with at least one eye on posterity. Even if no one other than us values our work, we have to assume that, at some point, they might. We imagine our leavings treated the way we treat those of the composers who've gone before us: diligently preserving them, eagerly searching them for clues to the development of talent and mastery, including them in beautifully printed and bound editions of the complete works.

Most of us realize, on some level, that's a fantasy. It would be, if not impossible, at least not easy, for every composer's complete output to be saved, let alone treated with any special reverence. Libraries and archives have limited capacity, and “the cloud” (i.e. other people's computers) may have other ideas about what it wants to store. In any case, it makes no promises unless it's paid to, and sometimes not even then.

Going through those notebooks has been a complex process. A small part of it has been, “Wow … I don't remember writing that; it's not bad!” A lot of it has been, “Wow … that belongs in the recycle bin!” And a lot of it has involved saying goodbye, not just to a big pile of paper with musical notation scribbled on it, but to the childhood and young adulthood during which that musical notation was put onto that paper.

A few of the pieces are tied to events, like the one I wrote when my grandfather died. A very few of the pieces were performed; a song or two, and an Easter Cantata some of my cousins kindly sang through for me one afternoon. A collection of short pieces was published; they were written with Leonard Kilmer, my piano teacher at the time, and performed at the summer music camp at the local college. I was younger than most of the kids at that camp. I also gave a talk about aleatory music there that year.

Leonard introduced me to modern techniques by way of Vincent Persichetti's harmony book. I was in junior high school, and the modal melody and quartal-secundal harmony I learned from him have been important ever since. This was the time the school orchestra performed a piece of mine, for violin and strings. Playing the solo was a thrill, a happy time in a tough stretch, and I'm grateful to the kind friends who made it happen. During that period, I wrote my first music worth keeping. A Lament for voice and piano survives in an arrangement for soprano saxophone and piano.

But a lot of the music just shows me trying, and failing, to reproduce the grand pieces I admired. It's too bad, in a way, that I didn't look at other models; today I'd suggest, for instance, that someone wanting to write a cantata take a look at one by Buxtehude (“Alles, was Ihr tut”, perhaps); someone wanting to write a piano concerto could check out the pasticcio concertos of Mozart … and begin by writing a sonata in the style of the ones he used. But in those days, I wasn't big on taking advice from anyone. To be fair, a lot of the young musicians whose work I find online fall into the same trap, trying to run before they can walk properly.

But the biggest realization during the whole process of creative destruction has been that the future I'd been imagining, the one in which my works could be gathered, treasured, and preserved, is most likely not the future to which we are headed. There are too many problems facing the human race right now, and the genesis of my musical language isn't a priority.

A few pages have been saved, for now, but the reprieve is likely temporary. After watching (and being part of) the process of cleaning up after the deaths of a number of friends, and after a number of house moves, mine and others', it's clear the choice is only whether I want to put these things into the recycle bin now, when I can do so with my own two hands, or whether I want them put there (or into the trash), by someone else. Today I'm choosing to take action on my own behalf.