A Clasical Time of the Year

Goldberg Variations

I don't really know why but winter seems to invite classical music. It has been very pleasant listening to the Bach and Mozart stations on Pandora this winter. Then there is Glenn Gould.

While reading Steve Jobs autobiography by Walter Isaacson, I was reminded of my music past when the book mentioned Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations recordings. While writing record reviews for the Daily Tar Heel (a ruse to acquire free recordings to review) I was given a re-release of Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations. Recorded in 1955, this performance and recording has legs. It evokes a certain feeling or environment and has remained in my primary music collection for a long time. All of time actually.

From my music study classes at UNC, I learned that Johann Sebastian Bach was a bit of a fuddy-duddy in his rejection of the Piano-Forte instrument that appeared in the last ten or so years of his life. He wrote his keyboards for organ and harpsichord. In the case of the Goldberg Variations, they were written for harpsichord. We have to think some Count from Saxony who could not sleep and demanded his musician perform the Variations to allow him to sleep. They still have a calming effect.

It is noted in Steve Jobs biography that, Gould had revisited the Goldberg variations in 1981 and Jobs enjoyed listening to both versions on his iPod. Just the impetous to watch the PBS documentary on Glenn Gould that is available on Netflix - Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould.

Gould of course performs the Goldberg Variations on piano and brings a new interpretation to the music. It is well worth the effort to listen to both the 1955 and the 1981 recordings and feel the maturity that developed in preforming the music some twenty six years later. One is brash and young and the other more thoughtful. Both are great for meditation. Music to get lost in.

I don't know why there is a disdain for cover bands. As if some great music should not be played again and again by different artists. You realize that the New York Philharmonic is just a cover band. Gould recognized this himself when he stated "I believe the only excuse we have for being musicians and making music in any fashion is to make it differently. To perform it differently. To establish the music's difference and vis a vie our own difference."

Both the 1955 & 1981 Recordings
Available from Sony Music

Glenn Gould's performance of the Goldberg Variations is still import and still listened to more than 25 years after his death. Not as a musical writer, but as a musical performer and artist. This may be the gift of the twentieth century--artist recordings that will be appreciated and loved for all of time. Just because the technology arrived during this century. It is said that the Goldberg Variations are named after the first musician who performed them. Wouldn’t it be great to have a high quality recording of how they were first played on the harpsichord by Johann Goldberg and compare it to Gould’s piano interpretation? I feel robbed not having this experience. But at least we have Gould and the 1955 and 1981 Variations.