Page 240 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

higher than the left hand). By doubling the tempo, Bach retains interest.
Variation 24 Canone all’Ottava: A lovely lyrical theme is repeated in the bass and then an octave above the original theme. This is the pattern the piece follows back and forth, ending as it began.
Variation 25 Adagio: Rachmaninoff stated that a piece, no matter how long, should only have one ultimate point. If so, this is the point of the Goldbergs. A droning and inching depressed chromatic bass is offset by a treble melody that climbs and jumps slowly to ecstatic high notes. It is like
a conversation between two people who speak different languages. The bass and the treble don’t agree. You have
the feeling that the treble might be joyous if the bass didn’t drag it down with its underwater, ungrateful tonalities. This is the duality between reason and passion expressed as an impossible barrier, the dissociation about which T. S. Eliot warned, the fragmentation of a modern world where there is no inner correspondence between the spirit and the flesh. It is what the modern world has become, without the unifying force of 17th-century belief.
Variation 26: Bach realizes that we need some excitement after the profundity of the last variation. You can hear the familiar chord structure of the original melody, now covered over with the filigree of endless turns. It’s like a trellis covered with vines blowing in the wind.
Variation 27 Canone alla Nona: Using the by now familiar scales to begin each phrase, Bach breaks open the ends
of phrases into ornaments that jump very far apart, rather than staying close to a central anchoring note. He wants to see what this will sound like in a few different positions. There is a kind of joy in the way the end of each phrase dances: a happy hop.
Variation 28: Both hands play trills and one note of melody at a time. This technique, where one hand plays the
inversion, the mirror-image, of the other, is also employed in the C-minor Prelude in the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. It can be played either as a dance or meaningfully slowly. The melody is the bass of the initial aria, played upside down, so it’s inverted both as a theme and inverted also by being in the right hand rather than the left. The trills are a diversion, because what Bach wants to do is very simple, but he needs to make it entertaining. Even
Bach has a sense that he has asked a lot of Count Kaiserling in the 25th Variation, and there must be a contrasting play- fulness in the variations that follow. He uses such fast-slow, profound-diverting contrasts throughout, acknowledging
the dual purpose of music. As Rachmaninoff said, he really wanted to communicate single-note messages, but was forced to play scales and octaves to keep people entertained while he went about his simple revelations.
To mirror the treble melody, Bach often repeats it in the bass by crossing the right hand over the left while the left hand continues the trills. This virtuosic trick is attributed to the French, especially to Couperin.
Gould pointed out that this and the following variation have the same motivic structure. Everywhere else, Bach varies
his attention to add to the complex skein of the harmonics. So here you can hear directly two ways of improvising on the same notes.
Variation 29: The descending bass notes of the original theme introduce every measure (as they did in the last variation), motivating giant trills in the treble. The trills are actually huge chords moving back and forth, which is a brilliant way of varying a two-note figuration. The effect
is very celebratory. The massive chords give way to rapid passagework, where the bass melody of the original aria becomes a virtuoso aria, coming into its own at last, as important as the treble melody, which Bach focused on first. In the second section you can hear even more clearly the descending theme. Schumann and Brahms both used descending themes of four notes to signify their love for Clara Wieck, but here Bach links four descending groups
240 The Music at Tippet Rise