EILEEN BATTERSBYponders JS Bach and Glenn Gould
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) mastered the underlying mathematics of music, and did so with consummate humanity and a feel for beauty that 262 years since his death continues to inspire musicians. If a complete artist exists it is Bach who is to music what Shakespeare is to literature. He was born into a musical dynasty spanning some eight generations, from the 16th century to descendants dying out by the mid-19th. He left no diaries and very few letters and, in addition to his majestic and diverse body of work is known for fathering 20 children between two wives, the first of whom, Maria Barbara Bach, his second cousin and mother of composers Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, died suddenly.
The following year he married Anna Magdalena, a soprano, 17 years his junior with whom he had 13 children. Earlier, as a young man, he famously took leave between 1705-06 from his post as organist in Arnstadt to visit the composer and master organist Buxtehude, in Lübeck, some 250 miles away. The older man agreed to Bach succeeding him on condition that he marry his daughter; Bach declined. Fiery and independent-minded, he often clashed with authority. After serving as court organist and konzermeister at Weimar, he then became Kapellmeister for Prince Leopold in Köthen where he composed many works including the Brandenburg Concertos as well violin pieces and keyboard music.
In 1723 he was appointed Kantor of St Thomas’s in Leipzig. The sacred choral works he composed as part of his duties there constitute many of Western music’s supreme achievements: St John Passion (1724), St Matthew Passion (1727), The Mass in B Minor. There are also more than 200 church cantatas. The spiritual is central yet Bach’s secular orchestral compositions dominate the chamber and keyboard repertoire.
The Goldberg Variations occupy a special place. Commissioned by a patron afflicted by insomnia, or so the story goes, the 30 variations were written for the harpsichord and published in 1741. A pianist who revelled in imposing his vision upon them was Canadian Glen Gould, who died 30 years ago on October 4th, within days of his 50th birthday.
Gould was an original, strange and eccentric, with an aversion to being touched. He first recorded the Goldberg Variations as a 22-year-old newcomer. That 1955 recording was placed on the Voyager space probe in 1977. In 1981 Gould, who had retired from the concert stage at 30, returned to the same CBS studio to make a second recording of the work. It is more reflective, 10 minutes slower than his first version. Murray Perahia has also recorded the work as have Angela Hewitt and Freddy Kempf.
Irish specialist Malcolm Proud’s superb 2001 harpsichord recording is particularly interesting.
The Irish Baroque Orchestra, directed by violinist Monica Hugget, begins its new concert season next week with performances in Dublin’s Christ Church, Cork and Waterford of The Goldberg Variations as arranged for strings articulating the ethereal splendour and versatility of an extraordinary composition.
