"Goldberg" Canons, BWV 1087
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
In 1974, Bach's personal copy of the first edition of his Goldberg Variations was discovered in a private collection in France. In the back of the volume of this monumental harpsichord work is a page of previously unknown music written in Bach's hand and bearing the following title (in German): "Various canons on the first eight bass notes of the preceding aria." There follow fourteen canons, each of them based on those eight bass notes from the Goldberg Variations. Only two of the canons were previously known from other versions, one of them from a painted portrait in which Bach is holding a copy of it.
The canons are not written out like conventional music, but rather they are presented in the form of puzzles to be solved. Thus one of them presents the eight-note Goldberg motive and instructs the reader to play it simultaneously forwards and backwards, leaving the performer to figure out when the second voice should begin and on which note, so that the canon makes musical sense. From relatively simple two-voice canons, the set gradually becomes more complex. New material is added on top of the Goldberg bass line. In some, two voices of new material are each to be played in canon, while the bass plays the simple Goldberg motive. The number of voices increases as the canons grow more complex, until there is a triple canon in six voices. The final canon is written as a single line of music with the instruction that it is to be played by four instruments, all at different speeds. (The solution requires that two of them also play the line upside down.)
This all sounds like very intellectual stuff, and without question it is -- but the music is also beautiful and has a distinctive sound that one can enjoy without having to analyze its technical details. Bach probably was not thinking about a performance when he wrote these little canons. They appear to be more like intellectual musings by one of the greatest musical minds in history, but they can also be a fascinating experience in performance. In order to make them playable, though, a number of decisions have to be made. For one, we must decide what instruments should play them, since Bach did not specify any instruments. Another problem is that most of these canons are perpetual canons -- i. e. by the time the second voice finishes its music, the first has already started its line over again, leaving no clear ending point. One must therefore decide how many times a canon should repeat and then choose a stopping point.
Finally, one might decide to play through the set of canons more or less continuously, without significant breaks between them. Doing so can make a single work out of what would otherwise be fourteen extremely brief fragments. As the canons go from quite simple counterpoint on the Goldberg motive to increasingly complex music, the collection can begin to feel like a single unified piece with an overall direction and shape and with contrasts of character and tempo. Through it all, the constant repetition of the Goldberg bass line has an almost hypnotic effect, similar to the repeating bass of a chaccone.
Boston Baroque Performances
“Goldberg” Canons, BWV 1087
July 29, 1990
Castle Hill Festival, Ipswich, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
January 16, 1990
Gardner Museum, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
December 31, 1988
St. Paul’s Cathedral, Boston, MA (First Night)
Martin Pearlman, conductor
April 23, 1988
Strawbery Banke Festival, Portsmouth, NH
Martin Pearlman, conductor
November 13, 1987
St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Philadelphia, PA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
November 9, 1987
Plymouth State College, Plymouth, NH
Martin Pearlman, conductor
July 15, 1987
George’s Island, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
October 17, 1986
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
January 21, 1986
Northwest Bach Festival, Spokane, WA
Martin Pearlman, conductor