My “Morning Practice Live-streaming” starts at 6AM every morning from Mon-Fri. This morning was the 13th of the series. I have been going over one variation per day from Bach’s Goldberg, examining how each variation is put together, and what is varied, how.
6AM is early, even for me – but Bach wakes my brain, ears, and fingers up to the joy of music. And to start my day by sharing this process with people from all over the world is really amazing. It is a very niche topic. but I have a few people waiting for me to start my stream every morning. Bach’s craftsmanship is so intricate and his structure so grand that it requires your utmost attention and concentration. It forces you to focus on the music, transporting you away from whatever challenges that we are all facing, both individually in our lives and globally as a society.
Many people consider J.S. Bach, and the Goldberg Variations as the epitome of Western Civilization. For example, one can see this high regard by its symbolic uses in our favorite movies.
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
This movie, a psychological horror, is such a classic, it needs little introduction. Here, let me just point to how symbolic the use of the Aria from the Goldberg Variations is. Hannibal Lechter, a cannibalistic serial killer, is depicted here as highly cultured. He reads poetry, draws himself, speaks politely, stands erect and eats well (lamb chops, extra rare). In contrast, the prison guards curse, body language lazy, and have no appreciation for the arts (almost put the tray of food on top of Lechter’s drawings). However, it is Lechter who is in custody, and who kills the guards in a horrendous fashion, in a state of ecstasy, resembling his facial expression from earlier in the scene when he was humming along to the Goldberg.
TRIGGER WARNING: A SCENE OF EXTREME VIOLENCE
Why did it have to be the Goldberg? Because it represents more than just beauty. It is sublime, awesome beyond description, measurement or comprehension. It also had to be Bach, because one of the biggest questions of from the 20th century is that of Nazism/holocaust from the country that produced Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Kant, Hagel and Schopenhauer. Here, Goldberg represents a concept that is beyond good/evil.
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library by Frederick Wiseman
This is a documentary. Not very known. But it’s use of the Goldberg in the trailer is spot on, I am referring to it here as an example.
The aria from the Goldberg is used to demonstrate the grand presence of NYPL in the history of art, archives, its future, but as soon as the word “education” comes out of one of the librarian’s mouth as its function, Goldberg quickly disappears. It gets taken over, eventually, by a woodwind quintet arrangement of Bartok’s Romanian Dances, based on folk tunes. Let’s compare and contrast the two musical selections.
A devout Lutheran, Bach wrote his pieces for Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone). Appropriately in the trailer, the aria is sounding without a visible sound source, as though from the heavens, while the library is presented in a rather conceptual light. It is a professional recording, refined in every sense. In contrast, when the library is presented in a more realistic, community-oriented light, you see the woodwind quintet playing on a casual stage for the local community. It is not a perfect performance, nor processed recording. Over Bartok’s Romanian Dances, you see clips of diverse people in various activities, hear librarians describing the concept and the future of libraries as being about the people, and for saving lives, in great contrast to the first half of the trailer with the Goldberg. It can almost be interpreted to be critical of the idea of Soli Deo Gloria, and what a work like the Goldberg Variations represent.
English Patient (1996)
The movie takes place during WWII at an abandoned Italian monastery, destroyed by an air raid. The protagonist is a disfigured man with severe burns all over his body. His amnesia, combined with his burns, makes him unidentifiable. He is simply referred to as the “English patient” for his accent. In this scene, his nurse is seen playing Goldberg’s first variation.
Piano playing brings back some sense of normalcy to the nurse. Here, the Goldberg represents nostalgia for the past, familiarity, culture, humanity…. She is abruptly brought back to reality, when a soldier in charge of clearing mines shoots a gun to get her to stop playing. He knows that Germans liked planting mines in pianos. The fact that continuous playing might have killed her does not faze the nurse. At being told that Germans left mines in pianos, she replies “then maybe you are safe as long as you only play Bach – he is German!” then laughs. Bach, and his “Goldberg” and what they represent transcends life and death for her.
Tomorrow at 5PM (PT)/8PM (ET), I’ll be playing my “Dr. Pianist’s Weekend Live! #4.” I’ll play Variations 7 to 11 – the ones I went over for each of my morning practice live stream from Monday to Friday, along with Kabalevsky’s Variations Op. 40-1, and a few other pieces.