To continue our journey of the Goldberg Variations, we’re going back to the wonderful recording by Céline Frisch with which we started the cycle. It was made in the year 2000 in Paris, on a copy of a German harpsichord built by Anthony Sidey and Frédéric Bal.
The set of variations that we’ll review today opens with number 13, for two manuals. Like the Aria, this variation is a sarabande, in 3/4, with a delicate and very ornate melody mostly in 32nd notes, on top of slow-moving bass line and middle voice that together provide the harmonic support. The sarabande’s characteristic accent on the second beat of the bar is given by the rhythmic pattern of the middle voice (dotted eighth – sixteenth). A fourth voice comes in only on the last 2 beats of each section, to supplement the interesting harmonic pattern used to arrive at the closing chord.
Variation 14 disrupts this serene mood drastically. It’s a free, animated and playful toccata with wide leaps and hand crossings, requiring two manuals. Bach passes material back and forth between the hands, and inverts some of the motifs from the first section in the second one.
With Variation 15 we encounter another marked change in character, with a switch to minor mode for the first time and an “andante” tempo marking. Per the master plan, this variation is a strict canon, this time at the fifth. The canonic voices are one bar apart and they move in contrary motion. The bass line is quite active and often shares material with the upper voices as it accompanies them. This variation gets us to the midpoint of the set, and interestingly, ends quite inconclusively with an open fifth more than three octaves wide.
As an opener to the second half of the work, Variation 16 is a French overture, complete with its slow and fast parts built in perfect compliance with the predetermined pattern. Section A maps to the slow start of the overture, and has 16 bars with the expected repeat sign, while section B is the contrapuntal fast part which features a change in meter to 3/8 and has double the number of bars (32), with the harmony moving twice as slow.
Variation 17, in 3/4, also has a toccata style in two-part writing. It requires two manuals given the hand crossings. The voices move in constant 16th notes featuring arpeggios and up and down scales in thirds and sixths.
Variation 18 is the expected canon at the sixth. The two canonic lines are remarkably close – just offset by one beat (a half note, given the “cut” time signature). The constant rising sixths in such close proximity, added to the fact that the bass line stays fairly distant below, makes this canon relatively easy to follow by ear.
