The hallowed reputation

When in 1935 the American harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick prefaced his playing edition of the Goldberg Variations with a quote from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio medici of 1642 – ‘there is something in it of Divinity more than the eare discovers’ – he was not meaning to use it as an example of English aesthetics of the late Renaissance and platonic ideals of soundless music. Rather, he was looking for a way to signal his own admiration and enthusiasm for a unique piece of actual music, to invoke not so much the cleverness of its strategy and tactics as the kind of spiritual world it seems to occupy and the special feelings it arouses in both player and listener. To listen to or play any of the Goldberg Variations seems to many people more than a ‘merely musical’ experience, and its appearance in modern recital programmes attracts special attention as a peak to be scaled by the harpsichordist or a work to approach with respect by the pianist. I think myself that it ‘feels special’ because, whatever antecedent this or that feature has, its beauty is both original – seldom like anything else, even in Bach – and at the same time comprehensible, intelligible, coherent, based on simple, ‘truthful’ harmonies. The Goldberg has its own language, but one made from standard vocabulary.