Variatio 30. a 1 Clav. Quodlibet Pissed Up or Pissed Off

Jeremy Denk has a word....

Varario 25 a 2 Clav; Donne and Dusted

Variatio 2. a 1 Clav: Like Dancing Around Architecture...

Variatio 1. a 1 Clav: Take That and Party

Cut it out, Johann, I'm trying to be a tragic romantic poet over here. I liked it in the Aria, when it was all slow and sorry, like a voice gasping for breath before speaking softly. And now this: a jolly little tune that marches up and down the keyboard. 

There's a guy in the studio next door who is either rehearsing a gritty Glaswegian drama or having a serious row with the voices inside his head. I'm nursing a hangover (not so much from alcohol but at the shame of not getting into the Art School), and he keeps shouting at someone to fuck off. Meanwhile, Varatio 1 is rolling over and over like a clockwork machine. 

Apparently the player does cross-over hands and everything, like Liberace or Bobby Crush. According to Wikipedia, some critic says its a polonise, a dance which now gets illustrated with pictures of old people doing a conga line. And, yeah, it's got that forced jollity about it.

If you put it on repeat, it slowly drives you insane. After the restraint of the Aria, it's like opening a window and looking out to see thousands of cartoon characters performing task-based choreography. 

Here's a version on the harpsichord, which really gets that mechanical pulse... although the visuals could be a little migraine inducing.

Aria: Can Music Save My Mortal Soul?

When I am not behaving like a character from a Tom Wait's song, I'll run towards the past in vague hope of finding succour for my battered heart. The alternative is shaping my life as a bitter anecdote, which is funny for about as long as it takes to listen to the Aria  from the Goldberg Variations.

Funnily enough, my anecdotes usually go through thirty versions until returning to their original form (only now imbued with the soul-crushing misery of a mind that has been trying to use words to disguise a clear repeated motif of melancholic despair). And that is just like the Goldbergs. I am the J.S. Bach of romantic failure.

I associate Bach with the baroque - a twiddly, over-ornate and under-emotional era of music, in my dumb précis of the eighteenth century  - but The Goldberg Variations are more sly and tentative. The theme - an aria,  but without singing, just a solo keyboard - echoes the melancholy of the great miserabilists (Dowland, Children of God era SWANS), with the distinctive trills hesitant, and the melody picked up over a steady bass. 

In former Olympic weight-lifter Kimiko Douglass-Ishizaka's interpretation (the one that is free on-line), it is as if the melody is being pushed reluctantly onwards by the almost aggressive bass.

Apparently, it is all about the bass: it's based on the sarabande, a dance that was banned in Spain and was popularised by dancing ladies with castanets. Check out this filth...