Jan 29 (Var 3)

Lots to talk about!

This variation bills itself as a Canon. You are no doubt familiar with Pachelbel's Canon in D, a beautiful piece that I played at my mom's wedding. Thinking about that piece, you get a sense of repetition, or moving melodies playing above a background of chord changes to anchor the harmony. Well, that's not how I think about this Bach piece at all. Nonetheless, a canon it is, because the whole thing is repeated ideas with slight variations. Those are the variations that are driving me crazy, by the way.

Take a look at that - four different measures (out of only 16) all have the same bass figure, 
albeit in two different keys. And of course, the fingering is different for all of them. Notable is that the right hand ascends against it each time, and in different ways. I think I photographed them out of order so I don't want to make any claims about call and response, but there's definitely a skeleton of three ascending notes that is decorated variously by Bach. And of course three ascending notes is a really really common motif throughout; study this image and you'll see it *all over*. But I want to zoom in just a bit on the second of the above:

So there's the bass line, again, but this time look at the right hand. Ascending, then an E-D#-E to resolve it. The melody in the right hand is exactly the same in these two images, but I bet you wouldn't even notice it happening when you listened for the first couple of times. They sound completely different due to the other lines that weave through. I'm trying to bring it out, really I am, but boy oh boy. Incidentally, Chopin does something really similar in one of his beautiful nocturnes, Op Post 72 (the post. means it was published posthumously). There's a middle part where a really similar 1-7#-1 turn happens several times in a row over increasingly arresting arpeggios (around 1 minute in the recording on that wikipedia page) that I love to listen to but love to play even more. It's really magical the way a master composer can make music that is satisfying to the ear and to the mind.

Here's the recording, and I'm ready to do both halves at once now.