Talk:Goldberg Variations

message: I've been investigating the ornaments in bar 2 of the Aria as the two semi-quavers are treated differently from each other in my GG recording. The only specific reference I have found says that the falling thirds A F# D with slurred ornaments should be treated as fast and before their respective beats. Stephen B Streater (talk) 19:59, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: What was the source for that investigation? Common practice was that these ornaments were played on the beat, and rather slow, because they are in fact 'seufzers'.DTBone (talk) 00:10, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aria ornaments 

message: Hello, I just reverted an edit discussing the style and tempo of the Gigue variation.  My two reasons are:
*The claim made in the new edit that the gigue is a "French gigue" was made without a reference source, and is possibly quite subjective.  I'd like to see a source before including it.
*The edit removed what I felt was a useful and intriguing point:  that performers who made recordings before the 1974 discovery of the composer's own annotated copy sometimes picked a tempo that turned out to be quite different from what Bach evidently intended.
I hope this seems reasonable.  Opus33 (talk) 04:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Rolff Damman points out in his book about the Goldbergs, that Bach used the word 'giga' and 'gigue' to distinguish between the resp. French and Italian styles. In this case it makes more sense to connect 'al tempo di giga' to the Italian style, which usually is performed little faster than the more elegant 'french' gigue. Actually one might even argue it is a fast siciliano (also more italian and little faster than the french derivate sicilienne) Maybe of interest too is some thoughts i gave to the Goldbergs in an article published in the music magazine Pianowereld in the Netherlands. The english transcript of that article is at my site. and a graph is here. There one can see some maybe deeper symbolical link between this gigue (variation 7) and variation 22, the alla breve; which is another 'faster' piece with an extra title. (I noticed that between variation 7 and 22 lay exactly 14 (!) other variations, where 14 can be seen as the Bach-number (2+1+3+8).). I know this is not scientific research, but a personal interpretation/speculation of my findings. regards, Tjako (talk) 17:09, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you.  The discussion currently in the article does have a reference source, but I nevertheless sense that it is a bit unbalanced, emphasizing the views of one scholar (albeit a highly qualified one) without properly summarizing other views.  When I have some time I will look at your reference and others and try to balance it a bit (if no one else does first).  Opus33 (talk) 00:00, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The tempo of the giga variation

message: According to a BBC announcer, anyway, one of the two Quodlibet folktunes is the theme around which Buxtehude organized his Capricciosa variations; whether Bach knew these or no is not established. The two works do have their similarities. Schissel | Sound the Note! 03:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that's Kraut und Rüben or Bergamasca.  There's a reference to a Sisman article at New Grove at the Bach cantata website: .  Maybe someone with access to New Grove can insert relevant parts here or start a Kraut und Rüben article.  Sisman is very reputable.  I don't think its a question about whether Bach knew of previous works.  These were very well-known tunes. Just searching my Itunes database, there's a Bergamasca movement in Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances which starts off with the same four Kraut-und-Rü-ben notes.  Repighi based that on an old lute piece by Bernardo Gianoncelli.  That part is OR, but Sisman isn't.  :-)DavidRF (talk) 18:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That excerpt should be enough to support the Groves reference. If you really feel the whole article should be consulted, let me know. Also, I suspect Markus Weng (2008) Johann Sebastian Bachs Goldberg-Variationen: Gattungsinterferenz in Johann Sebastian Bachs Goldberg-Variationen might be of service as well. Eusebeus (talk) 07:18, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quodlibet 

message: Might it be a good idea to include a few examples of appearances in modern media, like films or radio plays and the like? 75.104.96.37 (talk) 07:35, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. --Gloumouth1 12:02, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: We've tried this before (see article history) and it seemed to work rather badly -- you get a huge pile of stuff, almost none of it sourced, and a lot of the items seemed ephemeral with notability issues (see WP:TRIVIA). Eventually it all got taken out. I would add that pop culture references tell you nothing about the Goldberg Variations themselves, other than that they are really famous; and we already know that. Opus33 (talk) 17:23, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree with Opus33. Especially now that there is a free license recording we'll just end up with a giant list of semi-notable media that doesn't really further the readers understanding of the Goldberg Variations (other than emphasizing that they are famous). Kaldari (talk) 21:15, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Appearances in modern media 

message: I'm not sure about the figured bass on the page, bar 26. Is that B meant to have a "6", since it is a G-major first inversion rather than a B-minor? jftsang 10:11, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll check the source when I get a chance.  Opus33 (talk) 15:29, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

text: I mean, the 6 is in the source, but not in the file here. Glocqu (talk) 08:10, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind, I just corrected the error. Glocqu (talk) 10:03, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bass line 

message: "Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertrieben, hätt mein' Mutter Fleisch gekocht, wär ich länger blieben"... I don't know *much* German, but surely that should be "vertreiben" and "bleiben", nicht wahr? Sebum-n-soda (talk) 16:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad German? 

message: Are any of the recordings in the External Links section off-limits in terms of copyright? Thinking specifically of the Glenn Gould link.
* Glenn Gould Playing the Goldberg Variations 45 minutes  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.222.107.76 (talk) 21:20, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recordings 

message: Using good sources at IMSLP (first printed edition (which Bach played on himself), I have corrected the order of some variation titles. Added Adagio to var. 25 as it is no less official then the already-labelled var. 7, 'al tempo di giga'. both were not in orignal edition but hand-added by Bach in his own copy (see the ref I added). Not 100% sure about whether some of the titles go before, or after the 'a 1 Clav.', but I used the first printed edition (on IMSLP) as a guide. Many later editions really mess around things (capitalising things that should be, moving them around in the score, adding hideous tempo interpretative markings on the score), the first printed edition was the cleanest. If any thoughts, do add, cheers.--Cloudfloatcorrection (talk) 03:48, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I welcomed you on your talk page. It's a fine first edit (but why did you change "wistful" to "wi*****l"?). It certainly makes sense to me to say "canon" before the number of manuals. Riggr Mortis (talk) 04:54, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh no, that's a cuss word filter in my browser which always filters out stfu (contained in wistful), always put up with it but I've just edited out it in my tampermonkey to get rid of that stupid entry, and fixed it on the page, sorry. I forget that it does it in text boxes too. --Cloudfloatcorrection (talk) 14:04, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Variation titles 

message: The recently-editing Anon has complained to me about my reversions; I asked him/her to discuss on the talk page but he/she replied on my own talk page instead.  Here is what (s)he said:
:Glenn Gould Playing the Goldberg Variations 45 minutes — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.222.107.76 (talk) 21:20, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Opus said, "This very personal and idiosyncratic site might (might) be enjoyed by random people browsing the web but it's not appropriate for an encyclopedia." Which part is idiosyncratic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.87.68.5 (talk) 03:32, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

text: Per WP:ELNEVER, we shouldn't link to the Glenn Gould performance unless it is an authorized reproduction. The suggestion that we shouldn't link to Ishizawa's performance because it isn't "the best" is simply bizarre. Kaldari (talk) 22:37, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Its not people think that Ishizawa's performance is good, its that the performance is free and open source.  Most other recordings have copyright restrictions.  These are only meant to be instructive snippets so that you can follow along with the analysis in the text.  It sounds like your issue is more with the OGG format than it is with the specific recording.DavidRF (talk) 15:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Ishizawa's performance is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, which means it is free for anyone to use or distribute however they like without restriction. If you don't like the Ogg version, you can download the mp3s or convert it to whatever format you like. Kaldari (talk) 04:57, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

text: I've drastically pruned the external links recordings section. Wikipedia is not a link directory. External links should be reserved for sites providing significant extra information not currently present in the article, not links to every single site that has some kind of recording of this work on it. They were duplicative, in some cases also advertising the purchase of a particular CD/DVD, or Midi/sampled renderings. Voceditenore (talk)
Also in external links jsbach.org appears to be dead so should probably be removed unless it is now somewhere else?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rajmarshall (talk • contribs) 17:11, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Addition and deletion of external links

message: Should the title of the page be "Goldberg" Variations rather than Goldberg Variations? The latter suggests that the work's title is Goldberg Variations; but of course the work is untitled: it is an untitled set of variations differentiated by others by the nickname 'Goldberg', much as, say, Beethoven's 14th piano sonata is nicknamed 'Mondschein'. Or have I missed the memo on classical-music titling conventions? 152.78.90.200 (talk) 15:21, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello Anon, you can find the relevant policy memo here:  . I looked it over and think the overall message it gives implies that we shouldn't be putting quotes around Goldberg. They give several examples in which the preference for common usage trumps the preference for literal accuracy.  I hope this helps.  Opus33 (talk) 18:51, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title Punctuation 

message: Per the discussion above, I propose to merge the section on "Transcribed and popularized versions" into Goldberg Variations discography, leaving only a summary here of the discography article.  The discography article could be renamed to something like Goldberg Variations versions and discography.  If people object to this merge, then I would like to add Bruno Degazio to the list in "Transcribed and popularized versions".Anythingyouwant (talk) 14:26, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest having two articles:  Goldberg Variations discography and Goldberg Variations (transcribed versions).  They are not really the same topic and indeed overlap only a little bit:  discography would include the huge number of orthodox recordings of the original work, and trancribed versions might (conceivably) become notable even if not recorded.  Opus33 (talk) 17:32, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of the items currently in the discography article are played on synthesizer, accordion, guitar, horn, trumpet, trombone, and tuba.  Would we move them all to the new article?Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure.  Opus33 (talk) 20:14, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, well, if someone wants to start a new article on variations (or versions or whatever) of the Goldberg Variations, then that's okay with me.Anythingyouwant (talk) 08:36, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to merge section on "Transcribed and popularized versions" into [[Goldberg Variations discography]]

message: Sorry to undo all the work editor IB did, but really, sound recordings have to meet a certain minimum standard to be included and these completely-wooden, mechanically-timed performances in my opinion don't qualify.  The recordings we already had were by a competent musician and pending further developments I think they are the recordings we should be using.  Lastly, the "Music Portal" is far too general to be of any use in this a particular article so I took that out too.  Opus33 (talk) 21:47, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Howdy, ho. My reasoning at time I saw it, for replacing the piano versions with the harpsichord ones was that since the composition was originally written for harpsichord, the recordings should be of one. I can see your point though. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 12:29, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Computer-generated sound files