6 - Composition, Performance, and Reception in Novels Based on the Goldberg Variations

Summary

IN ADDITION TO the structural elements of Bach's Goldberg Variations discussed in chapter 5 as a model for literary texts, the piece can also be examined with respect to its composition and performance history. In particular, the story about the circumstances of the piece's composition reported by Bach's first biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel in 1802— already nearly sixty years after the work's publication—has seized the imagination of a number of writers.

The first section focuses on the legend according to which Bach composed the piece for performance by the young harpsichordist Goldberg to give comfort to an insomniac in his sleepless nights. The name by which the piece is commonly known can be traced to this story, amply demonstrating the power of persuasion it has had throughout history, both on the reception of the piece in general and on writers such as Gabriel Josipovici. Next, I look beyond the composition itself to question the relationship between composition and performance. As with any performance art, music exists not in the form of a single work that reflects the composer's intentions, but is re-created anew with each performance. Though the ideal for many performers of classical music is that of fidelity to the work itself, each performance yet remains distinct, such that the performer plays a key role in the production of musical meaning. In this section, I examine the way this relationship between composer and performer is negotiated in Nancy Huston's The Goldberg Variations from the perspective of the performer. By the end of the novel, the harpsichordist Liliane sees performance as a kind of composition, one that is emphasized in the novel's construction when this narrator figure establishes herself as the intradiegetic author of all the monologues that precede her own.

The second section of this chapter then completes the transition to the performance side of the musical work. It first examines one example of the exceptional performer, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, whose unconventional 1955 interpretation of The Goldberg Variations was a sensation and highly influential not only in the realm of music but also on works of literature.