Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Aria

The Aria that opens and closes the Goldberg Variations is so still it seems to hold its breath. Written in a stately sarabande rhythm — slow, weighted, the second beat slightly emphasized — it moves with the unhurried patience of someone who has nowhere else to be. The harmonic foundation is what Bach actually varies thirty times: a bass line and chord progression, not the melody itself, though the melody is what stays with you. Glenn Gould's 1981 recording — his last major studio session, released days before his death — turned this piece into something almost unbearably intimate: his tempos are slow enough to reveal every inner voice, and you can hear him humming softly along with the piano, his breath part of the texture. In Gould's hands the Aria became synonymous with a kind of luminous farewell. But the work exists entirely separately from that reading, and in other hands it is serene rather than valedictory, introspective without heaviness. The ornamentation is rich and exact — each trill and turn precisely placed, decorating without obscuring the long melodic lines. This is Baroque keyboard music at its most refined, written for a harpsichord but living now most fully on the modern piano. It belongs late at night, or early in the morning before the day has asked anything of you yet.