My first instalment of the recomposition of the Bach Goldberg Variations. The repeated sections are often cited as use for ornamental and melodic embellishment of up to all the voices in the score, but I edge towards a more liberal school of thought which allows for the complete recomposition of parts on the second reading. This is, perhaps, the same method that Bach and his contemporaries could have deployed during live performance when improvisation was a necessary and inherent part of chamber performances and sacred worship.
Bach was an outstanding improviser and this is, in turn, the type of artistic license that allowed for the inscriptions we see on scores today. It is necessary, then, to remove ourselves from the antiquated lens of performance practice in the 20th century and turn to a new way to develop and create interesting interpretations of our readings. New and unheard ways of perceiving the Baroque, in this instance, and giving development to a culture that fuses the separated elements of the musician – the improviser, the composer and the performer all in one.
I should say that I don’t believe that studying the widely established way to perform these works is of no use, but should be taken as a product of their time, one that is in perpetual evolution.