Paul Griffiths
A note sounds. Then it sounds again. But everything has changed. Not
only is the note colored by a different resonance the second time
around, but featureless time has been marked with the beginnings of a
grid. The one note at the start defined only a before and an after.
The second discloses a pulse. In accordance with this pulse, a third
sound appears, but up a step, encouraging the accompaniment—which has
not drawn attention to itself so far—to move conversely down.
We have reached only the beginning of the second measure of the
Goldberg Variations and already a process is at work, a process that
will be partly completed at the end of this measure but whose every
completion will imply continuation. This first two-measure phrase will
summon another, and so on, until there is a whole thirty-two-measure
dance, which will be only the beginning of a chain of such pieces,
again thirty-two in number.
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