July 12, 2004
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Small World
In memory of
Laurance Rockefeller,
who died yesterday at 94“J. S. Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’ is a self-contained world, immersion
in which is transformative….At the end of Variation 30, Bach writes simply ‘Aria da capo.’ I have written
it out for the convenience of the players. This recurrence of the Aria, after its
long journey through thirty variations and especially coming immediately after
the exuberant Quodlibet (Variation 30), is magical. It is the same Aria, yet subtly different: transformed.”
