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    Ruggiero
      Goldberg
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Goldberg Ground

The Goldberg Variations begin and end with an Aria that first appeared in a notebook kept by Anna Magdalena Wilcken, Sebastian's young wife. Anna Magdalena was a singer, and we normally associate aria with vocal music. But Bach uses the harpsichord to "sing" this one, so we could think of it as a song without words. The aria implies a controlling bass line Bach himself might have called its ruggiero.

This same bass supports each of the thirty variations. While the ruggiero is always discernible, it is sometimes utterly disguised, as if at a costume party. In the following variations the ruggiero is most plainly dressed: Variatio 22, Variatio 19, Variatio 12, and Variatio 4. Sing the bass line as you listen to each variation. Does it always fit, or does the composer take liberties?

As simple as be the above variations, the ruggiero is not stated outright; rather, Bach clothes it in modest summer dress. He outfits the remaining variations for increasingly inclement weather until, in some, you can barely hear it for the fur coat, cap, and mittens. But listen carefully--the ruggiero is always present, behind the fancy clothes, giving form and substance to the whole. Often called "character pieces," each variation can be identified as belonging to a popular 18th-century genre or style: quodlibet, canon, a march, French overture, fugue, many dances and arabesques. Each of these pieces graces the same beauty that wore the original Aria. In essence, this beauty is neither melody nor harmony, but an amalgam best described in the theory of Heinrich Schenker as an Ursatz (fundamental structure).

So, in contrast to the emerging gallant style, where the composer would have treated the ear first to a simple melody stripped of harmonic density and begging elaboration, the theme of the Goldberg Variations is, from the start, fully developed. Were it not for its chaconne-like structure--four similarly contoured phrases--our ears might despair of comprehending a theme at all. The Aria's melody is certainly not thematic; Bach immediately abandons it in favor of bass-line variation. Each successive variation is as elaborate as its precursor. Contrary to expectation, Bach's "song without words" is heard in retrospect not as "theme" but as rumination of it, and then left ultimately to the imagination. This imaginary conception comes to full flower, in most people, toward the end, rather than the beginning, of the cycle.
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