Wrestling the Goldbergs: Piano Variations as a Spiritual Practice

Looking back, I realize my search began as a sort of spiritual crisis.¹ Practically overnight, or so it seemed, I found myself twenty years into a career as a freelance pianist and teacher, and two decades into a marriage with the predictable house and garden, two cats, and three betta fish. I swam laps three mornings a week, went to yoga classes, meditated daily. In short, I had a routine of well-worn patterns and practices. I was not bored. How could I be? Nor was I unhappy. Yet, late at night, my mind circling over existential thoughts, I knew that on some level I was restless. If this assortment of routines and rituals were the rest of my life, was it enough? Lacking conviction, I was not sure.

Almost out of desperation, I began searching for a spiritual teacher, somebody or something to turn my life upside down and shine a flashlight into all the dark corners of my work and routines. I began attending meditation sessions at the nearby Zen center, hoping the austerity of that practice would provide some direction and clarity. I sought out musical colleagues, wishing for a pair of ears that would call me out on all my shoddy practice habits at the piano. Every morning while I drank my coffee, I read deep into an ever-growing pile of books exploring various spiritual disciplines, studying the lives of the Desert Fathers and the writings of ancient Buddhist monks. Afterwards I would go to the piano and begin practicing, not only a familiar and highly polished daily ritual, but also my work, quite literally. At the piano, I would practice a rotating stack of music for upcoming gigs, read through repertoire I needed to prepare for students' lessons, and dig into the technical work necessary to keep my chops sharp and my ears alert. Some days my hours were full of Brahms and Chopin, some days Mozart and Copland, and still other times Beethoven and Debussy. Almost always, my practicing hours included Bach.

Little did I realize at the time that the spiritual teacher I had been searching for had been in front of me all along, revealed in the practices of Bach himself.² Day after day, year after year, Bach taught his students and children. He played church services and led rehearsals. He turned notes into melodies, patterns into musical architecture, designing entire universes and then hiding the keys to the locks, chuckling with the joy of his own imagination.³ Indeed, Bach's whole life's work was simply a variation on a theme: time to practice.

GLENN GOULD'S GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

My husband would say he fell in love with Bach's Goldberg Variations long before he fell in love with me, or ever dreamed he would be married to a pianist who might play them. One of the first CDs Matt presented me with, when our romance was still new and every gift carried weight and significance, was the 1981 recording of Glenn Gould playing the variations.⁴ Gould had originally recorded the piece in 1955,⁵ when he was twenty-three years old and making his first recording for Columbia Records. Thinking perhaps of Bach's French Suites or one of the volumes of the Well-Tempered Clavier, the producer asked, "What do you want to record?" "The Goldberg Variations," Gould answered.

When Gould made this proposal, the Goldbergs were fairly unknown to classical music audiences. The harpsichordist Wanda Landowska had been the first person to record the piece in 1933, but by and large, pianists did not tackle the work. Gould, however, was quickly gaining a reputation for unorthodox opinions and practices. He hummed and sang under his breath incessantly while playing. He sat on a piano bench so low to the ground his nose almost touched the keys. He was, by all accounts, both odd and brilliant.⁶

I was oblivious to this history of the Goldbergs back then. I knew nothing about Gould's preference for obscure, cerebral music. I had never heard of Wanda Landowska. The fact that...