IMPRIMATUR 3 - The Goldberg’s Variations

Dal mercoledì 23 settembre 2009
al domenica 27 settembre 2009

Curated by Martina Cavallarin

IMPRIMATUR 3 – The Goldberg Variations is an exhibition based on the characteristic traits of seven young Italian artists who have put their artistic intelligence at the service of a challenge developed across seven different languages, combining the peculiarities and specificities of music with the practice of contemporary visual art.

“The Goldberg Variations (BWV 988), composed for Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, were written by Johann Sebastian Bach (Eisenach, 21 March 1685 – Leipzig, 28 July 1750) between 1741 and 1745 and published in Nuremberg by Balthasar Schmid.

Written for harpsichord solo, the work was conceived as a modular architecture of 32 pieces ranged according to mathematical and symmetric patterns that give it a cohesion that is unique in the history of music. Alongside the Art of the Fugue it can be considered as the highest point of Bach’s experimentation, thanks above all to technical modulations that have been studied under the mathematical profile. Its great structural value, incomparable composition technique, ability to touch upon all the possibilities of expression of the harpsichord as well as the technical skills required to perform it, make the Variations a true monument of the composer’s intelligence.

The work is based on counterpoint.

The counterpoint is the art of combining a given melody (a given canto) with one or more contemporary melodies, which are defined counterpoints with respect to the given canto. In other words, counterpoint consists in juxtaposing two different melodies, ensuring that they coexist. And to achieve this, the structure of the music must be organised according to a perfect plan so as to avoid degeneration into chaos.

Glenn Herbert Gould (Toronto, 25 September 1932 – Toronto, 4 October 1982) was a Canadian pianist, composer, harpsichordist and organist. Gould made his first official recording for CBS in 1955. He chose to record the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. The head of Columbia’s "classical music" section was initially not very happy with this choice, considering also that it was considered at that time as not being representative of Bach’s work. In fact, besides an incomplete 1928 recording by the pianist Rudolf Serkin, nobody else, not even harpsichord specialists, had tackled this work. Many considered it more a virtuoso exercise than a fully fledged musical work. The piece, though, came to be associated to Gould, thanks to the 1954 mono recording (which has since been republished) and the performances the pianist gave. It was maybe a sign of destiny but one of his last recordings was again the Goldberg Variations, one of the few pieces Gould recorded twice in studio. Though very different, both recordings have been critically acclaimed: The first, full of energy and with a frenetic tempo; the second, slower and more introspective.

Gould was known also for the way he moved his body during performance and for the way he insistently followed routine. At concertos he would only sit on the folding chair his father, Bert Gould, had made for him, continuing to use it until it was completely worn out. That chair is so closely linked to his figure that a place of honour has been reserved to it at the National Library of Canada. He declared, in a famous video, that the chair was “much closer to him than even Bach’s music.”

Glenn Gould received honours throughout his life and even after. At the time of the release in 1955 of the CBS recording, the international press was already speaking of the Gould phenomenon. And it was no fluke that the Goldberg Variations, a then obscure composition by Bach, hit the charts, selling more than a Louis Armstrong release. The “New Yorker” hailed him as “a Marlon Brando of the piano.” He was included in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1983. In that same year, the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard wrote a novel whose central character is Gould (Italian translation: Il soccombente, published by Adelphi) where the Canadian pianist is the object of admiration, as well as the obsession, of a colleague “not similarly great.”

Even in the codices, temperatures and requirements of contemporary art there coexist the adjectives utilised by Bach, the sophisticated genius, and Gould, the hypochondriac genius: mathematic variations, symmetries, experimentations, technical modulations, structural values, intelligence and counterpoint. The central theme of Imprimatur 3 – Le Variazioni Golderg hinges around the coexistence of differing obsessions organised in a structure of controlled chaos, modulated with variable languages, but which requires technical research, the irony of presences, dangerous stratifications, the tension between the visible and the non-visible, the sedimentations of experiences that constantly need to be kept under check and pursued.

Artists:
Federico Arcuri, Giuseppe Ciracì, Chiara Lecca, Davide Lovatti, Gianni Moretti, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Svetlana Ostapovici

Vernissage September 23, 2009 h. 19.00

September 23 - 27 2009

91 mQ Art Project Space
Landsberger Allee 54
Berlin 10249
Tel +49 1635473412
info91mq@gmail.com
www.91mq.org