The Open Goldberg Variations | Hacker News Reader

The Open Goldberg Variations

opengoldbergvariations.org

184 pointsexolymph88 comments

Hi! I produced this recording and project, and it's so nice to see it on the front page of Hacker News this morning.

Let's talk about Kimiko Ishizaka, the pianist. She always insists on standing in the background, letting her projects be about Bach, and public domain, while she quietly delivers the most stunning performances of these works that one can imagine.

Kimiko is German-Japanese. She grew up performing in a trio with her brothers who are also both notable classical musicians in Germany. In addition to the Goldberg Variations, she has recorded the Well-Tempered Clavier I (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPHIZw7HZq4), and The Art of the Fugue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIrNDWqANCs) and released them into the public domain as well.

Then, in 2019, she did something completely new and released an album of her own, jazz-inspired compositions for solo piano called New Me! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph35hLwcckY&list=PLeWVBqJrTS...). She continues studying Jazz and is composing a cycle of songs (pop-jazz), and a series of ragtime pieces for piano.

Kimiko is very athletic, and has placed in the top-3 at the German nationals in both powelifting and olympic weightlifting. She has a room in her house which functions both as a piano practice room, and a gym. It is painted pink and decorated with Hello Kitty, because, well, she's a half-Japanese girl who loves Hello Kitty =)

The most amazing thing of all just happened to Kimiko, however. She gave birth to a beautiful son (https://twitter.com/KimikoIshizaka/status/127507285375949619...), just 5 days ago.

Thank you for this project and for putting the spotlight on this pianist. I listened to 'the new me' and it is very interesting how she did that and yet somehow there is a bit of Bach shining through here and there.

Indeed! Especially in Blues Variations, which is - like the Golderg Variations - a theme-and-variation form. But like the WTC and AoF, it ends in a 4 voice fugue. All on a blues theme =)

Amazing music. Been listening to it on repeat for a while now... After you posted the link I went and googled her, found her own compositions and I absolutely love them.

If you have time: please research Friedrich Gulda and if Kimiko isn't aware of him yet please introduce her to his music, he went through a similar path, originally classically trained eventually went for his own style. Here is a sample:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua11GSiTPXg

Lots of jazz from him as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrphQPtjWJw

Maybe she will like it (or maybe you will :) ). Thank you again!

We love Gulda!

Heh, cool. The terrorist-pianist strikes again.

What is your opinion on Brad Mehldau - After Bach? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MZw6XI-b6Q

Brad Mehldau is Kimiko's absolute favorite jazz pianist. His mastery of harmony and his impeccable piano technique really speaks to her.

Nina Simone is another musician who permeated her music with very clear influences from Bach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WHHW8PrF6Q

Yes. Her life story is really heartbreaking, wanting to become a classical pianist but being told that being black and playing classical music at the same time just wouldn't do. I'm of two minds on this - as I've written before on HN -, sad as it is that she did not follow her chosen path in the end it gave us her own material which to me is just as dear of not dearer. My all time favorite song is 'wild is the wind'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Gx0wYim8Y

Amazing song, guaranteed to give me gooseflesh no matter how many times I've heard it.

Her playing is awesome. Thank you both for producing this, and congrats on the addition to the family!

Can you talk about the production process for this project? What hardware and software was used for the recording (and mixing?) and the rendering of the video?

First, the score was made with MuseScore. Then it was prepared as an iPad App by the MuseScore team who custom made the synchronization between the score and the music. I then recorded the iPad app as a video using the "Reflector" program for Mac OS X. The iPad app doesn't exist anymore because it was not compatible with new versions of IOS.

There's an article on the recording process here: https://opengoldbergvariations.org/news/recording-the-goldbe...

Anne-Marie Sylvestre used Pyramix as her DAW. I don't know more than that, though.

Thank you for this project, and thank you for sharing more about Kimiko. Congrats to her for her new baby, and for her astonishing achievements. I will always support anything that brings Bach to more people.

Side track: can we talk about MuseScore (mentioned in the article as the collaborator of the effort)? MuseScore is a notation software, an open-source alternative to Sibelius and Finale (and now Dorico). Teachers (at the two colleges I take classes at) still dismiss it as not-worthy of comparison although in my music and composition learning I have not found anything I cannot accomplish with it.

Maybe I’ll eventually find out its limitations but to suggest to new students to buy a “professional” notation software for $600 (or $30/month) as opposed to $0 is questionable in my opinion.

Yeah Sibelius just dominated for so long that people got used to it. I see Logic Pro also does notation.

Logic Pro's notation is horrid though. That's not why you would use it.

Sibelius was originally a brilliant piece of software until it was bought by Avid and the entire UI turned into utter trash. I haven't touched it since. I also bought Finale when it first came out (was in a demo session at the MacWorld where it came out, sitting next to me was Wendy Carlos) and that was the worst piece of software ever written which is why I switched to Sibelius when it first came out. Maybe both are better now, but my minimal needs of today are fine with MuseScore.

But what's the problem with teachers "recommendations". Can't you still use musescore (or, better, lilypond) for your homework?

Professional Music Engraver here. It has a long way to go to be comparable. It requires so much work to get the scores into a usable state that almost no one in the professional sphere uses it. Sure, it would be lovely to have an open source notation engine (and we have a much better one in Lilypond, it's just not user-friendly at all), but to develop that would take a huge amount of effort and have tons of expertise behind it, which the project currently does not have.

So much of the quality of this kind of work is tied to the user and their skills in what constitutes "good" engraving. For most novices, this is a non-concern, which is why Musescore has taken off, since it provides a great entry-level tool for most musicians to make scores. But it doesn't hold up when doing more professional and/or complex work.

You'll be glad to know there is now a full time engraver also on the MuseScore team since last week! Would it be possible to chat with you about what else could be improved? Thanks!

I started working on MuseScore recently (last week actually) with my buddy Tantacrul who I used to work with on Ubuntu a few years ago.

MS4 is going to be a major overhaul, and MuseScore.com is going to be massively improved also. Would it be possible to chat with you about what the reservations your teachers have about it, and how we can improve those areas?

One suggestion would be to implement a mode similar to Finale's "speedy entry", which allows for more efficient entry of notes, dynamics, articulations, ornaments, etc. without moving between modes and pallets, correcting and adjusting and so forth.

Forcing people into paying for the distribution of their own midi files/scores would be one major issue. Of course musescore.org claims that musescore.com is a totally separate entity but they go out of their way to confuse visitors of the .org site. The interaction between .org stewards and the general public is totally bizarre. It's the same trick that gracenote pulled on cddb many years go. It was ugly then, it's ugly now and the copyright excuse just doesn't cut it, all they'd need to do is properly implement the DMCA for this problem to go away.

Hey Jacques, this was one of the main things I wanted to clarify too, after looking at user feedback over the last week. Would you be up for a quick chat to understand better how to remedy this?

Sure, email in profile.

I love Tantacrul's videos, and was pleased to see he's now working on MuseScore. He finally gets to put his money where his mouth is, and I'm fairly confident that he (and yourself) will do a great job with MS4.

Best wishes and happy coding to the team!

CTO at a conservatory here. Although I haven't been in music long enough to really know, I think there is a lot of room here for a great open source product. Sibelius and Finale are too expensive and not interested in offering discounts to composition students. (Who would then probably be lifetime customers, so I don't really get it, but whatever.) Get in touch if you're interested in talking (I'm easy to find).

To anyone wondering: public domain? Bach has been dead for how long? Of course there are already some available (recordings, and sheet music of course), a great database is: https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

I do not want to denounce the efforts made though. Anything which makes these works more accessible is welcome. The Goldberg Variations are beautiful. Most famous recordings probably the two by Glenn Gould. There is even an interview in which they explore the differences between the two, and Gould opens up about some decisions he has made and why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaLoegXPpyk

It's worth listening to, also to explore the Goldberg Variations a little bit in general. It also gives you a sense of Gould's "quirky wit". It's likely it was completely scripted by Gould in advance. There are of course many recordings of the Goldberg Variations, partial list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldberg_Variations_discograph...

Both of Gould's interpretations aren't in any way "standard interpretations". Fun fact: I was so used to listening to Gould's Bach interpretations back then, I immediately emulated his style when playing Bach, which my piano teacher found really annoying.

Bach's work is in the public domain, which means anyone can make their own recording. But, any recording of Bach's works will still automatically have its own copyright, unless it's intentionally dedicated to the public domain too. The great thing about a public domain recording is that anyone can take it and use in any sort of artistic or even non-artistic endeavour, without having to worry about the usual "Contact the copyright owner, hope they will grant you a license that's not too expensive."

In a lot of jurisdictions, the same goes for the actual sheet music. Even a lot of facsimile editions - literally photos- of the sheet music claim copyright to the "creative work" embedded in making the photo.

The result being that in many jurisdictions, you'll have difficulties finding public domain sheet music of obviously public domain music for which it is clear (the longest living) composer died over 70 years ago.

More recently, a recording's been released of a third Gould performance of the Goldberg Variations, recorded live in Salzburg in 1959. It's very nice.

The easiest way to describe the differences between the 'young' and the 'old' Goldberg variations as played by Glenn Gould are to look at the runtimes. As I get older I find myself liking the ones played by the older Gould better.

I love the mature version too -- 1950s Gould sounds like he's in a terrible hurry, 1980s Gould feels entirely in control of his performance.

If you haven't heard it, Hilary Hahn's Chaconne is also slow compared to a lot of other interpretations, and for me has a lot of the same impact (makes me cry, basically, but stimulates a huge range of emotions in a very short time) as the later Gould recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqA3qQMKueA

Great recording!

To be specific and as you say, not to denounce this (or any other) very welcome recent offering on the Goldberg Variations ...

https://imslp.org/wiki/Goldberg-Variationen%2C_BWV_988_(Bach...

offers 38 scores and 50 arrangements of out-of-copyright (free scores) Goldberg Variations.

The ambition of this project (Open Goldberg) was a bit wider. We wanted to make: - A software score (MuseScore) which has all of the advantages of a canonical digital document vs a picture (which is what IMSLP offers) - A public domain recording - A download of the unmixed stems so that people could mix their own (open source model) - A MIDI version

So... that's what we did!

I personally love Keith Jarrett's. Though Glenn Gould's are, let's say, "gould standard".

I would also recommend Tatiana Nikolayeva's (1924–1993) Bach recordings. She is considered to be one of the greatest Bach Interpreters. I am fortunate my current teacher was a student of hers in Russia when she was between the ages of 8-14, and am now studying some Bach with her.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/bach-goldberg-variations-bw...

I tend to be very disappointed by the majority of piano transcriptions of Bach’s keyboard works, which is understandable since the piano and harpsichord are so very different. Outside of Gould’s, who played much like a harpsichord, the above album is the most moving and fascinating piano transcription of Goldberg that I have heard. There are several parts of interpretation that would normally make me yell “heresy”, but Ji-Yong’s interpretations really bring the piece out in a way fully fit for piano. Check it out!

You might enjoy Stephen Malin's YouTube channel where he animates the notes of a piece. He uses some of her Bach playing, and, tangentially, he has been releasing animations of the two- and three-part inventions and I quite like the interpretations.

Stephen Malinowski's videos of Kimiko Ishizaka's Art of the Fugue recording are breathtaking. He understands the structure of the music much the same way that Kimiko does, and it reflects in how he delineates the voices and the themes. He also gave a spectacular treatment to her completion of the unfinished final fugue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIrNDWqANCs

My main quibble with modern performances like this (my personal favourite is Murray Perahia's) is the sometimes ridiculous level of rubato injected into performances. It's a modern (well, 19th century) invention, and not reflective of how music was performed in Bach's day, as far as I know. To modern ears, a rubato-less performance would sound much more rigid, less expressive, and less emotive (particularly with Bach, whose music is often described as "mathematical"), especially when played on the original harpsichord. Compare Gould's with, say, the recordings of Karl Richter. You find the same thing in all modern interpretations of older music, filtered through modern lenses. Bach isn't Chopin, though it can of course also sound beautiful when played that way.

"Not reflective of how music was performed in Bach's day" is a data point, not a judgment of quality of an interpretation. If "molto rubato" is a complaint it needs to be followed by an actual criticism.

For example-- I remember someone (Kissin?) using "unsuitable" rubato in one of Brahms Paginini Variations. The problem was that it obscured the 2-against-3 texture in that variation. By applying rubato the entire time, that rhythmic drive never gets established and the variation seems less effective for it. (And rhythmic drive is very often central to Brahms' music.)

There are costs and there are benefits to any interpretive approach. But I'd be very cautious about going down the "modern lens" rabbit hole. At least for the 20th century, Taruskin persuasively argued that the "authenticity" movement mainly ended up reproducing modernist interpretations of Baroque and Classical period music.

I think it is a more than fair criticism of many modern pianists of Baroque era music, but let's cut them some slack too: it is entirely valid to re-interpret existing music through a more modern lens (hence the 1000's of covers) and Bach himself saw absolutely no problem with re-interpreting other composers works.

Music is both finished product and raw material, a score is much more raw material than finished product. Finally, the original is still available, nothing got lost.

Glenn Gould's interpretation might be the most famous, and is worth a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwas_7H5KUs (1955)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEkXet4WX_c (1981)

On days you would like to hear humming along and someone else thoroughly enjoying the music, I agree with Glen Gould

Gotta love the tempo of that 1981 theme, so slow, so stately

Those really are wonderful. The video in the 1981 performance really adds to the experience, I think. Thanks for the link!

Some historical context might help: when this recording was released, the copyright lobby was still issuing takedown requests and blocking views on YouTube videos and websites. So in some jurisdictions this recording was the only one easily available to use.

Also, the open source and digital first nature of the transcription - the first high quality transcription in musicXML - meant that this project enabled lots of "downstream" projects, such as the first braille edition of the Goldberg variations.

Just because a piece is public domain doesn't mean it is accessible!

The Braille example really establishes the importance of that context for me. Thank you!

I don't have a great deal of experience with classical music.

That said, I have this same pianist's album of Well-Tempered Clavier, and I think it's quite nice. (https://music.kimiko-piano.com/track/prelude-no-1-in-c-major..., for example)

If I had a time machine watching a live JS Bach recital would be near the top of my list of things to do. It’s wonderful to see a talented musician make this work more accessible.

One of the eyewitnesses to Bach's playing was Constantin Bellermann. (chronicled in the Bach Reader)

Bellermann wrote about a pedal solo that Bach played: he “ran over the pedals so quickly that his feet appeared winged, with a thundering fullness of sound, and penetrated the ears of the listeners like a bolt of lightning”, and that he “was admired in amazement” by Prince Frederick van Hessen. The prince removed a jewelled ring from his hand on the spot and gave it to Bach. If he had earned that just with the speed of his feet, wondered Bellermann, what would the prince have given him if Bach had used his hands as well?

There is a German lady called Barbara Dennerlein that is a bit like that, her footwork is nothing short of amazing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Dennerlein

There are some youtube videos of her playing jazz.

I saw her in Chicago in 2009, playing the pipe organ at the Rockefeller Chapel, in a wonderful but utterly poorly-promoted performance. The audience was tiny for such a magnificent space, and I thought it a crying shame.

It's hard to think of a pipe organ as a jazz instrument, but then again, any instrument is a jazz instrument.

JS Bach is without a doubt the man I would most want to meet, interview, view perform, etc. It is hard to put into words, but his music is just inexhaustibly deep, challenging, joyful, profound, etc. in any given week I will spend some time listening to some modern band, maybe dabble in Beethoven symphony or two for a few hours, get pulled into a Stevie Wonder album, but I always, without fail, return to Bach. He is literally the “sun” in my little galaxy of music; all rotates around him and no matter where I am in a given day, I may just cut what I’m listening to short and put on some Bach.

I struggle to think of anything that engages my analytical brain and artful soul so fully and simultaneously. How the hell did he do it?!

The scope of his creation is just unfathomable. The utter profundity of his pieces, followed by the sheer proliferation.

Yes, this is what keeps blowing me away. There are ever more pieces to be discovered and listened to and he had to make all that stuff, write it down, be a dad to a whole bunch of children, spend time 'fundraising' and playing nice with royalty and clergy for access to instruments and at the end of all that he did it without any kind of digital assistance.

Oh, and he died at 65, old for the time he lived in but still, that's pretty young by today's standards for a life full of accomplishment.

I think you'd have to line up in a very long line of other people. Come to think of it, and even though I would like to do the same I'd get the hell out of there in the hope that he would compose just one more piece instead of talking to me.

I struggle to listen to Bach for an extended period of time. I think I don't "get" him. Tbh it's probably that, because actually playing his music on the piano is always a joy so it's probably skill to listen + analyse which is lacking.

These days I am much more Schubert and Beethoven, but I feel a certain guilt for not being able to appreciate Bach more. Both Mozart and Chopin worshipped him amongst others (iirc both were known to copy out das wohltemperiete klavier by hand as an exercise of love)

Any tips on grokking Bach? Feel like I have to concentrate super hard - to the point I either go a bit numb or lose focus

EDIT worth mentioning I'm not really a casual listener. More like a failing amateur musician with no talent. (Probably more so than Salieri :p)

Did you try the easier pieces, like the Brandeburg concertos? Also, it may help for some more cerebral things such as the violin partitas to listen first the "adaptations" such as Busoni's chaconne (which makes it easier to the untrained ear by providing all the notes that are implicit in the original version).

It definitely took my some time before I "got" Bach, but once I did I've never been the same.

Here are some recommendations:

1. Listen to works for solo instruments; this allows you to focus in on what's going on

2. Watch videos for solo instruments; this allows you to really take in what the musician is doing to perform this work

3. When listening to a piece, say to yourself "I am going to focus on X" and try to hear that part is doing throughout the piece in relation to the other parts. E.g. "I'm going to listen to the bass voices in a solo work" or "I'm going to listen to the oboes".

4. I often find myself being very physical when I listen to Bach...e.g. clapping or slamming my hands on various cues.

5. LISTEN TO THE SAME PIECE OF MUSIC A LOT...either same performance or different ones. You are given new revelations as you get to know a piece more, certain harmonies, certain voices, etc that you never noticed before.

Do you always have to listen with such focus? No, as it seems your brain then becomes able to enjoy pieces more casually as it is trained to hear these things.

Here is a fun piece to "train" yourself to enjoy Bach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3lH_Tevw5o

If you like this sort of thing, you should also check out the Netherlands Bach Society [1] on Youtube. They've been producing incredible renditions of Bach works and sharing them freely for a while.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2kF6qdHRTM_hDYfEmzkS9w

It'd be nice to have a version recorded on harpsichord instead of piano.

I love a harpsichord sound. My favourite performer is Trevor Pinnock. Just about everything he’s put out is awesome

Check out Jean Rondeau’s version recorded on the harpsichord. It’s honestly beautiful and the Goldberg Variations is one of my favourite pieces of music. It’s on YouTube :)

There is nothing like the clarity of the harpsichord sound. Especially for music that can have that many details to listen.

I am a big fan of Scott Ross. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDGQSRpLIJk

Spent countless hours to listen to his Scarlatti recordings :-)

This is a super cool project, but downloading the tracks require giving an email address and subscribing to a newsletter. Fortunately, as the work is public domain, we can all re-host it as we want. :) In case that's helpful, here's a direct download link to the FLAC version (1.3 GB) downloaded from Bandcamp: http://dl.free.fr/lZnLnrdJ9

(The link is re-hosted on a free service by a French ISP. The link will expire after 30 days without any download.)

All true and good points. The mailing list in question is controlled exclusively by myself and Kimiko Ishizaka and is only used to announce new projects by Kimiko.

> [..] to create a public domain recording and score of J.S. Bach's masterpiece

Very few realizes it but before Gould the Goldberg Variations were very little known even to professional pianists.

Given how old the GB variations are compared to when they found success, it's like Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes winning a best seller prize in 2020.

Ishizaka-san's performance is excellent, I highly recommend this recording. Yes, most people will tell you about how the Gould recordings are "the best" — but before you agree, listen to this. In my opinion, the Gould recordings are very interesting, but I really prefer this performance.

As much as I love Gould's recordings, this one made me hear something new. Thank you!

It's really beautiful, and such a wonderful project. I must say though that I always have a hard time not hearing the differences (mostly in timing) to the Gould recordings (55 being my go-to). Thank you for sharing!

Does anyone know any piano performances of 1600s-style improvisations on top of the Goldberg bassline?

It's strange because I hear Church organists who improvise all the time-- everything from hymn chord substitutions to fugal treatments of a tune in Bach's style. But I rarely have heard pianists doing that kind of thing.

Why isn't the Goldberg Variations already open/public domain? Bach has been dead for a very very very long time.

This is a public domain version of the recording. The sheet music itself is and has been in the public domain for a long time.

Aha. I missed that.

To be clear, the composition has been in the public domain. Publishers can copyright editions of a public domain score until the cows come home.

Since the score is available, couldn't a modern synthesizer produce a pretty good version of the composition?

It would be fairly dead, even on a real piano. If you recorded a real (good) pianist playing the same piece using a piano with a sensor bar the result could be played back and would actually be quite nice to listen to. But to go straight from score -> midi -> audio will not give an interpretation that will be very interesting.

If you want I can record a piece that you pick on the midi player piano that I just completed so that you can see firsthand what the effect would be. Let me know.

The Open Goldberg Variations were recorded on a piano that has a self-playing function. When nearby construction interrupted the recording process with outside noise, we had the piano repeat the takes so that we would still have them, and here's a video of that happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHipuHxYfjU

Wow, that's one very nice tool. Here is my variation on that theme, output only: https://jacquesmattheij.com/midi-fied-baby-grand-piano/ The input side is 'work in progress'. Not quite a Bosendorfer, but then again that would be totally wasted on me anyway.

Do you allow those midi files to be downloaded as well? That would be a priceless resource.

I have the .boe files somewhere. They're a proprietary version of MIDI that Boesendorfer developed. If you want them, I can find them and send them. robert@opengoldbergvariations.org

Oh super cool, yes, very much, I will mail you.

For a while I went through a phase of importing Bach midi files into ableton, exporting the audio to a track, then using ableton's "convert to midi" function to turn it back into midi, and then using a variety of soft-synths to replay the incorrect, but hauntingly familiar music. GBV, WTC and organ works were always fun. Favourite synths for replay would be Crystal, and Arturia's CS80V.

Add some long modulation envelopes and fiddle with the mod matrix for pseudo humanism ;-)

(2012)

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