Sylvia Marlowe (1908-1981) harpsichord (no type is indicated in the documentation)
Released unknown year (production 1963 is indicated at the label)
Released MCA MUCS 127, 139, PICCADILLY, LONDON V. I. ENGLAND, Licensed by MCA INC. U.S. A.
Printed and made by MacNeill Press LuI., London SEI
Recording dates not indicated in the documentation but at
is indicated
Recorded Feb 6-7, 12, 15+17+23, 1962
Cover photograph: “The Virgin and Child surrounded by Cherubim” by Bernardino Fungi (1460-1576). National Gallery, London
Thanks to Daniël, who let me browse the famous Daniël Beuman harpsichord collection

Sylvia Marlowe, America’s “First Lady of the Harpsichord,” has
appeared throughout America, Europe, and the Far East in solo
recitals, chamber music concerts, and as guest artist with major
symphony orchestras. Performer, scholar, teacher, and music
director of the Harpsichord Music Society, Miss Marlowe has
inspired many of America’s leading composers to write works for
her, and her performances of early music have been recognized
as authoritative, masterful, and deeply poetic.

Notes on the Programme
Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, the composer and harpsichordist
whose name Bach’s masterpiece bears, was a boy of only 15
‘when he earned his immortality. From Johann Nicolaus Forkers
On Johann Sebastian Bach’s Life, Genius, and Works (1802)
we learn that Goldberg was employed by Count Kaiserling,
Russian Ambassador to the Saxon Court, and that the Count,
often sickly, required music to be played to him on sleepless
and pain-filled nights. The Variations were Bach’s response to
the Count’s request for pieces of “a soft and somewhat lively
character”, and one can imagine no greater tribute to the young
player’s skill and understanding than this brilliant and profound
composition . A rare talent was cut off when Goldberg died in
1756, less than a month after his 29th birthday,
The Variations aim to give pleasure, and they do so by a
prodigious variety, fancy, and liveliness of invention. Forkel
reports that hitherto, Bach “on account of the constant sameness
of the fundamental harmony … had considered [variations] as
an ungrateful task.” It seems as though the challenge of overcoming
the form’s possible limitations inspired him to unprecedented
wonders of brilliance. No other single work of Bach’s
traverses so diverse a series of moods and gaits; no other explores
the possibilities of the keyboard so thoroughly and inventively.
It is also one of Bach’s most highly schematic works, yet it wears
its learning with unequalled grace.
Little of Bach’s music went into print during his lifetime. His
most ambitious publishing venture was the series of harpsichord
and organ works known collectively as the Clavierubung or
Keyboard Practice, and it is the fourth and final volume of the
set, dated 1742, that contains this “ARIA/ with Diverse Variations/
for the Harpsichord with 2 Manuals/ Composed for Music
Lovers, to Refresh their Spirits”.
The Variations are founded more on the accompaniment than
upon the melody itself. They can, indeed, be described as an
enormous passacaglia over a bass whose initial statement takes
64 measures (two sections of 16, each played twice). Here is an
outline of the bass as it appears in the Aria:
The word outline is used because the bass line is embellished
with passing notes and other decorative elements in certain of
its measures. In the Variations themselves, details of the tlass
are altered now and again. The bass is the fundament of : the
whole structure, and to keep it always in mind is the readiest
road to following Bach’s dialectic.
The Variations fall into groups of three. Within each group,
the first variation is generally in three-part texture, and various
forms appear : arias, dances, a fughetta, and even a French
Overture among them. The second of the group is almost always
a virtuoso arabesque, calling for brilliant playing upon two
manuals. Except in the tenth group of variations- and it is the
first and last groups that tend most to depart from the patterrthe
third member of the group is canonic, starting from canon
at the unison in Variation 3, and moving by progressively
increasing interval to canon at the ninth in Variation 27.

#SylviaMarlowe