Gold.Berg.Werk / Karlheinz Essl

an interpretation of the Goldberg-Variations BWV 988 by Johann Sebastian Bach for harpsichord and live-electronics

In the mid-1980s the composer Karlheinz Essl already had devoted intense study to this work, which in many respects seemed to pose compositional questions in an exemplary manner. In 2002, at the suggestion of the Orpheus Trio, the composer Essl took the High Baroque harmonic sequence of the piece transcending it in a modern, electronic sonorous space.

The version for electronics and harpsichord was written in 2010 for the festival Intonazione (www.intonazione.it).

Voglio il core

Music from the Salon of the Renaissance Courtesan, Veronica Franco, Venice. Circa 1574

Music by Antonino Barges, Baldassare Donato, Marco Facoli, Andrea Gabrieli and Claudio Merulo

Liner notes available upon request

Inventions

“Newton claims that there are seven colors and seven notes, while Du Fay asserts there are but three colors and three notes. Both are correct, and their argument is merely an empty one of words. I am also right when I say that there are countless colors and countless notes. However one chooses to understand it.”
(L. C. Mizler 1739)

The idea of a relationship between colors and notes inspired numerous learned Europeans of the Baroque Era to create color systems and methods of transferring these to music. The 18th-century reception of Isaac Newton’s seven-part spectrum shows that the idea had great influence on the subsequent discourse.

Counterpoint and cosmos

The Viennese twelve-tone composer Josef Matthias Hauer chose an interesting approach to Johann Sebastian Bach’s music: he wrote down the entire “Well-Tempered Clavier” by ear. In this new program, Susanne Pumhoesl pursues the question as to how the music of Bach affected Hauer’s compositional output, juxtaposing a selection of contrapuntal works by Johann Sebastian Bach with the bizarre twelve-tone games of Josef Matthias Hauer.