Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756)
- Concerto (d-moll) per il Cembalo concertato, DürG 16
Performers: Eliza Hansen (1909-2001, cembalo); Streicher des
Pfalzorchesters Ludwigshafen;
Christoph Stepp (1927-2014, conductor)
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German keyboard virtuoso and composer. Very little documentary evidence
about Goldberg's life has survived, and virtually all the early reports
contain some demonstrable errors. He is widely reported to have become a
pupil of J.S. Bach after the Russian ambassador to the court of Saxony,
Hermann Karl von Keyserlingk (Count from 1741), recognized the boy's
talent in Danzig. Goldberg was also claimed as a pupil by W.F. Bach, who
was in Dresden throughout Keyserlingk's first period of office in that
city (1734-1745). No other report confirms this tutelage, and the extent
of Goldberg's study with either Bach and the order in which he studied
with them remain subjects for speculation. Forkel's famous story of the
commissioning of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (published c.1741 as
Clavier-Übung, iv) by Keyserlingk to be played by Goldberg contains
several errors of fact and must be doubted. (It has frequently been
questioned because of Goldberg's extreme youth: the lack of a dedication
in the print is evidence against the commission, though even without a
commission Bach could have given Keyserlingk a copy of the print and
received a gift in return when he is known to have visited the
Keyserlingk home in Dresden.) It is clear that the technical difficulty
of the variations would have been well matched by Goldberg's amazing
performing skills. The fact that Keyserlingk's only son was studying in
Leipzig from 1741 until at least 1743 may have provided the vehicle for
Goldberg's visits to Leipzig – visits that are suggested by the nature,
style and diplomatic condition of Goldberg's church cantatas, as well as
by Forkel's doubtful story. Goldberg seems not to have accompanied
Count Keyserlingk from Dresden to Potsdam in 1745 and is next traceable
about 1749-1751 at a concert at which Keyserlingk (back in Dresden from
1749), Electress Maria Antonia Walpurgis of Saxony and W.F. Bach
(presumably visiting from Halle) were also present, according to W.F.
Bach's letter to the electress in 1767. In 1751 Goldberg joined the
private musical establishment of Count Heinrich von Brühl, which had
been weakened by the departure of both Georg Gebel II and Gottlob Harrer
in 1750.
He remained in Brühl's service until his early death, of consumption.
The earliest reports are unanimous in praising Goldberg's keyboard
playing, especially his facility in sight-reading at the keyboard. But
his compositional skills provoked a small controversy: Forkel suggested
in his Bach biography (1802) that Goldberg was ‘a very skilful keyboard
player, but with no particular talent for composition’, and J.F.
Reichardt reprinted this opinion in his 1805 autobiography, adding:
‘apparently H[err] F[orkel] knows nothing, or only the least
significant, of Goldberg's very rare keyboard works’. The statement
attributed to Reichardt that Goldberg possessed primarily technical
talent, was not really a musical genius and had no special talent for
composition, is not in Reichardt's autobiography but only in the very
imaginative ‘excerpt’ from it by H.M. Schletterer (J.F. Reichardt,
1865/R, p.69). Reichardt was himself in an excellent position to assess
Goldberg’s compositions, as he owned ‘several’ of Goldberg's keyboard
concertos and had heard Goldberg's sister play some of her brother's
works. The likelihood that J.S. Bach encouraged Goldberg to write church
cantatas for Leipzig speaks well for his compositional talent, as does
the confusion – going back at least to the Breitkopf catalogues of 1761
and 1762 – over the attribution of the Trio Sonata BWV1037. Goldberg's
extant compositions show a musical style varying with genre and
hypothetical chronology, from a style very close to J.S. Bach's to one
far more galant and accessible to the Dresden audience and, perhaps
finally, to an ambitious modern style calculated for Count Brühl's
orchestra and possibly influenced by the style of C.P.E. Bach (the
concertos). It is not surprising that in approaching the works of this
young and facile man it is difficult to find his ‘real’ musical style,
although a love for syncopation, for wide-ranging melodies and
especially for chromaticism runs through his works.
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