A Different Take

Goldberg Variations:

Ternary Patterns for Insomnia, choreographed by Örjan Andersson, music performed by Scottish Ensemble.

Folkoperan, Stockholm, Spring 2022.

THERE'S A story about the origins of Bach's Goldberg Variations that suggests it was written to help an aristocratic patron fall asleep on insomniac nights. Throughout all my years of listening to this piece of music in America—at home and in concert halls, alone and with others—I never once heard or read a reference to this apocryphal tale. Yet I‘ve already encountered it on two separate occasions during recent visits to Stockholm.

The first was in June of 2018, when I attended a late-night performance of the Goldbergs during Stockholm's annual Early Music Festival. There were two unusual things about the concert, which took place in the upstairs parish hall of a church in the Old Town. One was that the