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Programme Note

When I was approached by Judy Goldberg and Yo-Yo Ma to compose music based on the Aria of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, I had been coincidentally restudying the entire work and using it was a teaching model for my students. While the movement, entitled Fantasy Variation, is not a strict variation of Bach’s ground bass, it is nonetheless closely associated with many of the ideas in the Aria, thus creating a musical mosaic of sorts.

I wrote this music – actually two variations within one movement, with the intention of it being the concluding variation in the set. The piece is dedicated, of course, to Judy Goldberg.

--Richard Danielpour