Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Goldberg Variations - Estimate your time to learn

I think those that think just given enough time to practice and study they could:

1. shoot par golf
2. become a chess grandmaster or even just an international master
3. Acquire a forehand like Roger Federer
4. learn to play the Goldberg Variations notes at tempo

are being very unrealistic.

Back in my university days, many eons ago, I found that it took me 120 minutes of practice, on average, for each minute of music to reach performance level. All that meant though,was that I could play the pieces up to tempo with some musicality. I am still learning those pieces, as well as new rep 40 years later.

I'm fortunate enough to have grown up with a father who is a fearless amateur pianist. His technique is below concert level, but that never stopped him from spending the time (whatever it took) to learn what he wanted. Whether it's a Brahms intermezzo or a simple Bach prelude, or else the Goldberg Variations, the Diabelli Variations, Beethoven op.106, or the Prokofiev 8th, he always does his pieces musical justice. (Only the Rach 3rd rebuffed his efforts.) I'm lucky to feel that the Goldberg Variations are not out of my reach, if I want them.

My answer to the OP's original question is: probably about a year.


-J

Me learning the Goldberg brings to mind those chimps eventually typing every word in the British Museum, or however that goes. In other words, nigh onto forever.

FWIW,

I think the Goldberg Variations are a lot easier than people think. There's a certain mystique surrounding them that's based mostly on their length, ingenuity, and Glenn Gould's recording of them, but when you get right down to it, none of the variations (taken by themselves) are any more difficult than most of the material in the WTC or Partitas.

If you had said "only a few" instead of "none", I'd agree. However, some of the GVs, such as 20 and 23, strike me as being on a level all their own, at least when compared with the Partitas. (I don't know the WTC well enough to judge how they compare with it.) But quite a few of them - particularly the ones whose numbers give a remainder of 0 or 1 when divided by 3 (!) - are not bad at all, taken individually.

I had similar thoughts, before I learned the piece. "It's just a collection of 2- and 3-part inventions. How hard can it be?" Harder than I suspected, it turned out. The Goldbergs and the Partitas challenge in very different ways, imo. For one, many of the Goldbergs are about virtuoso display, even if played at sub-Gouldian tempi. The Partitas contain some occasional brilliant passagework and some very lively dances, but that's not the same thing. And if I say that the strictly independent and linear 3-part writing in the Goldberg canons has few parallels within the Partitas, someone will retort to cite the exceptions, or to point out the contrapuntal complexity of the Partitas in general, but that's not the same thing either.

The Goldbergs are more work than 2.5 - 3 partitas. (I'm trying for timelength-equivalence here). They are perhaps less work than 12-15 P&Fs, but very few people would perform the latter all at once.

The mystique that you mention does certainly exist, and it probably explains why so many young pianists feel that they absolutely need to play the Goldbergs, ready or not, as if no other Bach would be an adequate substitute. To the OP: this is not a healthy impulse. With so much wonderful Bach to choose from, why chase the mystique instead? A genuine attempt at the entire Goldbergs doesn't make a lot of sense until you have enough experience and technique to, say, prepare a French Suite in a week.

Yep, a lot of the 2 mod 3's are killers!

On Kreisler's point, it's quite possible that most of the individual Goldbergs are indeed on the level of the partitas, *and* that working up all 30 of them is just as hard as people think.

-J

As an adult student, I have been working on them for 12 years, and I still can't get the notes down on most of them. I hope to live to play them all.

I will likely never perform them. I have recorded a few, after many, many takes.

My youtube channel

No argument. I said I thought I could learn the notes. Not play them up to tempo.

OK, but I don't see the point in learning the notes to a piece if one will not expect to play the piece at some reasonably close to normal tempo. When people discuss learning the notes to a piece, I think it's assumed this means at some reasonably close to appropriate tempo.

Those who practice correctly can do any one of those things. I've only ever bothered to do #1, but I bet I could do #4 in a relatively short amount of time.

it took me a few weeks to learn them, a few years to think that I knew them, a few decades to learn that I didn't, and half a life to just have the guts to perform them, still not sure about it.

Very few professional tennis players in the history of the sport ever had a forehand the equal of Federer. These the most talented people playing tennis and if they don't know how to practice who would? Now how could a person with average or below average athletic ability ever hope to have a forehand like Federer?

He's lost 202 times, so there are certainly days when he's not the best. But if you want to take something so marginally small that one person can be "the best" at it, and then say no one else can match it, then yes. You have a point. But it is just as well to say that, eventually, someone will come along and beat him. Nobody stays "the best" forever.

Of the four you listed, that is the only one that is specific to one individual, and that individual's greatest strength. It would be like saying, "Nobody can drive a ball farther than John Daly." You're right, but Daly was never considered the world's greatest golfer. Tiger Woods is.

So, if we back #3 down to the more generic levels of the other three items on the list, we may find it to be quite possible, even probable, that it might occur.

So you really think that talent isn't a huge factor in reaching the levels required to do any of the above?

I know two of the most talented pianists at PW and they were both playing extremely advanced works(the kind most people never have the ability to play) relatively soon after they started. To me, this means that there was more involved than just having an excellent teacher and practicing a lot.

I think if one took the tennis player ranked only 1000th in the world and asked about the chances of a person with average or less than average athletic ability being able to reach that level with enough practice and the best coaching, I think their chances would be close to 0.

Similarly, if you can shoot par golf, I think you must have extremely high natural ability in the particular physical skills needed to do this, and it wasn't achieved just by excellent instruction and many hours of practice. How would you rate you athletic ability?

I don't think talent is a non-factor, but I do think it's overvalued. In terms of achieving such a high level of success and ability, I rank work ethic first. You can have the most talented kid in the world, but if they sit on their ass all day watching TV, they won't get anywhere. Similarly, you can have someone with average ability work their tail off every day, all day, and become the next greatest "anything" in the world. There are far more examples of "average" people working their tails off than there are of so-called "talented" people doing nothing.

The single smartest person I've ever heard of (IQ over 240) works at a gas station. A very good friend of mine with an above-average intelligence (IQ of 123) is doing top-level cancer research at Jefferson and making some pretty big breakthroughs.

I knew a kid who could run a 4:15 mile in 6th grade. You've never heard of him because he stopped running shortly thereafter. Another kid I grew up with couldn't break 8:00, but he worked his tail off, and later broke the national collegiate record in the 5k.

Final story, I taught a kid in martial arts who, growing up, was absolutely horrible. Couldn't hit a target with a laser sight, and didn't have the power to knock over a blow-up doll. He spent 6 hours a day on the floor, worked his butt off for 8 more years, and went on to win two world championships.

I think your example of the tennis player makes assumptions that you may not have considered. If you take someone 22 years old, with average athletic ability, and try to turn them into Roger Federer, you've got a few things going against you. One is the choices that person made during the previous 20 years that caused them to be in the condition they're in. The second is the amount of "peak physical conditioning" time they have left before age catches up. I believe, however, if you were to take a 30 year old with average athletic ability, go back to when they were 2 years old, and train them correctly from the start, that you would be talking about a "talented prodigy" and not an "average Joe".

To answer your last question, I am fortunate enough to be extremely athletic. Whether this is a product of the way I grew up, or some "natural" ability, I don't know. Both of my parents coached multiple sports, and ever since I was able to walk, I trained my tail off. My nine world titles in the martial arts didn't come because I was "so talented I didn't have to do anything." They came because I spent 6-7 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 10 years training to win those titles. Similarly, I didn't shoot par golf because I watched TV. Since I was 2 years old, I swung a club. It took until I was in my late teens to shoot par. That's another 15 years of working my butt off.

See, what I see is this: people pick up an activity to "try it out," or to "have fun with it." I've never done that. I can't do it--my brain isn't built that way. (Sometimes I wish I could, but it just doesn't happen.) I do things to be good at them, and I bust my tail to get there. Some people may enjoy playing a round of golf and breaking 120 for this first time. I'd rather go to a driving range and hit 1500 balls with a 7 iron. Why? I need to excel. I need to compete. I need to win.

It is that mentality, more than talent, that creates a Roger Federer. That's what creates a Dan Gable, a Tiger Woods, a Michael Phelps. It's not desire--desire isn't strong enough. It's a need. He needs to compete. Needs to win. Needs to beat everyone else and be the best in the world. And he works longer and harder than anyone else to make sure it happens.

I think the roles of talent vs. work ethic are virtually impossible to evaluate. Most agree that to achieve some incredibly high level of performance at something a very high work ethic is necessary. Few think that talent alone is sufficient to perform at the highest level. But the disagreement, of course, occurs about whether or not work ethic is sufficient.

Perhaps one of the most famous examples are the Polgar sisters in chess where the father, if I understand things correctly, was trying to show that the work ethic was sufficient and using his daughters as kind of an experiment. But even though all three of his daughters became great chess players(Judith being by far the strongest female chess player in history and Susan being one of the strongest female players in history), I don't think his experiment proved much.

I believe (not scientific fact, obviously) that as long as you're not deprived of some critical component (in the case of piano, not having hands, for example) that work ethic is at least 95% of the equation. I base my belief on this fact: without talent, work ethic can get you near the top; without work ethic, talent can take you nowhere. But you're absolutely right-- it's a heavily-contended idea with little definitive evidence one way or the other.

Just wanted to chime in on this conversation and say that I am an accomplished pianist who also has a FT day job and I am working on a suite of Goldbergs to play at the Boston Amateur Competition for 2019. Though learning all of the variations is indeed a chore, I think it's doable with concentrated work within a year to 18 mos.

Yes, that does mean one has to make the commitment ONLY to the Goldbergs in terms of learning new music. I personally am also keeping up another programme of previously learned music for the other rounds in the Boston competition. Playing through those pieces every so often though is also a good break from my Goldberg mania, when the brain truly needs a break from ACTIVE learning.

Finally, I want to say that the concept of performing in one sitting the ENTIRE Goldberg Variations or all of the WTC or even all of a Partita or English Suite is a complete anachronism. Bach nor any of his contemporaries every expected this. And although one certainly gains many things as both listener and performer with a complete performance of the Goldbergs, every variation is a sweeping jewel unto itself and comes across as such when performed by itself or with other variations. I believe these variations deserve to be freed from the straightjacket of the "complete performance" obsession.