Beat Spring Fatigue: Discover Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Haydn’s Surprise Symphony

When spring arrives, many of us — myself included — feel a peculiar lethargy. It’s likely chung-gonjeung, or spring fatigue. The mere existence of a word for it speaks to how common the experience is.

The National Institute of the Korean Language defines spring fatigue as the body’s difficulty adjusting to seasonal change. People often reach for coffee or other caffeine fixes to perk up. That temporary lift, though, can linger into the night and turn into insomnia.

Spring is a season of competing rhythms: efforts to stay awake followed by attempts to fall asleep. With that in mind, I selected music for insomnia and music for spring fatigue — Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Haydn’s Surprise Symphony.

Goldberg in the title refers to the performer. According to the story, a young harpsichordist named Johann Gottlieb Goldberg played nightly for a nobleman who suffered from insomnia. That patron was Hermann Carl von Keyserling, the Saxon ambassador to Russia.

When the ambassador stayed in Leipzig, where Bach lived, he would summon Bach to hear him play. On one occasion he reportedly asked, “Compose something to soothe me on sleepless nights.” Bach answered with this work in 1741 and is said to have been rewarded with a gold goblet filled with coins.

Scholars caution that the tale’s details are uncertain. Biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel recorded the anecdote in his 1802 book On the Life, Art, and Work of Johann Sebastian Bach. Forkel wrote fifty years after Bach’s death and based much of his account on information from Bach’s sons, and music historians detect elements of exaggeration and myth in the story.

The Goldberg Variations are also long. A complete performance can run anywhere from roughly 40 minutes to 80 minutes, depending on the performer’s approach. I can’t give a single definitive length, but I can explain what makes the piece expansive.

Structurally, Bach presents an aria and then transforms it through 30 variations, before returning to the opening aria to close the cycle.

You might think such length would simply lull you to sleep. That’s not entirely wrong — its extended, meditative unfolding can indeed help ease you into a deeper sleep.

By contrast, Haydn wrote music designed to wake you up. One work in particular became famous for jolting concert audiences: the Surprise Symphony.

Of the symphony’s four movements, the second opens calmly, as if nothing out of the ordinary will occur.

Then, abruptly, the orchestra delivers a loud chord — in many recordings it lands at about the 30-second mark. That single outburst earned the symphony its nickname. Even when you know it’s coming, the moment still startles you; it’s a piece of Haydn’s signature humor.

I remember attending a performance, waiting for that jolt with my eyes wide. Someone next to me shouted “Ah!” at the cue, and the audience burst into laughter.

What do your memories of spring fatigue and sleepless nights look like? I hope this pairing — the Goldberg Variations and the Surprise Symphony, music for insomnia and for spring fatigue — brings classical music a little closer to you.

By Shin-ae Yu — classical music writer

Books: Romance in Classical Music; Classical Music Without Beethoven

She majored in piano, worked as a classical-music reporter, and served as music coordinator for KBS classical programs. She now focuses on lectures and book talks.