For those who have not completely forgotten their sense of wonder, the ice flower (an ice crystal with a flower-like form) exerts a special fascination. Branching out into the most minute patterns, it seems to obey some kind of secret architectural plan; chance and regularity join together in an endless wealth of forms. Thus the composer, who quite naturally considered his work a way of honoring the Creation, uses elements of the Creation without ever expecting something like the appearance of the golden section in his music to be found. And what analysis does not pale before this reverent intimation of the secrets in Bach’s music? Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a work that never seems to lose its freshness and can always be discovered in a new way. An energetic thread unravels throughout the whole piece, holding it together; in the process, a sort of polyphonic node in the form of a canon is reached after every third variation. The principle of the canon, with the voices entering at progressively larger intervals, is not interrupted until the 30th variation, the Quodlibet. Like in living nature, a strict, but not rigid form serves as the basis for a lively and animated process of development. This is directly related to what Claude Debussy called the “divine arabesque,” in which “music participates in the laws of beauty inherent in all nature’s movements.”