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The street was very quiet. The moon, full. The ocean in the background, calm. All the lights inside were on as I walked by a Santa Monica house, when I thought I heard the famous theme from Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” Bach wrote this for a certain Herr Goldberg seeking serenity to put him to sleep.

The music was in my head or, if you are willing to get spiritual about it, in an unidentifiable ether. Inside the house, another Mr. Goldberg, one who changed his name to Frank Gehry as a striving young architect having moved from Toronto to Los Angeles, lay dying, leaving the realm he had remade like no one else in our time. Gehry died on Friday at age 96 following a brief respirator

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