The Goldberg Variations

The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, are a work written for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is one of the most important examples of variation form. They are named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may have been the first performer. Rather unusually for Bach's works, the Goldberg Variations were published in his own lifetime, in 1741. The publisher was Bach's friend Balthasar Schmid of Nuremberg. Schmid printed the work by making engraved copper plates (rather than using movable type); thus the notes of the first edition are in Schmid's own handwriting. The edition contains various printing errors. Nineteen copies of the first edition survive today. Of these, the most valuable is the "Handexemplar," discovered in 1974 in Strasbourg by the French musicologist Olivier Alain and now kept in the Biblioth