Goldberg Variations

The Goldberg Variations, named after the fourteen-year old harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, for whom it is thought they were written, are the last of a series of keyboard music Bach published under the title of Clavierübung. Based on a single ground bass theme, the mastery and power of the variations are astonishing, and the range of emotion they encompass is unparallelled in Bach’s instrumental music. The work has long been regarded as the most important set of variations composed in the Baroque era: in 1802 Johann Nicolaus Forkel, the author of the first biography of J. S. Bach, praised the work as the ‘model, according to which all variations should be made’.