The variation form enjoyed great popularity in Baroque music. It is abundantly represented in the works of George Frideric Handel and Johann Pachelbel, for example. This makes Johann Sebastian Bach's great restraint in this area all the more surprising. Apart from the chorale partitas BWV 766–768 (around 1700) and the Aria variata alla maniera italiana in A minor BWV 989 (1709), all of which can be classified as early works, we know of only three other variation works, albeit highly significant ones: the Passacaglia with Fugue for organ in C minor BWV 582 (1716/17), the Chaconne from the Partita for solo violin No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004 (1720), and finally the Goldberg Variations in G major for two-manual harpsichord, which were published in 1742.[1] „It seems as if Bach solved the compositional task of variation in these works in an exemplary and – especially in the Passacaglia and the Ciaconna – monumental way, but that the process as such did not appeal to him any further.“[2] Musicologist and first Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749–1818) gives us a possible reason for this in his description of the genesis of the Goldberg Variations. According to Forkel, the composition of the work was commissioned by the former Russian ambassador to Dresden, Hermann Carl Reichsgraf von Keyserlingk (1696–1764),

„who often stayed in Leipzig, and brought Goldberg[3] with him to Leipzig to have Bach teach him music. The count was often ill and suffered from insomnia. Goldberg, who lived in his house, had to spend the night in an adjoining room during such times to play something for him during his sleeplessness. Once, the Count told Bach that he would like to have some piano pieces for his Goldberg that were so gentle and somewhat cheerful in character that they might cheer him up a little during his sleepless nights. Bach believed that the best way to fulfil this wish was through variations, which he had previously considered thankless work because of their always identical basic harmony. But just as all his works at that time were already masterpieces, so too did these variations become so under his hand. Besides, this is the only example her produced of this kind. The Count subsequently referred to them simply as his variations. He could not get enough of listening to them, and for a long time, whenever sleepless nights came, he would say: Dear Goldberg, please play me one of my variations. Bach was perhaps never so rewarded for any of his works as he was for this one. The count gave him a gift of a golden cup filled with 100 louis d'or. But even if the gift had been a thousand times greater, it still would not have paid for their artistic value."[4]

The Goldberg Variations were printed in 1742 as the fourth and final part of the Klavierübungen (keyboard practice). Although Bach did not conclude his piano works with them because the second part of the Well-Tempered Clavier appeared in 1744. But the latter represent a collection of partly older compositions, and in no other piano work does Bach succeed in combining all areas of his style and artistry so masterfully. Above a simple bass line, he develops the full richness of his creative genius, composing canons, fugues, suite movements and virtuoso pieces, and achieving in the Adagio a harmonic boldness and expressiveness that invites comparison with Beethoven's Diabelli Variations.[5] Both in terms of their stylistic and technical synthesis and in terms of the virtuosity expected of the performer, the Goldberg Variations represent the pinnacle of Bach's piano artistry.

On the other hand, the Goldberg Variations are already on the threshold of Bach's late work. The series of nine canons[6] clearly points ahead to the Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her" ("From Heaven above to Earth I come") BWV 769 (1746/47), the Musical Offering BWV 1079 (1747) and The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 (1749/50). It is the result of a renewed engagement with the strict contrapuntal style, the ‘stile antico’ of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and other old masters, which took place between 1737 and 1743 and documents Bach's gradual turn to ‘musica speculativa’, to music as ‘ars’, which finds its unfinished perfection in The Art of Fugue, more to be heard internally than actually intended to be performed.

This turning point in Bach's work was accompanied by a change in his personal circumstances. In 1742, the fifty-seven-year-old master could look back on an almost complete collection of cantatas. He began to collect and organise his rich body of work. The Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 (1734), Part II of the Well-Tempered Clavier BWV 870–893 (1744) and the Mass in B minor, BWV 232 (1748) are the fruits of this activity. „By this time, he was already the old Bach, almost a man on his way back, one who had put his house in order and was now having a little more of his work printed. Until then, life had hardly given him time to do so.“[7]

In the Goldberg Variations, we see various creative currents of the young Bach converging and transcending. At the same time, rays emanate from here to the internalised, speculative late work.[8]