Bach: Goldberg Variations in G Major

Comfort for insomniacs?

The Goldberg Variations opens and closes with the heavenly beautiful "Aria" - an ornate, noble Sarabande. Rather than just varying the melody of the Aria, the thirty variations are built upon its bass line. Every third variation is a canon at increasing intervals, except the final, thirtieth variation, a so-called quodlibet, mixing a number of popular tunes - including one that goes "Cabbage and turnips have driven me away, had my mother cooked meat, I'd have opted to stay". The variations found just after each canon are genre pieces of various types, often based one Baroque dances. The variations preceding the canons are variations in lively tempo with a great deal of hand-crossing. This ternary pattern—canon, genre piece, virtuoso "arabesque"—is repeated a total of nine times, until the Quodlibet breaks the cycle.

Bach wrote the work with a two-manual harpsichord in mind (the score specifies for each variation if it is meant to be played on one or two manuals), which makes the challenge for the pianist even greater – the many hand-crossings, possibly inspired by Scarlatti's keyboard music, is much easier to perform on two manuals.