Bach: Goldberg Variations in G Major
Piano Sheet Music to Download and Print or to View in Mobile Devices
ID:109![]() Goldberg Variations |
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Key: G Major | Year: 1741 | |
Level: 8+ | Period: Baroque | |
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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.
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Piano sheet music and recordings. This piece is by Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations in G Major (published in 1741) . Level 8+, Period: Baroque
Goldberg Variations in G Major, by the baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. This piano piece was initially published in the year 1741 and is included in Miscellaneous pieces by Bach.
Goldberg Variations in G Major, by the baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. This piano piece was initially published in the year 1741 and is included in Miscellaneous pieces by Bach.