Fourteen Canons on the first eight notes of the Aria ground from the Goldberg Variations (BWV 1087)

J S Bach Fourteen Canons on the first eight notes of the Aria ground from the Goldberg Variations (BWV 1087)

The present edition of BWV 10871, a cycle of canons that only resurfaced in 1975, is based on the original as edited for the New Bach Edition.  The main body of our separate print reproduces the canons in their original notation; the editor’s resolutions are found in Appendix I.

The newly discovered canons revealed how incomplete our knowledge of Bach’s canonic art was at that time.  Early Bach scholars had already realised that canons played an important part particularly in the composer’s late work.  Nevertheless, as we now know, the logical connection was still missing between the subtle canonic technique of the Art of Fugue in its early version of 1742 (BWV 1080) and the later Musical Offering (BWV 1079) and the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch (BWV 769), both dating from 1747.  BWV 1087 is the first instance in which Bach probes a broad range of styles in the canonic elaboration of a single subject, utilising the species of perpetual canon that so often served for dedications in the baroque age.

- Urtext of the New Bach Edition

- Performance score

- Performance possibility: 2 violins and keyboard; keyboard solo