Editing Goldberg Variations (section)

== Publication ==
Rather unusually for Bach's works,<ref>See [[List of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach printed during his lifetime]]</ref> the ''Goldberg Variations'' were published in his own lifetime, in 1741. The publisher was Bach's friend Balthasar Schmid of [[Nuremberg]]. Schmid printed the work by making engraved copper plates (rather than using movable type); thus the notes of the first edition are in Schmid's own handwriting.

The title page, shown in the figure above, reads in German:
:{|
|Clavier Ubung / bestehend / in einer ARIA / mit verschiedenen Verænderungen / vors Clavicimbal / mit 2 Manualen. / Denen Liebhabern zur Gemüths- / Ergetzung verfertiget von / Johann Sebastian Bach / Königl. Pohl. u. Churfl. Sæchs. Hoff- / Compositeur, Capellmeister, u. Directore / Chori Musici in Leipzig. / Nürnberg in Verlegung / Balthasar Schmids<ref>{{harvnb|Kirkpatrick|1938|p=vii}}</ref>
|style="padding-left:1em;"|Keyboard exercise, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals. Composed for connoisseurs, for the refreshment of their spirits, by Johann Sebastian Bach, composer for the royal court of Poland and the Electoral court of Saxony, [[Kapellmeister]] and Director of Choral Music in Leipzig. Nuremberg, Balthasar Schmid, publisher.
|}
The term "''Clavier Ubung''" (nowadays spelled "''Klavierübung''") had been assigned by Bach to some of his previous keyboard works. Klavierübung part 1 was the six [[Partitas, BWV 825-830|partitas]], part 2 the ''[[Italian Concerto, BWV 971|Italian Concerto]]'' and ''[[Overture in the French style, BWV 831|French Overture]]'', and [[Clavier-Übung III|part 3]] a series of [[chorale prelude]]s for organ framed by a [[prelude and fugue]] in E{{music|flat}} major. Although Bach also called his variations "''Klavierübung''", he did not specifically designate them as the fourth in this series.<ref>For discussion see {{harvtxt|Williams|2001|loc=8}}, who notes that the ''[[Neue Bach-Ausgabe]]'' and the ''[[Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis]]'' do refer to the variations as "''Klavierübung IV''".</ref>

Nineteen copies of the first edition survive today. Of these, the most valuable is the {{lang|de|Handexemplar}} (Bach's personal copy of the published score),{{sfn|Wolff|1976}} discovered in 1974 in [[Strasbourg]] by the French musicologist [[Olivier Alain]] and now kept in the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France]], Paris. This copy includes printing corrections made by the composer and additional music in the form of fourteen canons on the Goldberg [[ground (music)|ground]] (see [[#Canons on the Goldberg ground, BWV 1087|below]]). The nineteen printed copies provide virtually the only information available to modern editors trying to reconstruct Bach's intent, as the autograph (handwritten) score has not survived. A handwritten copy of just the aria is found in the 1725 [[Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach]]. Christoph Wolff suggests on the basis of handwriting evidence that [[Anna Magdalena Bach|Anna Magdalena]] copied the aria from the autograph score around 1740; it appears on two pages previously left blank.