What instrument did Bach write the Goldberg Variations for?

harpsichord
What are the Goldberg Variations? Around 1741, Bach published a long and complicated keyboard piece, calling it Aria with diverse variations for a harpsichord with two manuals (keyboards).

What is special about the Goldberg Variations?

What are the Goldberg Variations? The work itself consists of 30 variations, starting with a single ‘Aria’. After transforming the music over the course of an hour, using different time signatures, textures, and harmonies, the beautiful first aria returns, with a completely different feel from the first hearing.

Are the Goldberg Variations Baroque?

The variations found just after each canon are genre pieces of various types, among them three Baroque dances (4, 7, 19); a fughetta (10); a French overture (16); two ornate arias for the right hand (13, 25); and others (22, 28).

What grade is Goldberg Variations Aria?

If I remember correctly, the Aria and Variation 1 have been set for Grade 8.

How long does it take to play the Goldberg Variations?

The piece is eighty minutes long, and mostly in G major. Just think about that for a minute. Then (without a bathroom break) think very similar thoughts for 79 more minutes, winding around the same basic themes, and then you will have some idea of what it’s like to experience—you might even say survive—the Goldbergs.

Who made the first harpsichord?

The earliest surviving harpsichords were built in Italy in the early 16th century. Little is known of the early history of the harpsichord, but, during the 16th–18th century, it underwent considerable evolution and became one of the most important European instruments.

Do people still make harpsichords?

With time, such instruments came to dominate the scene, and the older heavy-frame instruments are almost never manufactured today. They retain historical value, however, since they were the instruments that early to mid-20th-century composers had in mind when they wrote their works.

Who invented harpsichord?

(A three-keyboard harpsichord dated 1702, sometimes attributed to Cristofori and bearing the arms of Ferdinando, is preserved at the Stearns Collection at the University of Michigan.) Cristofori apparently invented the piano about 1709, and, according to contemporary sources, four of his pianos existed in 1711.