Which composer wrote the 'Goldberg Variations'?

The composer who wrote the Goldberg Variations was Johann Sebastian Bach. The work, catalogued as BWV 988, is a keyboard composition consisting of an opening aria followed by 30 variations.

Bach published it in 1741 as part of his Clavier-Übung series. The title page describes it as an aria with variations for a two-manual harpsichord. The music is built over the bass and harmonic pattern of the opening aria rather than treating the melody as a conventional theme in every variation.

The work is named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, a talented young keyboardist who may have performed it for Count Hermann Karl von Keyserlingk. That famous story comes from an early Bach biography by Johann Nikolaus Forkel, written decades later, and historians have questioned how accurately it describes the commission.

The Goldberg Variations are often performed on modern piano, although Bach specified a two-manual harpsichord. Every third variation is a canon, with the interval between imitating voices gradually expanding. The composer’s name is also linked symbolically to 14 canons discovered in his personal copy of the printed edition: B-A-C-H corresponds to 14 in letter-number notation.