Bach, Johann Sebastian

First edition of the "Goldberg" Variations, BWV 988, [1, (1 blank)], 32 pages, 4to (29.5 x 20.3cm), engraved throughout, fine decorative title, plate number 16 to title, watermark of a snake (scarcely discernible on many leaves), early nineteenth-century cloth-backed marbled boards, manuscript label to upper cover ("Clavir Uibung bestehend in einer Aria mit 30. Veränderungen vors Clavicymball von J. S. Bach. M. E."), signature of former owner to title ("M. Elias"), signature of later owner to front free endpaper ("Feigler Janka"), on guards throughout, browning and spotting to title, damp-staining, affecting mainly the lowest stave of music, at the beginning and end of the volume, stain to title and first 3 leaves of music, a few corners creased

RISM B 491; Hirsch, iii 40; Fuld, pp.252-253; Hoboken, i 112;  J.S. Bach, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, edited by Walter Emery and Christoph Wolff, V/2, Kritischer Bericht (1981), pp.91-102;  G. Kinsky, Die Originalausgaben der Werke Johann Sebastian Bachs (Vienna etc., 1937), pp.48ff.; 

As stated in the catalogue, the leaves are on guards. However, the volume is complete. There is browning and spotting to title, damp-staining, affecting mainly the lowest stave of music, at the beginning and end of the volume, a stain to title and first 3 leaves of music, and a few corners creased
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This is an unrecorded copy of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations: it has remained within the family of the present owner since about 1890. 

First editions of JS Bach's music published during his lifetime are of the greatest rarity at auction.  Only about twenty works were published by Bach and most of these are unobtainable. This is the only major source for the "Goldberg" Variations: no autograph manuscript exists. 

The "Goldberg" Variations BWV 988 represents the apogee of the Baroque variation form and is among Bach's most important keyboard works.  The edition is beautifully engraved and is one of the finest and rarest music editions of the eighteenth century.  It is the primary source for the "Goldberg" Variations: with the exception of a transcription of the opening aria by Anna Magdalena Bach in her "Klavierbüchlein", all the other surviving manuscripts of the work are apparently based directly or indirectly on this first edition.   

The present copy is unrecorded.  Eighteen surviving copies are located in the critical report to the modern scholarly complete edition (1981); all of these are now in institutional libraries. There is no copy in the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig, nor the Bach-Haus in Eisenach.  Copies have been sold in these rooms in 1925, 1959 (now at Princeton), and finally in 1992 (still in private hands).  A few others offered by Liepmannssohn of Berlin between 1893 and 1926 are untraced or lost. 

The snake watermark in this copy, which is discernible on only a few leaves, would appear to be the same as that on Bach's own Handexemplar, which is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.  However, there seems to have been only one issue of the first edition of the "Goldberg Variations" and so the four observable paper-types in the known copies do not indicate a chronological sequence.