It is indeed ironic that a composer whose name will forever be associated with a work he did not write (Bach's Goldberg Variations) would have one of the finest works he did compose misattributed to Bach.

Johann Gottlieb Goldberg was employed from a very early age by Count Hermann Karl von Keyserlingk, the Russian Ambassador to the court of Saxony, who recognized the young man's prodigious talents as a keyboard player. Keyserlingk was acquainted with Johann Sebastian Bach and asked the great composer to write for him "a little night music" to soothe him to sleep when he suffered frequent bouts of insomnia. Bach responded with his Aria with 30 Diverse Variations, BWV 988, published as Book IV of Bach's Clavierübung.

Legend has it that young Goldberg (all of 14 at the time) played this keyboard work for the Count to lull him to sleep (although the exciting nature of many of the variations likely had the opposite effect!). Doubt has been cast on the veracity of this tale, related by Bach's earliest biographers, because of the technical difficulty of BWV 988, but it might just as well indicate how talented the young Goldberg was: contemporary sources speak of Goldberg's amazing keyboard expertise, including his remarkable sight-reading ability.

Details of Goldberg's life are sketchy, but it is believed that he studied with Johann Sebastian Bach as well as Bach's son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Johann Nikolaus Forkel, one of Bach's earliest biographers, wrote that Goldberg "was a very skillful keyboard player, but with no particular talent for composition." This remark has tainted Goldberg's legacy ever since, but Bach himself must have thought more highly of his pupil, as he encouraged Goldberg to write church cantatas for Leipzig. Indeed, perhaps the greatest testament to Goldberg's compositional gifts is this C major trio sonata, which passed as a work by the master himself for nearly two centuries.

The confusion over the authorship of this trio sonata dates from shortly after Goldberg's death. Breitkopf published the work under Goldberg's name in 1761, but three years later attributed it to Bach. Despite some uncertainty that the piece was actually the work of Bach, it earned a place in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, and was listed as BWV 1037. A 1953 article by scholar Alfred Dürr seemed to settle the question, but C. F. Peters somewhat stubbornly continued to attribute the work to Bach in their catalog.

One can sense the influence of Bach in this trio sonata, cast in four movements alternating slow and fast tempos, and it is entirely possible that Bach even contributed some helpful suggestions to his student — especially noteworthy is the triple fugue in the second movement.

© 2003 Jeff Eldridge