J.S. Bach. First edition of the Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, 1741

Johann Sebastian Bach

Clavier Ubung bestehend in einer Aria mit verschiedenen Veraenderungen vors Clavicimbal mit 2 Manualen. Denen Liebhabern zur Gemüths-Ergetzung verfertiget von Johann Sebastian Bach Königl. Pohl. u. Churfl. Saechs. Hoff-Compositeur, Capellmeister, u. Directore Chori Musici in Leipzig, Nuremberg: Balthasar Schmid, [1741]

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, damp-staining, affecting chiefly the lower margin and the lowest system of music, browning, some staining and a few tiny tears to title, one tear in lower margin with old repair, a few corners creased

ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED EDITIONS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THIS COPY IS UNRECORDED IN THE MODERN SCHOLARLY COMPLETE EDITION.

IN ANY EVENT, FIRST EDITIONS OF J.S. 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 now unobtainable. This is the only major source for the Goldberg Variations: no autograph manuscript exists.

The Goldberg Variations BWV 988 represents the summit 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.

But more than just representing a peak within Bach's mighty oeuvre, it would be fair to say that, like no other work by the composer, the Goldberg Variations, with their sublime aria theme and 30 stupendously inventive variations (every third of which is a canon of extraordinary subtlety and beauty), have come to be regarded as a shorthand for the very essence of musical genius, and as one of the greatest achievements of human creation and indeed civilisation. 

The present copy is not among the eighteen surviving copies located in the critical report to the Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke (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.

Janka Feigler, an earlier owner of the edition, is evidently one and the same as the one-time pupil of Liszt and spouse (1858-1911) of the Hungarian journalist and councillor József Márkus, whom she married in 1877.

LITERATURE:

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.

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's, London, 27 November 2013 (lot 145)