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The world has been waiting for almost 250 years for a completely authoritative text of the "Goldberg Variations," which were published in Bach's lifetime (in 1741 or 1742) as the fourth part of the Clavierilbung. Balthasar Schmid of Nuremburg engraved them with great care; nonetheless, his elegant engraving contained a few wrong notes, and some slurs, ties, accidentals, and ornament signs were inadvertently omitted. In addition, some of the ornaments are ambiguous, and some blurred. In the absence of Bach's autograph, Schmid's engraving must remain the primary source for the "Goldberg Variations," and Bach's own 'corrected' copy 1 takes pride of place over the other extant copies corrected by Bach. When the Bach Gesellschaft (hereafter BGA) published the "Goldberg Variations" in 1853 2 , the editor, C. F. Becker, followed his own copy of the original engraving fairly closely; however, he introduced some rather 3.

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