Johann Gottlieb Goldberg was a German virtuoso harpsichordist, organist, and composer of the late Baroque and early Classical period. He is most famous for lending his name, as the probable original performer, to the renowned Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) of J.S. Bach. A dearth of dependable biographical information and the small number of available compositions have left many details of his life and work unclear.
Johann Gottlieb Goldberg was probably of German ancestry, and was born son of Johann Goldberg (instrument maker) in Danzig (Gdansk). Little is known for certain about his childhood, other than that he was a child prodigy. He seems to have attracting the attention of Hermann Karl von Keyserlingk, the Russian ambassador to the Saxon court, who brought him from in Danzig to Dresden in the mid 1730's. .
The main thing that is known about Goldberg's early life is that he was a pupil of J.S. Bach, placed with him for study by Keyserlingk. The most likely date for this to have happened was 1737. J.S. Bach's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, also claimed Goldberg for a pupil. If this was so, it is unknown whether the ten-year-old studied with W.F. Bach first in Dresden and was recommended to the father by him, or whether J.S. Bach, when the boy had to return to Dresden, referred him to W.F. Bach. Around 1746 J.G. Goldberg was a pupil of J.S. Bach in Leipzig. One thing that is indisputable is that young Goldberg was a keyboard player of exceptional skill and virtuosity, even at the age of ten, and was already composing by then.
An early J.S. Bach scholar and his first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, tells the famous story that Goldberg, while in the service of Count von Keyserlingk (the ambassador received this title in 1741), was often asked to play music for him late into the night because Keyserlingk was an insomniac. Goldberg, it is said, asked his famous teacher to provide some new music that he might play on these late night bouts. J.S. Bach responded with a massive and masterly set of keyboard variations based on an aria, which may have been by Goldberg.
