Aria

That the Aria is not the theme but itself a variation – or, rather, a melodious and rich setting of harmonies accompanying a certain model bass-line – has been noted already, and given the Goldberg's aim to create self-contained movements of a very distinctive character each time, a question is, What kind of piece is the Aria?

In some respects this is obviously a generic sarabande tendre, with leisurely pulse, slow harmonic rhythm, harmonies made from the full triads, various emphases on the second beat of the bar, a singing melody, no upbeat. Like Christoph Bach's simpler Sarabande (see Example 3, p. 37), the Aria also has a single chord at the end of each half (the traditional French sarabande has a feminine cadence with two chords, strong–weak), and again like it and older sarabandes generally, it gives a series of broken chords to the left hand. (But older sarabandes of Christoph Bach's kind were much more lively and sprightly than those of Bach and Handel.) Starting with a quite high right-hand solo and moving towards more continuous and melodious semiquavers in the last half-dozen bars are characteristics that can be found in several of the sarabandes of the French Suites. There as here, one might have the impression that the piece before one is a sarabande doublée, i.e. a fluent variation of a chordal, perhaps richly chordal, original.