Should a diligent scholar try to reconstruct from Bach’s pieces his technique, so far as it had influenced musical form, he would soon be brought to a pause. For when we examine this literature, we see that to the master everything was possible, and that he never gave form to a conception for the sake of technique. He is a stupendous genius who does not write for everybody, and therefore his compositions are often difficult; but the difficulties are never against the genius of the clavier, and can be conquered by anything but idleness. He has, again, written some taking show-pieces, like the Prelude and Fugues in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 29), which, as “paying” salon pieces, sound much harder than they are; and, alongside of these again, are pieces which spring from the very joy in the abundance of possible techniques and of new conceptions. To this class belongs, if genuine, the Fantasia in A minor (Steingräber, vii. 8), in which pure technical fireworks are let off, of short scale passages for both hands, swinging chords and octaves, running motives with astonishing passage effects, passages of sixths with over and under accompaniments, and melodious phrases with embellishing harmonies. But here the first rank is taken by the famous “Goldberg” variations, already printed by Bach, partly set for two manuals, an album of thirty technical conceptions, in which everything possible in tone-material is contained, from arioso to canon, from _grave_ to _presto_; everything, in fact, which Bach ever adopted for the setting of his ideas. The twenty-ninth variation, which can also be played on one manual, brings before us chords and passages of interwoven beauty which prepare beforehand the way for Liszt. Even in technique, then, the genius of Bach stretches over centuries.