Gilded Goldbergs are put here when the project started rather than in the year and at the op. number of their completion.  Beginning purely practically — transcription of a few Goldberg Variations for two pianos so as to be able to play and relish their ingenuities with ease and clarity, it slowly and shyly entered further and further reaches of fantasy, still always based firmly in the sheer social and artistic delights of this domestic medium. 

"Shyly" is an understatement.  I felt guilty and ashamed.  But desire knows no curb:  nature's voice triumphed over the murmurings of compunction, and what had begun as occasional and intermittent finished as a comprehensive coverage of Bach's entire span from aria to aria, an odyssey of styles and techniques, dedicated for the most part to friends, colleagues, pupils "pictured within" (often incorporating their way of playing), that ran alongside some five years'-worth of other, more limited, original compositions.