Robert Peters wrote: >An interesting account of his impressions of Bach's Goldberg Variations. I assume his writing "Goldbach Variations" in the subject line was an unintentional substitution, Robert having Bach on his mind...and yet.... In the middle of the 18th century, an amateur mathematician, named Christian Goldbach announced a conjecture, so far as I know, neither proven nor refuted to this day, that every even number can be expressed as the sum of two primes (the number one, for this purpose being considered a prime). The possibly unperceived entry of the amateur mathematician into a thread on J.S. Bach is not necessarily inappropriate and perhaps the work of forces beyond our understanding rather than mere accident. The common attraction that mathematics and the music of Bach has for some minds was seized upon by Douglas Hofstadter in his book *Goedel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid*, which contains a reference to Goldbach's conjecture on pages 395-5. Walter Meyer