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