A series of canons from the Goldberg Variations collection, representing the pinnacle of contrapuntal complexity. These pieces require profound concentration to manage the overlapping voices.
The primary struggle is maintaining the distinct melodic character of the voices during the dense contrapuntal writing.
Canons BWV 1072-1078 is rated Henle level 6 of 9 — advanced repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 7–8. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 8.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 6 — meaning you can already play level 5–6 pieces cleanly. Learning it one level early is possible as a stretch piece, but more than that usually leads to months of frustration.
A typical performance of Canons BWV 1072-1078 lasts about 10 minutes.
Canons BWV 1072-1078 is available as free public-domain sheet music on IMSLP — the score is linked directly from this page.