Diabelli Variations - Background

Background

The work was composed after Diabelli, a well known music publisher and composer, in the early part of 1819 sent a waltz of his creation to all the important composers of the Austrian Empire, including Franz Schubert, Carl Czerny, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and the Archduke Rudolph, asking each of them to write a variation on it. His plan was to publish all the variations in a patriotic volume called Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, and to use the profits to benefit orphans and widows of the Napoleonic Wars. Franz Liszt was not included, but it seems his teacher Czerny arranged for him to also provide a variation, which he composed at the age of 11.

Beethoven had had a connection with Diabelli for a number of years. About a slightly earlier period, 1815, Beethoven's authoritative biographer, Alexander Wheelock Thayer, writes, "Diabelli, born near Salzburg in 1781, had now been for some years one of the more prolific composers of light and pleasing music, and one of the best and most popular teachers in Vienna. He was much employed by Steiner and Co., as copyist and corrector, and in this capacity enjoyed much of Beethoven's confidence, who also heartily liked him as a man." At the time of his project for variations on a theme of his own by various composers, Diabelli had advanced to become a partner in the publishing firm of Cappi and Diabelli.

The oft-told but now questionable story of the origins of this work is that Beethoven at first refused categorically to participate in Diabelli's project, dismissing the theme as banal, a Schusterfleck or 'cobbler's patch,' unworthy of his time. Not long afterwards, according to the story, upon learning that Diabelli would pay a handsome price for a full set of variations from him, Beethoven changed his mind and decided to show how much could be done with such slim materials. (In another version of the legend, Beethoven was so insulted at being asked to work with material he considered beneath him that he wrote 33 variations to demonstrate his prowess.) Today, however, this story is taken as more legend than fact. Its origins are with Anton Schindler, Beethoven's unreliable biographer, whose account conflicts in a number of ways with several established facts, indicating that he did not have first-hand knowledge of events.

At some point, Beethoven certainly did accept Diabelli's proposal, but rather than contributing a single variation on the theme, he planned a large set of variations. To begin work he laid aside his sketching of the Missa Solemnis, completing sketches for four variations by early 1819. (Schindler was so far off the mark that he claimed, "At the most, he worked three months on it, during the summer of 1823". Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven, claimed that "Beethoven wrote these Variations in a merry freak".) By the summer of 1819, he had completed twenty-three of the set of thirty-three. In February 1820, in a letter to the publisher Simrock, he mentioned "grand variations", as yet incomplete. Then he laid the work aside for several years – something Beethoven rarely did – while he returned to the Missa Solemnis and the late piano sonatas.

In June 1822, Beethoven offered to Peters "Variations on a waltz for pianoforte alone (there are many)". In the autumn of the same year he was in negotiations with Diabelli, writing to him, "The fee for the Variat. should be 40 ducats at the most if they are worked out on as large a scale as planned, but if this should not take place, it would be set for less". It was probably in February 1823 that Beethoven returned to the task of completing the set. By March or April 1823, the full set of thirty-three variations was finished. By April 30 a copy was ready to send to Ries in London. Beethoven kept the original set of twenty-three in order, but inserted nos. 1 (the opening march), 2, 15, 23 (sometimes called a parody of a Cramer finger exercise), 24 (a lyrical fughetta), 25, 26, 28, 29 (the first of the series of three slow variations leading to the final fugue and minuet), 31 (the third, highly expressive slow variation leading directly into the final fugue and minuet) and 33 (the concluding minuet).

What prompted Beethoven to write a set of "grand variations" on Diabelli's theme? One suggestion is the influence of the Archduke Rudolph who, in the previous year, under Beethoven's tutelage, had composed a huge set of forty variations on a theme by Beethoven. In a letter of 1819 to the Archduke, Beethoven mentions that "in my writing-desk there are several compositions that bear witness to my remembering Your Imperial Highness".

Several theories have been advanced on why he decided to write thirty-three variations. He might have been trying to outdo himself after his 32 Variations in C minor, or trying to outdo Bach's Goldberg Variations with its total of thirty two pieces (two presentations of the theme and thirty variations). There is a story that Diabelli was pressing Beethoven to send him his contribution to the project, whereupon Beethoven asked, "How many contributions have you got?" "Thirty-two", said Diabelli. "Go ahead and publish them", Beethoven is purported to have replied, "I shall write thirty-three all by myself." Alfred Brendel observes, "In Beethoven's own pianistic output, the figures 32 and 33 have their special significance: 32 sonatas are followed by 33 variations as a crowning achievement, of which Var. 33 relates directly to the thirty-second's final adagio." And Brendel adds, whimsically, "There happens to be, between the 32 Variations in C minor and the sets Opp. 34 and 35, a numerical gap. The Diabelli Variations fills it."

Diabelli published the work quickly as Op. 120 in June of the same year, adding the following introductory note:

We present here to the world Variations of no ordinary type, but a great and important masterpiece worthy to be ranked with the imperishable creations of the old Classics—such a work as only Beethoven, the greatest living representative of true art—only Beethoven, and no other, can produce. The most original structures and ideas, the boldest musical idioms and harmonies are here exhausted; every pianoforte effect based on a solid technique is employed, and this work is the more interesting from the fact that it is elicited from a theme which no one would otherwise have supposed capable of a working-out of that character in which our exalted Master stands alone among his contemporaries. The splendid Fugues, Nos. 24 and 32, will astonish all friends and connoisseurs of serious style, as will No2. 6, 16, 17, 23, &c. the brilliant pianists; indeed all these variations, through the novelty of their ideas, care in working-out, and beauty in the most artful of their transitions, will entitle the work to a place beside Sebastian Bach's famous masterpiece in the same form. We are proud to have given occasion for this composition, and have, moreover, taken all possible pains with regard to the printing to combine elegance with the utmost accuracy.

In the following year, 1824, it was republished as Volume 1 of the two-volume set Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, the second volume comprising the 50 variations by 50 other composers. Subsequent editions no longer mentioned Vaterländischer Künstlerverein.