Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a Theme by Diabelli is one of the towering works in the piano literature — an hour-long journey through the parodic, the solemn, and the sublime — yet it has the weirdest origin of all of Beethoven’s music.
In early 1819, Anton Diabelli came up with a publicity stunt for the Cappi & Diabelli music publishing firm: He solicited 50 composers across the Austrian empire to compose one variation each on a little waltz tune he had written.
At first, Beethoven balked at the idea. Diabelli’s dopey waltz theme was instantly recognizable as a cheap Schusterfleck (“cobbler’s patch”), in which the melody is repeated one step higher because the composer can’t think of anything better to do.
But Beethoven soon reconsidered. Perhaps he wanted to mock Diabelli’s waltz, or to demonstrate what musical marvels could be achieved even from so unpromisingly banal a beginning, and he soon began sketching variations on the tune.
As William Kinderman demonstrated in his illuminating 1989 monograph Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, Beethoven drafted 22 variations on Diabelli’s theme in 1819. These correspond to variations 3 through 14, 16 through 22, 27, 30, and 32 in the final work.
Beethoven then set aside these variations to work on his final three piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis. He resumed work on the variations in late 1822, adding two at the beginning, one in the middle, and a bunch towards the end for a total of 33, finishing in April 1823.
Why did Beethoven consider his Diabelli Variations complete with 33? Possibly he wanted to exceed by one the 32 Goldberg Variations of Bach, or his own 32 Variations on an Original Theme (WoO 80), or maybe because 33 was the next number after his 32 piano sonatas.
In 1824, Cappi & Diabelli published Beethoven’s 33 variations on Diabelli’s waltz as his “120tes Werk” (Opus 120). It was dedicated to Antonia Brentano. Here is a PDF of this first edition on the IMSLP website.
Along with Beethoven’s variations, Cappi & Diabelli also published the 50 variations by the numerous Tonsetzern and Virtuosen of the Austrian State, with a coda by Carl Czerny.
Beethoven’s previous sets of variations were usually published using the French word Variations, or sometimes the Italian Variazioni or the German Variationen. But here the word is Veränderungen, meaning “changes” or “alterations” or “transformations.” Beethoven had used this word only once before for his WoO 74 Variations (Day 117). Like then, it might have been an attempt to give the music a more German emphasis, perhaps in keeping with the Vaterländischer Künstlerverein (“Fatherland Art Association”) title page.
Several pianists have recorded a selection of the non-Beethoven Diabelli Variations, but here’s a recording of all 50 by Rudolf Buchbinder with animated score. It's labeled “Part II” because Beethoven’s variations were considered “Part I.”
Most of the 50 composers who contributed to Diabelli’s project have long been forgotten. But a few are familiar, including the first published composition by Franz Liszt, described in the score as a boy of 11 years born in Hungary.
Unlike the other 50 Austrian composers, Beethoven failed to pay much respect to Diabelli’s theme. As Alfred Brendel notes in the second part of his wonderful essay “Must Classical Music Be Entirely Serious?”:
apart from its sense of comedy, there is relatively little in the theme that informs the set as a whole. The theme has ceased to reign over its unruly offspring. Rather, the variations decide what the theme may have to offer them. Instead of being confirmed, adorned and glorified, it is improved, parodied, ridiculed, disclaimed, transfigured, mourned, stamped out and finally uplifted.
William Kinderman calls Diabelli’s theme a “beer hall waltz,” but also
a reservoir of unrealized possibilities. It was left to Beethoven to discover these possibilities, and in so doing to open up entirely new vistas in the history of variations form. Beneath the surface, this seemingly implausible project stimulated the composer’s deepest well-springs of imagination and inspiration.” (Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, p. 67)
In the first of two essays in Late Beethoven on the Diabelli Variations, Maynard Solomon writes:
By its utter indestructability, its imperviousness to perpetual attempts to dismantle it, Diabelli’s theme comes to stand for the unwearying tenacity of every individual, and gives token of assurance of a permanent place in the order of things. The ‘Diabelli’ Variations is not a conjurer’s trick demonstrating how an unlikely edifice can be built upon an absurd foundation. It is a demonstration of a different kind: how one thing can be radically transformed into another — or split into many — without itself being annihilated; it is an essay on creative metamorphosis and a promise of endurance.” (p. 21)
In the second essay he writes:
One way to understand the highly differentiated character of many of the individual variations is to view them as radically different modes of motion toward an unspecified objective — marching, striding, running, racing, dancing, along with others for which we have no descriptive words — always overcoming obstacles, sometimes easily, sometimes only by great exertion or adroit maneuvers.” (p. 180)
In her fascinating and throught-provoking essay “The Practical Wisdom of Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’ Variations”, Patricia Herzog discovers within the work a guide for living:
The significance of the Diabelli Variations depends, in my view, on our capacity to see the evolving nature of its thirty-three variations as the development of moral character, as the active or deliberative unfolding of a human life. Each human life is, if you will, endowed with a theme — a theme that both constrains and enables it, with which it both struggles and strives. As the greatness of Beethoven’s music lies in the transformation of Diabelli’s theme, so, too, we might say, the moral worth of a human life is measured not by its endowment, either natural or cultural — though this, too, cannot be ignore — but by what develops out of that endowment through a maturational process of criticism and reflection.
#Beethoven250 Day 334
Diabelli Variations (Opus 120), 1823
An animated score accompanies this studio performance by Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski.
Variation 1 immediately flouts tradition by deviating from the time signature and character of the theme. Beethoven turns the dance into a march, a form perhaps more appropriate for the monotonous harmonies of the theme but which also highlights their limitations.
Variation 2 returns to the ¾ meter of the theme but keeps the volume piano throughout, with alternating left and syncopated right hands. In his list of names for the variations, Brendel calls this one “Snowflake,” perhaps dancing as Debussy's do.
Variation 3 was Beethoven’s first variation in the 1819 lineup. The triple-meter rhythm now resembles a lullaby in the first half, but explores some contrapuntal intricacy in the second half.
Variation 4 starts off sounding more like a waltz than the original theme does, but then a crescendo with harmonic weirdness is guaranteed to alarm the couples on the dance floor.
Variation 5 is based around one of Beethoven’s rhythmic nuggets — two shorts and a long — that itself gives rise to variations of long-held chords and syncopation.
Variation 6 starts off as a canon but not quite evident because the melody begins with a trill followed by a broken chord. It sounds almost stately in spots and perhaps Beethoven was correct in specifying that it shouldn’t be played too seriously.
Variation 7 takes the theme into bass octaves, ornamented in the right hand with bouncing dotted notes and triplets. Brendel calls this one “Swiveling and Stamping.”
Variation 8 switches the hands from the previous variation, moving chords into the right hand and arpeggiated accompaniment in the left. Beethoven marks it “dolce e teneramente” (“sweetly and tenderly”) and more than one person has heard within a premonition of Brahms.
Variation 9 shifts to C minor for the first time. Beethoven builds the variation from the motif that begins Diabelli’s theme — the little turn before the chords begin. In each section, this bare repeated motif builds with additional accompaniment and released in a couple chords.
Variation 10, marked Presto, is the first through-composed variation, with an energetic series of octaves, chords, and bass trills.
When a tripartite structure is imposed on the Diabelli Variations, this is considered the conclusion of the first of three parts.
Variation 11 takes the turn figure at the beginning of Diabelli’s theme for another examination, turning it into a triplet motif. But the light textures make this a quiet and gently flowing interlude.
Variation 12 continues the flowing feel of the previous variation, but the tempo increases somewhat, and the momentum is interrupted by some long chords.
Variation 13 begins with a whacky disconnected passage that is 2/3 silence, alternating forte chords in a dotted rhythm, echoed by piano intervals, yet as William Kinderman notes (pp. 96–7), despite the ¾ time signature, it has an overall feel of a 4/4 march.
Variation 14 is in stark contrast. It’s explicitly in 4/4 time marked “Grave e maestoso,” the slowest variation so far, with a majestic double-dotted rhythm, yet we can’t quite believe its seriousness, so it builds up suspense for what’s going to follow.
Variation 15 was inserted by Beethoven in 1823 — a short 2/4 Presto Scherzando that begins with staccato chords again suggesting a march, but dissolving into more lyrical harmonic progressions.
Variation 16 is a jolt out of complacency, starting with a trill in the right hand and walking octaves in the bass, going straight into …
Variation 17, another in 4/4 time, and like the previous variation seeming to proclaim some kind of triumph. While the right hand busies itself energetically, the octaves in the bass march steadily for a while, and then go for the win.
Variation 18 resumes the ¾ rhythm of the theme for what at first seems like a lyrical repose. It becomes more fragmented and chromatic, but with a gorgeous ending.
Variation 19 brings back the original theme in a more literal way that we've heard recently, but greatly colored by figurations in both the left and right hands, the theme flashing in and out of audibility.
Variation 20 is a canon-like through-composed Andante that brings the work to a still and contemplative tranquility. In performance, this is approximately the halfway point. Alluding to the Missa Solemnis, William Kinderman calls it “the citadel of ‘inner peace’.”
Variation 21 leaps up in defiance, contrasting alternating 4/4 sections with trills and leaps and ¾ sections of rather agitated lyricism. Alfred Brendel calls this variation “Maniac and Moaner.”
Variation 22 quotes Leporello’s opening aria from Don Giovanni. Like the Don’s servant, Beethoven could well sing that “Night and day I slave away” in composing his variations, but he’s also suggesting that Diabelli lifted his theme from Mozart!
Concerning Variation 22, William Kinderman writes:
Leporello shares a psychological trait usually developed to a considerable degree by great artists — a capacity for ironic detachment. A quotation from Leporello fits the work whereas a quotation from the Don, or virtually any other character from the opera, would not: Beethoven’s relationship to his theme, like Leporello’s relationship to his master, is critical but faithful. And like Leporello, his variations now gain the capacity for disguise, as if they were not what they seem to be. With uncanny wit, this variation expands the scope of the set beyond the formalistic limits of art. (p. 104)
Variation 23 continues a little excursion into music history with an imitation of a bravura passage of fingerwork that resembles the first study in a famous Pianoforte-Method by Johann Baptist Cramer.
Variation 24 is labeled Fughetta. Playing legato with the soft pedal depressed, Beethoven takes the pianist back to the early 18th century. The hymn-like aura perhaps suggests a mood that Beethoven discovered within himself through his work on the Missa Solemnis.
Variation 25 is not an homage like the previous three but outright parody, a “distorted German dance” or “fumbling Ländler” as Kinderman calls it. This is also the beginning of the third and last section of the work.
Variation 26 is marked 3/8 like the previous variation but the notes are grouped as if it were 6/16, waves and waves of triples at seemingly the same tempo as the previous variation but with more notes.
Variation 27 subdivides the rhythm further. It’s still marked as 3/8 but now there are three triplets to the measure making it seem more like 9/16 with accentuated notes straining to realize a melody amidst the flurry.
Variation 28 is still moving at a breakneck speed but now in 2/4 with sforzandos imposing a duple rhythm that extracts humor from the simple repetition of a chord now and then a la “Our cat her kittens had” (Day 323).
Variation 29 shifts to C minor for only the second time in the work, but it will stay in C minor for the next three variations as well. This is through-composed twelve-measure ¾ Adagio.
Variation 30 is a minor-key variation from 1819, and at that time, it was the penultimate variation in the work. Curiously, it is not as interesting as the two minor-key variations that Beethoven surrounded it with in 1823.
Variation 31 is a long luxurious Largo, in performance the longest variation of the set. Fantasia-like runs accompany delicate chord progressions that remind some listeners of the 25th variation in Bach’s Goldberg set.
Variation 32 was the original conclusion to the work — a fugue that incorporates the intervals and repeated notes of Diabelli’s waltz theme. In keeping with the music-history concept of the Diabelli Variations, this is an homage to Handel.
Now how shall it end? At the conclusion of the Goldberg Variations, Bach repeated the theme that began the work, and Beethoven did something similar with the Arietta and variations in his Opus 111 Piano Sonata (Day 324). But those are themes that stand up on their own. The last thing we want is for Beethoven to reprise Diabelli’s stupid ditty, so after the fugue has reached its climax, and the pianist’s fingers have gone up and down the keyboard, Variation 32 dissipates, and Beethoven follows it in a way that is peculiar and touching.
Variation 33 is in the tempo of a minuet. If it alludes to the past, this would be Mozart. Alfred Brendel calls the fugue “a purifying ordeal from which the ‘waltz’ emerges transformed, ‘reborn’” as the minuet to which people once danced before the invasion of the waltz.
But wait! There’s more. Several measures from the very end, the Diabelli Variations allude to the Arietta that framed the variations in the Opus 111 Piano Sonata. Or as Lewis Lockwood put it (Beethoven, p. 395):
The path to the transcendental has once again been traversed, now all the way from the Viennese ballroom through human tragedy and comedy, finally arriving once more, and by a different route, at the starry heavens.
#Beethoven250 Day 334
Diabelli Variations (Opus 120), 1823
A dynamite live performance by Korean pianist Jong Hwa Park at the Seoul Arts Center.
#Beethoven250 Day 334
Diabelli Variations (Opus 120), 1823
What it lacks in singular artistic vision it gains in sheer charm: 19 students from the Purcell School (@PurcellSchool) near London take turns to play the entire composition.