Masterpieces of Music: Beethoven, Part 6

Now, finally, we come to the Diabelli Variations--please see the previous post for the background. I felt this piece needed the stage to be set. We saw that the variation form as a series of primarily melodic variations, originally improvised, over a repeating bass line or chord progression, has a very long history. We also saw that Bach achieved a marvelous synthesis of this technique with the other long-established one of canon in his Goldberg Variations.

I mention all this because the context is important. Bach and Beethoven are like two high mountains standing high above the valleys below. When Beethoven set out to write his variations on a waltz given to him by the publisher Diabelli, he was very conscious of the example of Bach. In a sense, the Diabelli variations are a response to the Goldberg Variations.

Beethoven, as you may imagine, did not want to duplicate Bach’s feat, but to see if he could surpass it. There is an interesting echo in Beethoven’s set. In the Goldbergs, Bach includes a quodlibet, a variation in which two different popular tunes are combined over the harmonic progression. Beethoven manages to parody a tune from Mozart’s Don Giovanni as one of his variations.

Here are a few points to be aware of regarding the piece:

• Beethoven was completely deaf when he composed these
• Anton Diabelli, the publisher and composer, wrote a waltz in early 1819 that he invited some 50 composers to write variations on
• Beethoven had a certain amount of disdain for the waltz, which he called a Schusterfleck “cobbler’s patch” meaning that it was crudely constructed
• He wrote about 2/3rds of the music in 1819, then set it aside until 1823, when he added a number of variations to complete the work
• Even for Beethoven this piece is very unusual—the theme is undistinguished and so a lot of the variations are parodies, mocking various aspects of the theme. I’m reminded of an English teacher I had at university who asked us to read a short story by Franz Kafka called “In the Penal Colony”. This is a very dark story about a prison where there is a diabolical machine that carves the name of your crime onto your body. Our professor strode into the class, tossed the book on the lectern, grinned and said “this is a very funny story.” Then he went through it in detail and showed us how, by exaggeration, incongruity and other literary devices, the story is actually very funny—black humor, of course. Similarly, Beethoven’s variations show the theme in various comic guises through exaggeration, incongruity and other devices.
• It is also unusual because with Beethoven usually the opening of the piece signals the weight of what is to follow—but not in this case where the brevity and somewhat crude simplicity of the theme is no guide to what is to come—this is part of the joke.
• The Diabelli Variations are late Beethoven which poses some challenges to the listener as late Beethoven usually involves long forms with larger organization and each piece tends to use a unique form
• Also typical of late Beethoven is intense transformation—this theme is dissected, compressed, expanded, X-rayed and dissolved. By variation XX, if we hadn’t heard everything in between, we would hardly recognize the theme. It has evolved like a living organism
• Another quality of late Beethoven is that the whole work has an overall progression that we might call psychological or even spiritual—witness the transformation over 50 minutes of the mundane waltz into the transcendent final minuet

Beethoven, unique among composers, creates a musical work that has a personality, comes alive, and in this work we can hear that personality emerging from the simple and ordinary waltz theme.

Let’s look at the waltz. There are three important elements:

• A) the turn beginning to the melody (the bass line also has the same turn, inverted)
• B) the descending 4^ths and 5^ths from the opening of the melody and
• C) the modulating sequences in the second half.

The triple fugue that is the penultimate variation has three subjects, each of which uses one of these three elements. Here is Alfred Brendel playing the waltz and the first few variations with the score. The theme itself takes the first 54 seconds:

Another interesting aspect is mode: it is a cliché of Classical variations that after a few variations in the major, there is one in the parallel minor. Except for Var. 9 the first 28 variations are all in C major, then variations 29, 30, and 31 are all in C minor with the last having a section in Eb. Variation 32 is a triple fugue in Eb, which is the relative major of C minor, meaning that it is closely related by having the same key signature of three flats. The final variation, a minuet, returns to C major. Ironically, this transcendent minuet evokes the kind of grace and delicacy that Mozart is renowned for…

Just as in Kafka’s short story, there is something absurd about the greatest set of variations in the Classical Era being written on such a trivial waltz. It is a very Beethoven thing to do as he loved the challenge of making a great deal from very little. One thinks of the theme from the Fifth Symphony. I doubt any other composer in the whole thousand years of Western music could have matched this accomplishment, though Brahms, among others, certainly tried. Here is a 'roadmap' to the whole of the piece:

	Tempo	Meaning	Key	Material
Theme	Vivace	Lively	C maj.	A B C
Var I	Alla Marcia maestoso	March, majestic	C	B C
Var II	Poco allegro	Somewhat fast	C	C
Var III	L’istesso tempo	same tempo	C	A C
Var IV	Un poco vivace	A bit lively	C	A
Var V	Allegro vivace	Fast and lively	C	B
Var VI	Allegro ma non troppo e serioso	Fast, but not too much and serious	C	A
Var VII	Allegro	Fast	C	B C
Var VIII	Poco vivace	A bit lively	C	C
Var IX	Allegro pesante e risoluto	Fast, heavy & resolute	C min.	A
Var X	Presto	Very fast	C	C
Var XI	Allegretto	Moderately fast	C	A
Var XII	Un poco più moto	A bit faster	C	A inv.
Var XIII	Vivace	Lively	C	Bare ver.
Var XIV	Grave e maestoso	Slow and majestic	C	A C
Var XV	Presto scherzando	Very fast and playful	C	B
Var XVI	Allegro	Fast	C	B
Var XVII	[Allegro]	[Fast]	C	B
Var XVIII	Poco moderato	Somewhat moderate	C	A
Var XIX	Presto	Very fast	C	C?
Var XX	Andante	Walking speed	C	Bare C?
Var XXI	Allegro con brio—meno allegro	Fast with energy—less fast (alternating)	C	A
Var XXII	Allegro molto alla ‘Notte e girono faticar’ di Mozart	Very fast after Mozart’s ‘Night and day I’ve been working…’	C	B
Var XXIII	Allegro assai	Very fast	C	A
Var XXIV	Fughetta: Andante	Little fugue: walking pace	C	B
Var XXV	Allegro	Fast	C	A B
Var XXVI	[No tempo given—same as prev.]		C	Bare
Var XXVII	Vivace	Lively	C	Bare
Var XXVIII	Allegro	Fast	C	C
Var XXIX	Adagio ma non troppo	Slow, but not too much	C min.	A
Var XXX	Andante, sempre cantabile	Walking, always singing	C min.	C
Var XXXI	Largo, molto expressivo	Very slow, very expressive	C min. (& Eb)	A B ornate
Var XXXII	Fuga: Allegro	Fugue: fast	Eb maj.	B C A
Var XXXIII	Tempo di Minuetto moderato	Minuet speed	C maj	A B C

In the roadmap I have created the last column gives the thematic material used in each variation. The three basic elements, the turn figure, the descending 4ths and 5ths, and the rising chromatic progression I have labeled A, B and C. All three are in the theme, of course, but the only other place we find all three together are in the next-to-last fugue and in the final minuet. Every other variation focuses on one or two of these three elements. Often only one. For example, variations iv, vi, ix, xi, xii, xviii, xxi, xxiii and xxix use just the turn figure which is sometimes reduced to just a trill. That is pretty amazing in itself, that he could derive nine variations from those four little notes. The descending 4^th and 5^th figure is focused on in variations v, xv, xvi, xvii, xxii, and xxiv. Some variations I have marked “bare” meaning that the theme is reduced to its bare bones—in xiii, for example, most of the theme is taken away, leaving only rests! In xxviii, it is reduced to nothing but the diminished 7^th chord and tonic harmonies. In contrast, in var. xxxi an enormous amount of intricate ornamentation is added. But the most unique aspect of how Beethoven explores the theme is not by adding notes, as just about every other composer would have done, but by subtracting elements, dissolving the theme into its tiniest parts and then building something new from these fragments. For a composer, listening to this is like a lesson in how to write music. For any listener, the piece is a spiritual journey that reveals the hidden beauties that lie beneath the surface of even the most ordinary and unassuming things in the world—like a ‘cobbler’s patch’ waltz by the very ordinary composer Anton Diabelli.

To sum up: in this piece Beethoven re-invents the whole idea of variation: instead of each variation using the same chord progression or a minor version of it as so many other Classical period variation sets do, he takes the theme apart, discovers its constituent elements, fractures it, re-constructs it and finally transcends it.  Each variation is an interesting piece of music in itself, but the set as a whole, with all the interrelationships among the variations and to the original theme, is something unprecedented in music. Now here is the rest of the set, also in the performance by Brendel: