Beethoven, "Diabelli Variations"

Born in 1781 near Salzburg, Anton Diabelli was a musician of limited creativity but with great skills as an impresario. As a young man, he also pursued ecclesiastical studies which he did not complete due to unmanageable circumstances, such as Napoleon's handing over to the State the monasteries where he intended to study. Thus it was that in 1803 he settled in Vienna intending to pursue a career in music, for he had already composed, after all, half a dozen masses. In the capital of the empire, he taught piano and guitar and composed simple pieces for the delight of the rising bourgeoisie, but his main source of income was his work as a copyist and proofreader for local publishing houses.

Capri & Diabelli Publishers
By 1817 he had set up his own company, and the following year he formed a partnership with Pietro Cappi, a well-known art dealer, and engraver. The lusty firm Capri & Diabelli made its first publication in December 1818; before long it was known as a purveyor of folk dances and arrangements of opera pieces for the amateur market. In order to balance the catalog and reach a wider market, in 1819 Diabelli began to send a waltz of his own to the most prominent Austrian composers for them to devise a variation based on it. The compilation was to be published for the benefit of the families of soldiers who had fallen in the recent wars.

Anton Diabelli (1781 - 1858)

By 1823, fifty composers had sent the publisher their contribution. Among them, to name but a few, were Schubert, Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, Hummel, Czerny (including the latter's eleven-year-old pupil Franz Liszt, thanks to the good offices of his teacher). One variation per composer, with the exception of Beethoven who sent thirty-three.

At the time he received the waltz, Beethoven was working on the composition of the Missa Solemnis... and was not very interested. But after a while, the idea of an encyclopedic work on the technique of the variations aroused his enthusiasm. When the Mass was finished in 1822, he completed the formidable set of variations and sent them to Diabelli, who published them as the master's Opus 120, also forming the first volume of the compilation for profit. The remaining fifty authors were grouped in Volume II.

The Diabelli Waltz
Initially, Beethoven not only disapproved of the piece but described it as being as musical as a "cobbler's patch". To some scholars, the qualification seems appropriate if one looks at its structure of "musical sequences repeated one after the other, each time modulated at similar intervals." This is undoubtedly true, but opinions on the musical value of this sequence vary over a wide range. For the most benevolent, this is a wholesome, graceful piece, devoid of any affectation or sentimentality. At the other extreme, there is nothing here but banality, a "beer hall waltz"... To form your own opinion, nothing better to pay full attention to the theme, in the video below.

33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, C Major, Opus 120
Here, however, there are no two opinions. The experts are unanimous in their enthusiasm for the work's grandeur. Hans von Büllow called it "a microcosm of Beethoven's genius". Another sees in it a mixture of "heavenly serenity, wild passion and noble majesty". It has also been compared to the Goldberg Variations for its grandeur, depth and stylistic and emotional calibre.
However, for the ordinary listener, this inspired mastery has proved difficult to assimilate. Its sheer length requires extreme concentration sustained over time, hence publishers and even performers have tried to rearrange or manipulate the work in order to make it "lighter" to the ear. But such lightness would only succeed in weakening a masterpiece which, in any case, is the result of an enormous effort of the intellect, considering the extreme simplicity of the original theme.

Published in Vienna in 1823 by Capri & Diabelli, the work is dedicated to Antonie Brentano, once noted as one of the probable "Immortal Beloved" of an earlier period in the master's life. The complete work lasts about an hour.

The rendition is by the young Mexican maestro Gavin Arturo Gamboa.