Alfred Brendel (piano)
Early in 1819 the composer and music publisher Anton Diabelli wrote to fifty of the most prominent musicians in Austria, enclosing a simple waltz-tune he had written, and asking each of them to contribute a variation on it, as a contribution to what he called a "National Artists' Society". The project took several years to come to fruition, but among the composers who eventually responded were Schubert, with a characteristically melancholy variation in the minor; and, in 1822, the 11-year-old Liszt, who was studying in Vienna at the time.
Legend has it that Beethoven at first refused to have anything to do with what he described as a piece of "cobbler's patch", and that it wasn't for a further four years that he turned his attention to his own contribution: not just a single variation, but a vast self-contained set of thirty-three. It's true that Beethoven was disparaging about Diabelli's tune, but he actually set to work on his variations almost as soon as he received it, sketching out two-thirds of them before laying the project aside in order to concentrate on his Missa solemnis . By the time he returned to the variations, towards the end of 1822, he had completed not only the Mass but also his last three piano sonatas, Opp.109, 110 and 111; and the experience of the late sonatas clearly left its mark on those portions of the 'Diabelli' variations that came after them.
When Beethoven took up the 'Diabelli' Variations again he didn't simply continue from the point at which he had left them, but expanded them from within, radically altering both the work's structure and its character. The interpolations were largely of two types: variations which reflected Beethoven's recently awakened interest in Baroque counterpoint, and parodies seemingly designed to increase the work's overall element of humour. The most striking parody had, however, been present in the composition's first phase: according to Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny, it was Diabelli's pestering the composer to complete the work that prompted him to cast one of the variations (No.22) as a reworking of Leporello's 'Notte e giorno faticar' ('Slaving away night and day') from Don Giovanni .
© Misha Donat
