This essay was written as program notes for a performance of the Diabelli Variations at Old First Concerts in San Francisco, which may be heard here.
The genesis of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations is one of those colorful stories in music history that is actually true. Anton Diabelli was a composer and music publisher in Vienna in Beethoven’s time, who in the year 1819 came up with the idea of sending a little waltz of his own composition to every known composer in Austria, and soliciting from each a single variation on it, to be published all together as a sort of compendium of Viennese music. In fact this collection did eventually appear, in 1824, with contributions from about 50 composers, among them Franz Schubert and the 11-year-old Franz Liszt. Beethoven, when initially approached, had predictably nothing but disdain for the project, not to mention the rather silly waltz itself, and refused to take part.
Yet he became intrigued despite himself with the little tune, for in the ensuing months, taking up the matter on entirely his own terms, he sketched out not one but 20 variations. These he then set aside for three years, turning his attention to the completion of the Missa Solemnis and to the last three piano sonatas. Returning to the project in late 1822, he finished the work the following spring and presented to Diabelli something the publisher could hardly have foreseen, a monumental assemblage of 33 variations, requiring almost an hour to perform and constituting a veritable encyclopedia of Beethoven's accumulated mastery of variation technique.
The whole character of this extraordinary work stems from the peculiar nature of the theme. Though not without charm it is essentially trivial; it would seem inconceivable to build so great an edifice on so flimsy a foundation. The Diabelli Variations fall in the heart of what we refer to as Beethoven’s third or late creative period, when his music reaches emotional realms hitherto unknown in music, and is often intensely personal and spiritual in nature. How then does the late Beethoven, so immersed in great and lofty endeavors, dive headlong into the slapstick world of Diabelli’s waltz?
One answer may lie in the composer's attitude toward humor. Beethoven's music throughout his life is full of humor, and often of a quite gruff variety. In his later works, the composer often seeks to blend humor with other gentler traits, as if to synthesize it into the broader range of human experience, and at times transforming it into a sort of warm, affable 'good humor'.
The Diabelli Variations deal with this question head on. The work is at its heart, for all its length and complexity, a comic one - a sort of apotheosis of humor. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny. Yet it also reveals a deeper emotional and psychological drama, and the grand sweep of the piece can be seen in the broadest terms as a gradual process of transcending the triviality of the theme to attain a higher spiritual plane.
This upward path, from the ridiculous to the sublime as it were, is hardly a linear one, and the comic element reasserts itself vigorously throughout. Beethoven is merciless in mocking Diabelli's theme; in particular the banality of the repeated chords with which the waltz begins comes in for much ridicule. A wonderful example is the very first variation, a grandiose march where the pomp and bluster of the declamation is quite at odds with the vapidity of the duly reiterated chords - the effect is predictably preposterous. With a multiplicity of meaning so typical of this piece however, this variation, one inserted by Beethoven in the later stage of the compositional process, serves notice that the work ahead, while of a comic cast, is also of grand and significant scale.
The repeated chords reappear variously as an inane hammering (Var. 21), a playful tremolo (Var. 10), or a blaring trumpet call in the dual march variations 16 and 17. In No. 13, the most comical of all, Beethoven seems to be illustrating the redundancy of these chords by simply omitting most of them, leaving more empty space than notes. The idea of repetition more generally is also taken up, for example with mock sententiousness in Var. 6 (marked serioso), or in Var. 9, which consists exclusively of the little turn from the theme's first measure reiterated with unyielding obstinacy.
Alongside the comedy, however, other moods emerge. A lyrical, pastoral vein appears already with the 2nd and 3rd variations, and is revisited regularly (Var. 8, 11, 12, 18, 26). Toward the middle of the work, a more serious, probing, philosophical tone enters, notably in the slow variations 14 and 20.
It is extraordinary how Beethoven transforms the element of repetition from its comic origins to express these deeper sentiments. Beethoven is often intrigued by the idea of stasis, finding ways to create an impression of vast space and to make time almost stand still. Here he probes the potential stillness inherent in simple repetition, creating for example an effect of poetic musing in Var. 2, a stately breadth in Var. 14, or in Var. 20 a haunting, mystical calm.
There are two aspects of the Diabelli Variations which are particularly shocking at first hearing. One is its chromaticism, which becomes increasingly marked, even bizarre, as the piece progresses. The other is the extremity of its contrasts, most notably in the middle third of the work, where they become virtually dissociative. We are used to extremes of character in Beethoven's music, but not to hearing them juxtaposed so rudely. In particular, Beethoven seems deliberately to follow the most profound and contemplative variations with the most ridiculous thing possible. It is as if his nobler spirit attempts to take hold, but is uncouthly cast aside by the farcical little devils lingering from Diabelli's waltz.
In the most disconcerting such moment, the serene contemplation of Var. 20 is shattered by the shrieking, cackling trills of No. 21. There follow two variations of frank parody: No. 22, a send-up of Leporello’s opening aria (Nott’ e giorno faticar) from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and No. 23, a spoof of a piano etude (by Cramer) which would have been well known in Beethoven's time, the pianist’s fingers scurrying madly in a mock display of virtuosity.
The spiritual vein then patiently returns with a more affectionate type of parody: a fughetta in the style of Bach - and an amazingly skillful and beautiful imitation it is. With this oasis of crystalline loveliness, the phase of dissociated contrasts seems to have ended, and from here the work begins to build in a more direct and integrated way toward the final crisis.
Starting with Var. 25, where the repeated chords reappear in the guise of a playful German dance, the intensity increases up through the maniacal insistence of Var. 28. Then comes a group of three slow variations, all in C minor (till now every variation but one has been in C Major). Here all irony is at last left behind and the music sings with full and open pathos, above all in the third and greatest of the group, a grand and tragic Largo. This last also offers another tribute to Bach in its highly ornamental Baroque arioso style (and rather direct reference to the great 25th variation of the Goldberg Variations.)
From this point of utmost emotion, the work modulates to E-flat Major and arrives at its culmination, Var. 32, a great double fugue. Here the insipid repeated notes of the waltz theme are transfigured into a grandly heroic fugue subject. This music of incomparable energy and vitality ultimately reaches a titanic climax, on a diminished seventh chord.
Here the crisis is reached - after plumbing the depths of sorrow and scaling the heights of exultation, how is the work to resolve itself? An indescribably strange and wondrous transition, which no harmony textbook anywhere could possibly allow, leads back to the home key and to the answer... and it is, of all things, a minuet. Simple, graceful, yet deeply personal and expressive, this minuet brings together the various elements of the work: the dance, now transfigured to its most elevated form; the pastoral; and the spiritual. The comic is now fully subsumed in warmth and contentment. As so often in his late works, Beethoven's answer to great philosophical questions is simplicity and acceptance.
The minuet leads directly into a coda which seems to spiral ever higher into the ether, finally reaching a plane of exquisite and transcendent stillness, reminiscent of similar moments in the last piano sonata, Op. 111. The final chord launches the work forever upward into the blue.