Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

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Music reviews of Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

Music Review: Beethoven steals the show
Rating: 5 Stars

No other work by Beethoven is so rich in allusion, humour, and parody. Trivial or repetitious features of the waltz, such as the C major chords repeated ten-fold in the right hand in the opening bars, can be mercilessly exaggerated, as in variation 21, or dissolved into silence, as in variation 13. Inconspicuous elements of the theme, such as the ornamental turn heard at the outset, can assume astonishing importance, as in variations 9 and 11, which are based throughout on the turn. Several variations allude to Mozart, Bach, and other composers. The most obvious of these is the reference, in the unison octaves of variation 22, to "Notte e giorno faticar" from the beginning of Mozart's Don Giovanni. This allusion is brilliant not only through the musical affinity of the themes -which share, e.g., the same descending fourth and fifth- but through the reference to Mozart's Leporello. Beethoven's relationship to his theme, like Leporello's relationship to his master, is critical but faithful. And like Leporello, the variations after this point gain the capacity for disguise. Variation 23 is an étude-like parody of pianistic virtuosity alluding to the Pianoforte-Method by J.B.Cramer, whereas variation 24, the Fughetta, shows an affinity in its intensely sublimated atmosphere to some organ pieces from the third part of the Clavierübung by Bach.

The work as a whole consists of one large form with three distinct regions. The opening variations remain close to basic parameters of the theme (such as its metre) and show gradually increasing freeedom, which at last turns into dissociation in the contrasting canonic variations Nos. 19 and 20, and in No. 21, in which the structural parts of each variation half are themselves placed into opposition. In performance time, these variations represent the midpoint. A sense of larger formal coherence is created through unusually direct reference to the melodic shape of the original waltz in three variations inserted in 1823 -Nos. 1, 15, and 25. In No. 25 the waltz is reincarnated as a humorous German dance, but this image is gradually obliterated in the interconnected series of fast variations culminating in No. 28, in which harsh dissonances dominate every strong beat throughout.

After Variation 28, we enter a transfigured realm, in which Diabelli's waltz, and the world it represents, seem to be left behind. A group of three slow variations in the minor culminates in Variation 31, an elaborate aria reminiscent of the decorated minor variation of Bach's Goldberg set, while also foreshadowing the style of Chopin. The energetic fugue on E flat that follows is initially Handelian in character; its second part builds to a tremendous climax with three subjects combined simultaneously before the fugue dissipates into a powerful dissonant chord. An impressive transition leads to C major, and to the final and most subtle variation of all: a Mozartian minuet whose working-through through rhythmic means leads, in the coda, to an ethereal texture, strongly reminiscent of the famous Arietta movement of Beethoven's own last sonata, Op 111, composed in 1822. Herein lies the final surprise: the Arietta movement, itself influenced by the Diabelli project, became in turn Beethoven's model for the last of the Diabelli Variations. The end of the series of allusions thus became a self-reference and final point of orientation within an artwork whose vast scope ranges from the ironic caricature to sublime transformation of the commonplace waltz.

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