James' CD Pick of the Month

Beethoven: Diabelli Variations
Maurizio Pollini (piano)
(DG 459.645)

Did Antonio Diabelli get lucky despite or because of his overbearing nature? He started out in life with serious intent. Vienna-born, he studied as a boy with Joseph Haydn’s brother Michael. At 19 he moved north to Upper Bavaria to enter the Raitenhasslach monastery. But three years into his theological work, political forces within the Hapsburg Empire secularized the Bavarian monasteries, converting them from ecclesiastical to civil entities, shutting them down for the purposes of spiritual introspection. It must have been a moment of crisis in Diabelli’s young life. He gave up the priesthood, returned to Vienna, and went into business, joining the Steiner publishing firm as a music editor.

Ten years later, 1814, Beethoven began publishing some of his work with the Steiner firm, including in the next four years the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, the Op.95 String Quartet, and the big-selling "Wellington’s Victory" among others. It was through Steiner that Beethoven first encountered Diabelli, whose nature by age 33 was no longer monk-like. Though it may tell us as much about Beethoven as it does about Diabelli, the Great Composer used to routinely refer to him in correspondence as "Generalprofoss und diabolus Diabelli." Apparently this was funny to Beethoven because it was so true.

In his late thirties, Diabelli left Steiner and joined his colleague Peter Cappi in founding their own publishing firm. Six years later, when Diabelli left Cappi to continue on his own, among his first actions was to ask Beethoven to write a work for his new firm, a certain seller, to help Diabelli solidify his place in the marketplace, perhaps even a "Wellington’s Victory" for the Biedermeier parlor, specifically, a piano sonata for four hands. Was it a bold affront to Beethoven, the acknowledged Master, then deep into the metaphysical thicket of his late quartets, to write parlor music? Whatever Beethoven’s response, the project, as they say, was "not realized."

Diabelli, as was his way, persisted. Upon learning that Beethoven was writing quartets, he commissioned the great man to write a string quartet. Beethoven seems to have cast off a fragment from his on-going quartet excursions with Diabelli’s commission in mind, but set it aside.

The idea that indirectly won immortality for Diabelli was to ask several composers in the Hapsburg empire to write a single variation on one of his own waltz themes, a silly noodle really, then publish the collection. Beethoven was among those asked; he declined.

It is an interesting historical document, Diabelli’s famous collective work Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. The first variation, of more than two dozen, is by the young Franz Schubert, who had less than a decade to live. Johann Hummel is represented, likewise other important names in the history of pianism, Ignaz Moscheles, Carl Czerny, and a boy, age 11, here publishing his first work, Franz Liszt.

The hubbub over Diabelli’s commercial project caught Beethoven’s interest. He began a set of variations on the silly waltz. Sometime during the ensuring two years that he worked on this profound final statement for the piano, Beethoven let it be known to Diabelli that he had been following through on the publisher’s initial request to write a waltz variation.

Eventually, of course, diabolus Diabelli began hounding Beethoven to finish the "variation" and send it to him forthwith. Upon one such occasion, Beethoven incorporated his response into the 32 variations, no.22, in which Beethoven quotes Leporello, servant to the demanding Don Giovanni, complaining of his lot, "Notte e giorno faticar" (Night and day I slave). This was exactly the sort of thing that made Beethoven laugh.

Well, the rest, to coin a phrase, is history. Beethoven completed his stupendous masterpiece and it was published, by Diabelli’s firm, as Op.120, 33 Veränderungen über einen Walzer von A. Diabelli. Scholars point out that Beethoven used the term Veränderungen instead of Variationen, as a nod to Bach’s Aria mit 30 Veränderungen ("Goldberg").

The immense complexity and transcendent sweep of Op.120 is too much for a discussion here. Suffice it for now only to recall Hans von Bülow’s remark: "the microcosmos of Beethoven’s genius."

Maurizio Pollini, one of the world’s most admired intellectual interpreters of the five-century keyboard repertoire, has recorded Beethoven’s great work as he approaches 60. Hey, sports fans, an artistic event such as this may be likened to seeing the great DiMaggio step up to the plate against The Big Train. It can happen only across time, but what a wondrous sight.

Diabelli postscript. Following Beethoven’s death four years later, Diabelli managed to acquire from the Master’s estate the string quartet fragment he’d set aside in response to the long ago commission. Diabelli rushed it into print under the title "Beethoven’s Last Musical Thought." It certainly was not, nor was it even for string quartet. Instead it was arranged for two-hand and four-hand piano, perfect for parlor playing. Likely, Beethoven would not have found that amusing.