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Can anyone suggest a book with good musical anlaysis of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations? I've just returned to playing piano after about 40 years, and I can see that one of the great thrills of my life is going to be learning the Diabelli Variations. I'm amazed and deeply grateful that a good deal of it is within my range (at age 60 I have patience and determination.) It's such - can't think of a word to describe it - amazing music!

But as I come to know it in more detail, the more complex and puzzling it seems. It is filled with so many subtle patterns. He uses chromatic changes so often - I want to know more about that. And I want to know more about his use of chord sequences where the changes happen in the inner notes while the top and bottom are unchanged. I often wonder how a variation is related to Diabelli's original theme. And I have questions about specific passages, such as what to make of that place in the second section of Variation III where everything comes to a halt for four bars in the right hand with ties connecting three whole notes and two eighth notes, while the left hand simply repeats a little three-note figure eight times - How do I play that? It's like a boat dead in the water (the performance I'm listening to these days plays the left hand at about double the correct speed.). In other words, I'd like to read more about the musical construction of the Diabelli Variations - perhaps the kind of detailed analysis Donald Francis Tovey wrote. Can anyone suggest a title or two?

David Schreiber
Toronto

Hi David,

I think that the definitive writing on that greatest of piano solos still belongs to William Kinderman, "Diabelli Variations," (1987). He also recorded the work for Hyperion (CDA 66763). My personal favorites are Alfons Kontarsky (Lotus 9618), Maria Yudina (Philips' Great Pianists of the 20th Century series, vol. 99) and Alfred Brendel's live performance from 1976 (also Philips' series, vol. 13).

Hans von Bulow had this to say (quoted from Schirmer's Library, vol. 6, p. 43): "In this gigantic composition the Editor recognizes the microcosm, as it were, of Beethoven's genius in its entirety; or, indeed, an image of the entire realm of music in epitome. All evolutions of musical thought and tonal fantasy--from the sublimest imagination to the most reckless humor--in an incomparable wealth of form and expression, are most eloquently manifested in this work. As an object of study, and as a musical pabulum for the mentality of whole generations, it is practically inexhaustible. No author has ever given the world more brilliant proof of unwanting powers--nay, of the highest intensification of his creative force--as age was nearing. The neglect which suffered it to sleep on dusty shelves for some decades after publication, may be explained, on the one hand, by the indolence of contemporary artists, and, on the other, by the comparatively low plane of culture on which they stood. To realize this, read over the 50 variations (published at the same time) which Diabelli had composed, on his waltz, by the most celebrated musicians of Germany in aid of some benevolent scheme; the almost incredible gulf between the two sets will show, like no other testimony, on what a lonely eminence Beethoven stood."

It is also worth noting that Beethoven dedicated his ne plus ultra to his Immortal Beloved, Frau Antonia von Brentano. No other work of his, I believe, enjoys this distinction.

Good luck in your endeavor.

I have been playing this piece on and off over the years and, like you, have come away in awe of Beethoven's genius. There is so much more here than in the Sonatas, and in some small way each variation does connect to Diabelli's theme, if it is only to comment on a grace note.

They are, however, much harder to perform than appears at first. Many of the variations are manageable technically but not easy to render tonally. Some are just technically diabolical. All of them have that strange sense of disconnection that is common in Beethoven's late music - phrases that suddenly end, sharp contrasts in dynamics, themes that never return, unheard of modulations for the time. How you conquer this disconnection is the key problem in the variations, and that's why you rarely hear them in public or recorded.

Heinrich Neuhaus, the teacher of Richter and Gilels, considered the Diabelli Variations the pinnacle of piano music. His students were rarely even allowed to touch them unless the student was musically ready. Fortunately we as amateurs can explore them for the sheer pleasure of it.

i have a book "Late Beethoven - music, thought, imagination" by Maynard Solomon, in which the author gave some thorough description on almost every variation in Diabelli variations. i didn't really enjoy reading the whole book, since the style of writing is little awkward to me, but only this chapter - "9. The Shape of a Journey: The 'Diabelli' Variations" seems interesting to me.

There's a website: Diabelli Variations analysis.

I'd probably try to read section in the Tovey book Beethoven, listed in the bibliography of the website, directly. Tovey's comments are always illuminating.

The musicologist Karl Geiringer has an article entitled "THE STRUCTURE OF BEETHOVEN'S DIABELLI VARIATIONS," published in 1964 in Musical Quarterly (will require a trip to an academic library, or in Interlibrary Loan request at your local library, or possibly a purchase at this oxford journals website.

Thanks for all the great comments, y'all.

I'm reading through the Maynard Solomon book these days and completely agree that his writing style is to retch for (gaak, gaak!). Three or four pages and I think all he said was, "The opening is simple," but padding it with remarks about the beginning of the universe, the opening of this and that and the other, everything repeated and pumped up to be impressive, lots of chatter about "the quotidian.' Give the guy a pill! But I'll plough on, in case there's something useful.

Finding the Kinderman was hard. Even used copies cost going on $100. I finally found it - misfiled - in the reference section of the Toronto Public Library. Lots of scholarship about drafts and sketchbooks. I wonder, though, how much of his commentary actually adds anything to my interpretation and playing?

Someone once said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Sometimes that seems to hit the nail on the head.

Couldn't someone write more along the lines, "In these bars the inner notes of the LH chords echo the opening melody," or "The purpose of the surprising decrescendo just before the repeat sign is to create a contrast with ..."

Sounds like a good book waiting to be written.