of obtaining variety and climax without leaving the fundamental
key. Until his latest works, such sets of variations
are never finished. Their dramatic force is that of a repose
which is too unearthly to last; and at the first sign of dramatic
motion or change of key the sublime vision “fades into the
light of common day,” a light which Beethoven is far too great
an idealist to despise. (See the andante of the B flat trio, Op. 97;
and the slow movement of the violin concerto, which contains
two episodic themes in the same key.) In his later works
Beethoven 'found means, by striking out into foreign keys or
foreign rhythms, of organizing a coda which, as it were, finally
spins down in fragmentary new variations, or even returns to
the plain theme. Thus he was able to end his sonatas, Opp. 109
and 111, with solemn slow movements in which, with the utmost
richness of detail and novelty of idea, the melodic variation
form is nevertheless paramount. Beethoven also found many
ways of combining melodic variations with the principles of the
rondo and other more highly organized continuous movements.
Thus the finale of the Eroica Symphony has not only the
theme but many ideas of the variations and fugue-passages
in common with the brilliant set of variations for pianoforte
on a theme from Prometheus, Op. 35; and the Fantasia for
pianoforte, chorus and orchestra, and the choral finale of the
oth Symphony, are sets of melodic variations with freely
developed connecting links and episodes. In the case of the
oth Symphony, a second thematic idea eventually combines
with the figures of the first theme in double fugue.
But Beethoven’s highest art in variation-form is to be found in his independent sets of variations. In some of the earliest of these, notably in the 24 on a theme by Righini (which was his chief bravura performance as a young pianoforte player), he far transcends not only the earlier or sonata-form idea of melodic variations, but fuses their resources with those of the ground-bass, and adds to them his own unparalleled grasp of rhythmic organization.. Beethoven is the first composer who can be said to have discovered that a theme consists not only of melody and harmony but of rhythm and form. With earlier composers the form of the theme was automatically preserved in consequence of the preservation of either its melody or its harmony; but Beethoven had an unerring judgment as to when the form of a theme might be definite enough to remain as a basis for a variation which departed radically from both the harmony and the melody. The climax in the history of variations dates from the moment when Beethoven was just about to begin his oth Symphony, and received from A. Diabelli a waltz which that publisher was sending round to all the musicians in Austria so that each might contribute a variation to be published for the benefit of the sufferers in the late Napoleonic wars. Diabelli’s theme was absurdly prosaic, but it happened to be perhaps the sturdiest piece of musical anatomy that Beethoven or any composer since has ever seen. Not only was its harmonic form exceptionally clear and firm, but its phrase-rhythm was as simple, recognizable and heterogeneous as its other qualities. Its melodic merit was nil, yet it had plenty of recognizable melodic figures. All these prosaic technicalities are far more likely to impress a great composer as good practical resources than those high poetic qualities which critics discuss incessantly, but which are to a great artist the air he breathes. Diabelli’s waltz moved Beethoven to defer his work on the 9th Symphony!
The shape of Diabelli’s theme may be illustrated by a diagram
........
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Tonic. Dominant. Rising sequence. Close in dominant.
which represents its first sixteen bars; the upright strokes being the bars, and the brackets and dots (together with the names underneath) indicating the way in which the rhythm is grouped by correspondence of phrase and changes of harmony. The second part also consists of sixteen bars, moving harmonically back from the dominant to the tonic, and rhythmically of exactly the same structure as the first part. This harmonic and sequential plan, together with this straightforward square tapering rhythmic structure, is so formal in effect that Beethoven can substitute for it almost anything equally familiar that corresponds, in its proportions. Thus, the alternation of tonic and dominant in the first eight bars may be represented by another familiar form in which three bars of tonic and a fourth of dominant are answered by three bars of dominant and a fourth of tonic; as in variation 14 (which must be reckoned in half-bars). Again, the antithesis of tonic and dominant is accompanied in Diabelli’s theme by a part of the melodic figure being repeated a step higher at the change of harmony; and this naturally produces such devices as the answering of the tonic by the super tonic in variation 8, and, still more surprisingly, by the flat super tonic in variation 30. In so enormous and resourceful a work, occupying fifty minutes in performance, it is natural that some variations should drift rather farther from the anatomy of the theme than can be explained by any strict principle; and so the jocular transformation of the beginning of Diabelli’s bass into the theme of Mozart’s Notte e giorno faticar leads to a couple of extra bars at the end of its second part; otherwise the fughetta (variation 24) and variations 29 and 31 are the only cases in which any considerable part of the structure of the theme is lost, except the fu ue (variation 32), which is simply an elaborate movement on a salient feature of what must by courtesy be called Diabelli’s melody. A free fugue is a favourite solution of the difficult problem of the coda in a set of variations.
But for the works of Brahms, which invariably retain the classical conceptions while developing them in a thoroughly modern and living language, it can hardly be claimed that the art of variation-writing has advanced since Beethoven. The term is now used for a somewhat nondescript method of stringing together a series of short fantasias on a theme; a method which may be legitimate and artistic in individual cases, but hardly constitutes an art-form. There is this great disadvantage in variations that neglect the anatomy of the theme, that the only way in which, in the absence of other means of.-connexion, they can show any coherence at all is by more or less frequently harping on scraps of the melody. The effect is (except in unusually happy examples such as the Études symphoniques of Schurnannand the Enigma Variations of Elgar) curiously apologetic; because no ambitious composer in the “free” modern variation style thinks a melodic variation quite worthy of his dignity, and so the melodic allusions become the more tiresome from their furtive manner. Many “advanced” specimens of variation-form undoubtedly owe their origin to a -vague impulse of revolt from the unsound statements of unobservant writers of mid-10th century textbooks, who contented themselves with laying down crude rules such as that a variation might “either retain the melody and change the harmony, or retain the harmony and change the melody,” &c., without any attempt to see how the classical composers really analysed their themes. It is very characteristic of Schumann’s modesty and grasp of facts that he, who was the first to produce serious art in a free non-anatomical variation style, did not call his experiments variations without qualification. He never wrote a set in which the anatomy of the theme was of real importance to the whole; and, with him, whenever at least the initial melodic figure of his theme is not traceable throughout a section, that. section is simply an episode. But. Schumann knows this perfectly well, and acknowledges it. The Études symphoniques are called variations only in those sections which are fairly strict variations. Elsewhere they are simply numbered as études. The slow movement of the F major string quartet (in which a second theme masquerades as the first variation, and some of the other variation-like sections are quite free) is called andante quasi variazione; and even the strictest of all his variation works is called Impromptus, on a theme by Clara Wieck, Op. 5. There is, no doubt, great scope for a variation-form which is neither melodic nor anatomic, and we have not a word to say against the legitimacy of many forms of effective modern fantasia-variations; but the fact remains that it is very hazardous to talk of an “advance” in the variation-form, when even the best fantasia-variations are not only unconnected with any classical type but evidently unable to get nearly as far from either the melody or the harmony of their theme as the 25th of Bach’s “Goldberg” variations or many variations in the earliest sets by Beethoven. Indeed, the only sound classification of composers of modern variations, from the time of Mendelssohn onwards, is that
