"33 Variations"

[Michael]

There has been a previous thread about this new play, but I think this article is particularly interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/ar...ic/08tomm.html

[Michael]

Here is a review of the above play:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009...oadway-theatre

[DavidO]

If it were playing nearby, I'd go -- would be interesting to see (although I have a feeling that a lot of the dialog would sound like banality to most of us who have read so many biographies & studies & analyses of Beethoven, & who know his life backward & forward).

Just the other day, I was watching an embedded video on a Web page somewhere with a New York critic reviewing the play & showing actual footage. Wish I could remember where that Web site was. . . .

[Michael]

I am so glad that the very first work of Beethoven's that I (consciously) heard was not the Diabelli Variations. If so, I would have ran a mile away from him and classical music and would now be existing on a diet of God knows what. I worry about non-Beethovenians attending this play and being exposed to "advanced" Beethoven, in the sense that the Diabellis are hard to grasp on one hearing (speaking personally, of course). They may well run shrieking back into the arms of Mozart.

[gprengel]

In the mentioned NYT Article it says:

Before the year was out Beethoven had composed 23 wildly diverse variations on the theme. Then he set it aside, evidently having lost interest, and turned to other projects. Yet in late 1822 and early 1823 Beethoven composed 10 more variations.

I think this is really interesting, for these two blocks unconsciously always had ben very obvious to me. With the first block I never really could get along with. I can't see really much beauty in these first 23 variations.
But then an altogether new world of emotion and sprituality opens up with the second block - with the Back-like heavenly 24nd variation and those that follow.

Gerd

[Michael]

I may be wrong about this, but I think the extra variations were added in between some of the earlier variations - not in one continuous block.

[DavidO]

William Kinderman discusses this interruption at great length in his book "Beethoven's Diabelli Variations." The entire Part I of the book is devoted to "The Process of Composition," & examines "The Interrupted Genesis of the Variations," "Plans for the Closing Variations," &c.

You can also hear him discuss this in a lecture that was ripped to MP3 & uploaded to the Web somewhere. I have the lecture audio, which is about 45 MB, but I don't remember which Web site I got it from.

[Preston]

In my neverending search for good audio files of Beethoven scholarship & performance on the Web, I found this free lecture by William Kinderman on the Diabelli Variations:

www.ariettamusic.com/

Scroll to the very bottom of the page & select the MP3 link. The file is approximately 40 megabytes in size.

There you go!

[gprengel]

I may be wrong about this, but I think the extra variations were added in between some of the earlier variations - not in one continuous block.

In Wikipedia it says:

Beethoven kept the original set of twenty-three in order, but inserted nos. 1 (the opening march), 2, 15, 23 (sometimes called a parody of a Cramer finger exercise), 24 (a lyrical fughetta), 25, 26, 28, 29 (the first of the series of three slow variations leading to the final fugue and minuet), 31 (the third, highly expressive slow variation leading directly into the final fugue and minuet) and 33 (the concluding minuet)

These new set of variations were written around March and April 1823.
To me the include the most beautiful variations of the whole set, especially the Bach orientated variations #24 and #31.

[Michael]

In Wikipedia it says:

Beethoven kept the original set of twenty-three in order, but inserted nos. 1 (the opening march), 2, 15, 23 (sometimes called a parody of a Cramer finger exercise), 24 (a lyrical fughetta), 25, 26, 28, 29 (the first of the series of three slow variations leading to the final fugue and minuet), 31 (the third, highly expressive slow variation leading directly into the final fugue and minuet) and 33 (the concluding minuet)

These new set of variations were written around March and April 1823.
To me the include the most beautiful variations of the whole set, especially the Bach orientated variations #24 and #31.

I was wrong. B does seem to have composed the later part of the Diabellis as one continuous piece. I also have always preferred the second-half (timewise) of this difficult work.