32 Variations in C minor

Hearing someone play the Variations in C minor one day, Beethoven asked who wrote them and, on being told that the composer was none other then Ludwig van Beethoven, he exclaimed, “Oh Beethoven, what an ass you were!” Of course, he knew perfectly well who had written them but - reacting like most composers confronted by works which they consider undeservedly or embarrassingly popular - he took the opportunity at least to make a show of disowning them.

The more interesting aspect of the story is not so much Beethoven’s self-deprecation as the evidence of the work’s popularity. It was not the most likely candidate. Written in 1806, it is far from being an example of the kind of variation technique cultivated at that time: it is actually a reversion to the baroque form of chaconne variations, in which the bass remains constant while the melody above it (or below it) renews itself independ­ently of precedent in the original theme. The theme itself, more­over, with its bass line proceeding downwards in six chromatic steps from C to F, the right hand forcefully emphasising the harmonic progression, has little melodic charm about it. It doesn’t seem to be particularly well adapted to the piano either.

The variations, however, become more and more pianistic as they go on - all in the same Allegretto tempo, incidentally, all but the last at the same eight-bar length, all in 3/4 time, all in either C minor or C major. Being so short, they are arranged in groups, so that two or three of them in succession share the same rhythmic figuration or some other prominent feature - like the major mood common to five variations towards the middle of the work. Echoes of the right-hand part of the theme are discernible here too and they remain prominent in the seventeenth (back in C minor) and eighteenth variations before disappearing again for the next twelve. The 31st variation quietly recalls the theme in its original form, except that the bass rumbles in broken chords which then pass in a crescendo into the comparatively extended and elaborately pianistic finale.