Fifteen Variations and Fugue in E flat (‘Eroica’ Variations)

Fifteen Variations and fugue in E flat major, Op.35

Beethoven’s Op.34 and Op.35 were the first sets of variations which he dignified with an opus number. Up to that time he had written a dozen sets of piano variations, none of them very ambitious, all of them confined within the limitations of what was then the most popular and the least enterprising of classical forms. In 1802 he deliberately set out to change all that, and so began the process by which the theme and variations - culminating in the “Diabelli” set of 1823 - were elevated to a status at least equal to that of the sonata.

Although Beethoven’s variation technique in his Op.35 was, as he said “quite new” to his contemporaries, his innovations were influenced by the practice of a previous generation. The baroque period was the golden age of variations, with Bach’s “Goldberg” set - which Beethoven certainly knew and admired - perhaps the greatest example of all. His indebtedness to Bach shows most clearly towards the end, in the last variations, which is a highly decorative Largo, and the fugue, which precedes the sublimated da capo of the original theme.

These are not the only baroque characteristics of Op.35. For the most part they are not the usual classical variations on a melody but variations on a bass, like Bach’s “Goldberg.” This is why - as in the last movement of the “Eroica” Symphony a year later - he begins by introducing only the bass of his favourite dance tune from his Prometheus ballet score, without the melody. He repeats the bass three times, adding a contrapuntal voice on each occasion, and only then presents the theme as a whole. Given this other dimension, with its stimulus to his wit, Beethoven can afford to observe the classical conventions: until the fifteenth (Largo) variation in 6/8 there is no change of metre from the original 2/4 and no change of tempo from Allegretto vivace; until the fourteenth (in E flat minor) there is no change of key signature from the E flat major of the theme and only one departure from the pattern of two eight-bar parts, each part repeated. But this is where the greatness of the work begins.