Variations on ‘Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu’

Schneider Kakadu – Tailor Kakadu – is a character in Wenzel Müller’s opera Die Schwestern von Prag. Beethoven introduces him with great ceremony and indeed dresses him up in the full panoply of a classical tragic figure. Bleak G minor chords alternate with sorrowful fragments of melody winding their way through the texture, and the pianist’s intimation of Müller’s tune are greeted by dramatic sforzando gestures on violin and cello. It is only after the incongruous Adagio assai introduction is over and the pianist presents Müller’s tune as he wrote it that    the listener can understand how trivial it really is. But it is the kind of triviality Beethoven delighted in – and no less in 1813 (or thereabouts) when he wrote the Kakadu Variations than en years later when eh wrote the Diabelli Variations.

The first two variations are of the kind in which the theme is disguised with a repeated rhythmic pattern – semiquavers in the right hand of the piano, triplet semiquavers on the violin – and the cello gives much the same treatment of the melody in the third. The fourth variation is the first to bring the three instruments together and in the fifth the cello leads them through a little canon. The sixth, with its offbeat flecks of colour applied by violin and cello to the fluttering piano line, is a witty inspiration worthy of the Diabelli set. The seventh, for violin and cello in canon, leads straight into the eighth, where the violin seems to get out of time and the piano fusses about ti. The serious mood of the introduction returns in the ninth variation, Adagio espressivo in G minor – only of course to be swept away in a G major Presto. But that is not all: the Presto variation is extended by a long minor episode and it takes a particularly playful Allegretto coda to restore Tailor Kakadu to his original cheerfulness.

Schneider Kakadu – Tailor Kakadu – is a character in Wenzel Müller’s opera Die Schwestern von Prag. Beethoven introduces him with great ceremony and indeed dresses him up in the full panoply of a classical tragic figure. Bleak G minor chords alternate with sorrowful fragments of melody winding their way through the texture, and the pianist’s intimation of Müller’s tune are greeted by dramatic sforzando gestures on violin and cello. In spite of some anticipations, impressively distorted by offbeat accents, even by the end of the introduction the innocent listener can have no idea how trivial the theme is. But it is the kind of triviality Beethoven delighted in – and no less in 1813 (or thereabouts) when he wrote the Kakadu Variations than en years later when eh wrote the Diabelli Variations.

So, after the highly inappropriate Adagio assai introduction in G minor, the pianist reveals Müller’s theme in G major and in all its cheerful poverty. The first two variations are of the kind in which the theme is disguised with a continuous rhythmic pattern – semiquavers in the right hand of the piano, triplet semiquavers on the violin (with a few trills added) – and the cello gives much the same treatment of the melody in the third. The fourth variation is the first to bring the three instruments together and in the fifth the cello leads them through a little canon. The sixth variation, with its offbeat flecks of colour applied by violin and cello to the fluttering piano line, is a witty inspiration worthy of the Diabelli set. The seventh variation, for violin and cello in canon, leads straight into the eighth, where the violin seems to get out of time and the piano fusses about ti. The serious mood of the introduction returns in the ninth variation, Adagio espressivo in G minor – only of course to be swept away in a G major Presto. But that is not all: the Presto variation is extended by a long minor episode and it takes a particularly playful Allegretto coda to restore Tailor Kakadu to his original cheerfulness.