Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op.56a

The two-piano version of Brahms’s Haydn Variations isn’t an arrangement of an orchestral work either. Even though the Op. No. 56b seems to indicate the contrary, the keyboard version was written before the now far more widely known orchestral score. In either case it is idle pedanty to insist on calling the work “Variations on the St Anthony Chorale.” It is true that Haydn was not responsible for the theme, the origins of which are obscure, but the point is that Brahms thought it was. He respectfully retains the structure of the theme in the eight variations and stays in the same basic key of B flat (major or minor) throughout, whatever the changes in tempo and rhythmic figuration. The spacious Andante that follows the eighth variation after a short pause is a passacaglia constructed on a ground bass derived from the first five bars of the chorale, which finally reappears in much aggrandised version at the end.

Although Brahms hadn’t written much for orchestra when he started on his Haydn Variations – little more than the First Piano Concerto and the two Serenades – he was well experienced in the art of composing variations. He had published major sets of variations on themes by Schumann, Handel and Paganini, all of them for piano or piano duet and all reflecting something of the style of the composer who inspired them. The Variations on a Theme by Haydn, which was scored first for two pianos (Op.56b) and only then for orchestra (Op.56a), is clearly a work in the same line. The fact that modern research has proved that the theme, a traditional tune known as the “St Anthony Chorale,” is actually not by Haydn is interesting but not very significant. The point is that Brahms thought it was by Haydn and that the whole work is a tribute to the Vienna of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and, for the last ten years, Brahms himself. It was in a manuscript belong to a Viennese Haydn scholar that Brahms found the theme and it was in Vienna, at a Philharmonic concert in 1873, that he conducted the first performance of the work. It was an instant success.

The “St Anthony Chorale” theme is presented by Brahms in much the same instrumental colours as it appears in the Vienna manuscript – a wind Partita now attributed to Haydn’s pupil Ignaz Pleyel – repeating each of its two unequal halves in turn. He retains the same structure, with the longer second half, in the eight variations and stays in the same basic key of B flat (major or minor) throughout. The tempo, however, he changes from variation to variation and he supplies a different rhythmic identity for each one - repeated crotchets reverberating from the end of the theme set against changing quaver figurations in the first variation, busy dotted rhythms on clarinets and bassoons in the second, a sinuous line of even quavers more or less elaborately decorated in the third. The metre changes from 2/4 to 3/8 for the expressive fourth variation in the minor and to 6/8 for the contrastingly scherzo-like fifth variation in the major. The sixth is a vigorous outdoor variation with galloping rhythms and hunting horns, the seventh a graceful siciliano dance featuring solo flute and violas, the eighth an eerily fleeting study in muted colours that scarcely ever rises above pianissimo.

The Finale, a spacious Andante that follows after a short pause, is a different kind of variation. It is a revival of the baroque passacaglia or chaconne form based on a short theme that is repeated over and over as a bass line while new or related material is developed in the other parts. The ground bass in this case is derived from the first five bars of the “St Anthony” theme. It is repeated eleven times by lower strings before it passes to horns and woodwind and is finally combined, amid general orchestral rejoicing, with a much aggrandised version of the Chorale in its original form.