Anton Diabelli (
September 6, 1781 –
April 7, 1858) was an
Austrian music publisher, editor and
composer. Best known in his time as a publisher, he is most familiar today as the composer of the
waltz on which
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his set of thirty-three
Diabelli Variations.
Diabelli was born in
Mattsee near
Salzburg. He was trained to enter the
priesthood, but also took music lessons with
Michael Haydn. He moved to
Vienna to teach the
piano and
guitar before becoming partners with
Pietro Cappi in 1818 and setting up a music publishing firm with him.
The firm, Cappi & Diabelli (which became Diabelli & Co. in 1824) became well known by
arranging popular pieces so they could be played by amateurs at home. The firm became well known in more serious music circles by becoming the first to publish works by
Franz Schubert, a composer the firm later championed.
Diabelli produced a modest number of works as a composer, including an
operetta called
Adam in der Klemme, a number of
masses and
songs and a large number of piano and classical guitar pieces. Among these are pieces for four hands (two pianists playing at one piano), which are popular amongst amateur pianists.
Ironically, perhaps, the composition for which Diabelli is now best known was actually written as part of a publishing venture. In 1819, he decided to try to publish a volume of
variations on a waltz he had penned expressly for this purpose, with one variation by every important Austrian composer living at the time, as well as several significant non-Austrians. Fifty composers responded with pieces, including Schubert, an eleven-year-old
Franz Liszt, and
Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Carl Czerny was enlisted to write a
coda, and they were published as
Vaterländische Künstlerverein.
Beethoven, however, instead of providing just one variation, provided thirty-three, and his were published in a volume of their own in 1824. They constitute what is generally regarded as one of the greatest of Beethoven's piano pieces and as the greatest set of variations of their time, and are generally known simply as the
Diabelli Variations.
Diabelli's publishing house expanded throughout his life, before he retired in 1851, leaving it under the control of
Carl Anton Spina. When Diabelli died in 1858, Spina continued to run the firm, and published much music by
Johann Strauss II and
Josef Strauss. In 1872, the firm was taken over by
Friedrich Schreiber, and in 1876 it merged with the firm of
August Cranz, who bought the company in 1879 and ran it under his name.
He died in Vienna at the age of 76.
Diabelli's
Pleasures of Youth: Six Sonatinas was a collection of six
sonatinas written and composed by himself. Pleasures of Youth could be described as an ever-thickening battle between good and evil, noting that the song always very frequently changes from
forte to
pianoforte. Forte is loud, and has the evil feel, making it the evil enemy, while pianoforte is soft, and creates the message that it is the good one.
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