Anton Diabelli, Who is he?
Anton Diabelli, born 5 September 1781, in Mattsee near Salzburg (Austria). While living, he was best known as a editor and publisher. However, he also composed and his most familiar composition today is the waltz on which Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his set of thirty-three Diabelli Variations.
Initially, he thought his calling was to enter the priesthood. While studying to enter the priesthood, he also took music lessons with Michael Haydn. He moved to Vienna to teach the piano and guitar before becoming partners with Pietro Cappi to set up a music publishing firm in 1818. Eventually, the firm became known as Diabelli & Co. in 1824.
The firm became well known to the general public by arranging popular pieces that could be played by amateurs at home. The more serious musican became familiar with them through their publications of works by Franz Schubert.
Diabelli produced many works as a composer, including an operetta called Adam in der Klemme, several masses and songs and numerous piano and classical guitar pieces. Among these are pieces for four hands (two pianists playing at one piano), which are popular among amateur pianists.
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. The combined contributions would be published in an anthology called Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Fifty-one composers responded with pieces, including Beethoven, Schubert, Carl Czerny, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, and the eight-year-old Franz Liszt. Czerny was also enlisted to write a coda. Beethoven, however, instead of providing just one variation, provided 33. 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, Op. 120.
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 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 on 8 April 1858.
