Talk:Variations on a Theme by Haydn

The Mystery Theme
Hi TheMaestro-- I'm intrigued by your suggestion of a "mystery theme" by Haydn at the end of the Haydn Variations, but you've presented it as a puzzle, not as information that could be useful to a Wikipedia reader. In fact, I admit that I've looked at the score and I can't find any new theme other than simple ascending and descending scales--which could come from anywhere.

So, please look at the score (you can follow the link at end of article) and specify the measure numbers, orchestral parts, and specific work of Haydn that the mystery theme is supposed to be from. Without identification, I don't think a "teaser" item like this is appropriate. --Opus33 16:53, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Opus33 -- Thanks for your comments. This is my first Wiki contribution, and I wondered whether a teaser would be considered appropriate. I am happy to defer to your opinion on the matter

Perhaps rather than "theme" I should have said "fragment," or something with similarly smaller connotations. Yes, scales could come from anywhere; but I've always been curious about mm. 463-464 in the finale. Scales have not been particularly motivic up to that point in the work, and their preponderance at the end always struck me as out of place. Similarly, the sudden appearance of sextuplets is not foreshadowed, and it also seems out of keeping with typical Brahmsian economy. And, with the scales and the triplets combined, we end up with that curious almost-scale with the second degree missing.

My confusion turned to deep satisfaction when I noticed m. 148, at the very end of the variation movement of the "Clock" Symphony.

Now, I don't have any proprietary claim on the connection, but the fact is that I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere.

I'd be interested in your thoughts. If you think it's worth including, I'd like some advice on how best to present it. -- TheMaestro


 * The resemblance is quite striking--well spotted! We'll never know it wasn't just chance (which is why I put in a cautious "evidently") but it would be nice to think that Brahms put it in on purpose--or, at least, in subconscious awareness of Haydn's example.


 * Also, a tweak: Haydn pioneered variations for orchestra, but not variations per se.  Cheers, Opus33 21:49, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If I may, I find the "evidently" a bit too cautious. For the reasons I cited earlier, those two measures are so out of character with the rest of the piece that they take considerable setting up on Brahms's part in order to create a context in which they would be less jarring (remember, my experience began with finding them jarring). There is no doubt of Brahms's thorough knowledge of Haydn's work, and one didn't have to be a scholar to know the "Clock."

I resisted the urge to speak of Brahms's selection of the passage as reflecting his admiration for Haydn's variation forms. But I think that "Brahms quotes a passage" is a modest claim in light of the evidence. -- TheMaestro


 * As you please, TM; if you change it I certainly won't edit-war with you. Opus33 22:49, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks! --TheMaestro

Four years later:


 * I have to agree with Opus33 - claim about "mystery theme" seems to be unjustified and has to be deleted. --oboist 16:53, 29 Jun 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, my own opinion is that TheMaestro is almost certainly right. On the other hand, this material is quite obviously a case of original research, which is banned on Wikipedia.  TheMaestro put it in several years ago, back in the Wikipedia's anything-goes early period, and following current policy we ought to take it out pronto.  I have no urge to do this myself, however...  Cheers, Opus33 (talk) 19:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Haydn`s Divertimento No 46 in B flat Major includes Chorale San Antoni = Variations..... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.134.107.3 (talk) 15:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Pleyel
I'm scribbling a quick article on Ignaz Pleyel, and I always thought that the theme to the VTJH, ie. the St. Anthony Chorale, had been attributed with reasonable certainty to him (I remember this from grad school, and it's on the internet, but I'm having trouble finding a reliable source). Does anyone else know? For now I'll insert some of the usual weaselage "some scholars believe ..." Antandrus 16:18, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for doing Pleyel, Antandrus; both Sacred Harp and Symphony No. 94 (Haydn) needed him. For St. Anthony Chorale I checked MLA Bibliography and got nothing; perhaps in some book about Brahms?  Cool if someday Google succeeds in searching the contents of every published book, as they hope to do.  Then we could easily solve toughies like this one.   Opus33 05:51, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Pleyel again

JackofOz -- isn't it the Divertimento that is sometimes claimed to be by Pleyel? I think we should maintain the position that the authorship of the theme may not lie with the composer of the Divertimento. TheMaestro (talk) 01:39, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Spot on, Maestro. I've re-explained it in the text.  Hope that's better now.  --  JackofOz (talk) 02:10, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, good, and I've tightened it up further, as the same argument applies regardless of who wrote the Divertimento. TheMaestro (talk) 02:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Haydn again?

Hey, folks, what do we think of this? Richard Freed, at http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/?fuseaction=composition&composition_id=2120, says that "[n]ow, however, it appears that Haydn was actually the composer of the Divertimento..." TheMaestro (talk) 16:36, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I wonder what his evidence is.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:10, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

A couple reverts

 * Resemblance to Brahms's Fourth is original research and not a legal edit by Wikipedia rules (this should ultimately be applied to other material here as well...).
 * It doesn't help the reader to point out that there is no triangle in the piano version; let's give our readers credit for just a tiny bit of intelligence, no?

Opus33 16:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The comparison to the Fourth Symphony might be worth putting back in. The final variation here is a passacaglia, the fourth movement of the Fourth is often called a passacaglia (the symphony page says Brahms called it a "chaconne", but the passacaglia page says that the symphony follows all the rules of a passacaglia).  That's at least twice that Brahms has used a specific baroque form in a grand, romantic-era orchestral work.  Who else was writing passacaglias in the 1870s and 1880s?  A simple mention that Brahms would later use the passacaglia form again in the fourth symphony is not original research in my opinion.  DavidRF 22:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

First-ever free-standing set of variations for orchestra?
I've just heard a claim that the Variations are the first-ever free-standing set of variations for orchestra. This was via Paul Bevan of ABC Classic FM, whose "facts" are often very wide of the mark. I'd be surprised if there weren't earlier sets of orchestral variations written not as part of a symphony or a suite - this was 1873, after all - but I can't bring to mind any earlier examples just now. Can anyone confirm or provide a counter-example to the claim, and a cite? I guess if it is cited, it needs to go into the article. -- JackofOz (talk) 05:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The claim is well documented -- Donald McCorkle, in the Norton Scores edition I cited above, refers to Op. 56a as "the first set of independent variations for orchestra in the history of music," and cites Robert U. Nelson, ''The Technique of Variation. A study of the Instrumental Variation Form from Antonio de Cabezón to Max Reger'', in support. But such a claim is of course ultimately unverifiable. -- TheMaestro (talk) 20:26, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * This is also in Elaine Sisman's article "Variations" in the most recent Grove online ... "The ‘St Anthony’ or ‘Haydn’ Variations (the chorale theme was not written by Haydn) was probably the first independent set written for orchestra ..." There's an earlier set of variations by Chopin (opus 2) for piano and orchestra (on "La ci darem la mano").  I certainly can't think of any others either.  I'm going to suggest that Sisman says "probably" because there certainly could be a really, really obscure composer out there who wrote a set that may turn up some day. Antandrus  (talk) 22:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, it seems to be the case, then; at least when considering relatively well-known composers. This is really, really surprising.  If someone had asked me when the first independent set of orchestral variations was written, I'd have guessed no later than about 1820, and I'd have been happy to hear about one written a lot earlier than that.  But there you go, it's 1873.  Thanks for the refs, folks.  --  JackofOz (talk) 22:54, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I have incorporated the claim into the main article. -- TheMaestro (talk) 05:58, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm a little late with a reply, but Salieri has a set of orchestral variations on La follia of Spain which dates from around 1815. There are some solos in some of the variations, but no predominant soloist throughout the whole set. DavidRF (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, truth will out regardless of expert opinion! I have a recording of Salieri's 26 Variations on La Folia said to be dated December 1815 and they are, indeed and clearly, a substantial stand-alone set of orchestral variations. I have modified the claim in the article accordingly. Opus131 (talk) 02:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * But that forces us to the extraordinary conclusion that, after the first set, nobody wrote another one for 58 years. Given the huge amount of music written between 1815 and 1873, that is just about unbelievable.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  09:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't make that conclusion. You only need one counterexample to show that the Haydn Variations were not the "first".  You don't have to explain why the first one didn't catch on.  There's a similar parallel with Schumann's Piano Quintet.  Yes, Schumann popularized the "piano + string quartet" scoring, but Boccherini had done it fifty years before but for some reason it didn't catch on.DavidRF (talk) 16:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I found another reference. In Julian Littlewood's 2004 book "The Variations of Johannes Brahms", ISBN 978-0954012342, he states the following on p. 107: "There is also the question of genre.  An independent orchestral variation set was very unusual.[43] Brahms himself appears not to have envisioned the work as an orchestral piece until he was deep in composition of the two-piano version." google books  And then footnote-43 states: "There are several minor independent variation sets for orchestra from the earlier nineteenth century, such as Franck's Variations brillantes on borrowed themes Opp. 5 & 8 (1834 & 1835), both of which exist also in piano arrangements (Franck later made a valuable contribution to the concerto-like genre of independent sets for orchestra with his Symphonic Variations, 1885, although the most famous work in this idiom is unquestionably Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini).  There have, of course, been many independent orchestral sets since Brahms's Op. 56."  Its too bad that Littlewood doesn't list more examples, but its clear that he didn't think that Brahms "invented" the genre, just that before him it was "unusual".DavidRF (talk) 16:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Just a note: The German site http://www.klassika.info/Komponisten/Franck_C/wv_opus.html lists Franck's Op. 8 as written for piano and orchestra. The Op. 5 is listed as for orchestra alone. Franck was 12 years old when he wrote it! Opus131 (talk) 19:46, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The Title
Dkusic1, I'm perplexed about your edit on the title. The 1874 Simrock First Edition score is online, and the title is clearly, "Variationen über ein Thema von Jos. Haydn." Why do you say that the first name was omitted? --TheMaestro (talk) 01:45, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Many months have passed. I've changed the title of the piece in the body of the article but do not know how to change the title of the article. Anyone who wishes to do it, please go ahead. --TheMaestro (talk) 18:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)


 * This requires a "move" of the article, see Help:Moving a page. Tayste (edits) 21:06, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Another source that talks about the source for the actual hymn
http://www.barbwired.com/barbweb/programs/brahms_variations.html

173.95.168.87 (talk) 13:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

For a work so full of allusions the concentration on a single bar from Haydn's clock symphony is a little odd. Bach is evoked throughout, surely, and Weber (one of the fanfares from Euryanthe) and Berlioz (Queen Mab) are also more than hinted at.81.153.51.221 (talk) 21:49, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Media
You say 'This is a performance of the version for two pianos'. What are you referring to there? I can't see anything, did something get removed? --Brian Josephson (talk) 20:14, 1 December 2018 (UTC) Ignore that query — the music has suddenly appeared. For some reason it did not show when I looked on the page first — perhaps the media server was slow. --Brian Josephson (talk) 20:19, 1 December 2018 (UTC)