At this time the inventive composer-publisher Diabelli had a good idea. He composed a childish waltz in C major, and invited fifty of the most distinguished composers and virtuosos of Vienna and the Austrian states to be kind enough to set variations to it. Beethoven sent him thirty-three variations, which appeared as Op. 120. Diabelli may well have been astonished. He had perhaps some dread of the “last” Beethoven who was then so full of youth. But he had not expected anything of this kind. Perhaps he did not quite know whether it was all done in earnest. Even the name of Beethoven did not aid the venture much. The world during many years troubled itself little about it, and let the strange colossus alone. It was reserved for Bülow, who had the keenest sense for the last efforts of Beethoven’s genius, to penetrate deeply into the great mass. He observed that the thirty-three variations are no co-ordinated series; they are an inner drama, like one of the later sonatas. They rise from the explanatory sections which lay out the theme, through a gentle minor group, by a double fugue, into calmer regions; a minuet concludes, which is no minuet, but one of those wonderful resurrections which were the old Master’s special love. The variations are a testament, as the Goldberg variations were those of Bach. From melody to canon, from gloom to parody, from archaism to anticipations of the future, from popularity to the philosophy of the hermit, from mysticism to dance, from technical glitter to the mystery of enharmonics, they lead us along three and thirty paths to different realms. [Illustration: Beethoven’s last Grand Piano, by Graf, Vienna, with four strings to each note, on account of his deafness. ] [110] _Pigtail and Tuft_, a combination of “Bigwig” and “High and Mighty,” with “Sir Oracle.” [111] Meaning the “leader” of the band, practically the conductor in those days. [112] The author here uses a term to describe Dussek, which I remove to the foot of the page, viz. _Epigonus_, which means “one born after,” in the sense of a descendant who merely continues his father’s work. Often it is equivalent to our “decadent.” [113] The author may perhaps refer to the Scherzi of Op. 2, No. 3, in C, or Op. 7 in E flat. [114] The student is not likely to find the passage marked with this word, but the author is none the less correct in his description, for it must be played so. [115] See Op. 31, No. 3, first movement in E flat, bar 46 and ff. [116] Apparently the passage referred to is the 10 bars which precede the second subject, in the first movement of the F sharp major sonata.