Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56

Composer: BRAHMS, Johannes
  • Brahms composed this set of variations in 1873. Brahms initially composed the work for two pianos, then orchestrated it.1
    • The orchestral version premiered in Vienna on Nov. 2, 1873. 
  • Brahms found the theme of these variations in a collection of old works for wind instruments in his musical library. The tune was called “Choral St Antoni” (“St. Anthony Chorale”) and Brahms’s book attributed it to Haydn.2 However, musicologists are no longer certain that Haydn wrote this tune. For this reason, this work is sometimes called “St Anthony Variations,” even though Brahms himself called it “Variations on a Theme by Haydn.”3
  • The last several variations are composed upon a ground bass, a Baroque technique that shows Brahms’s love of early music. (Compare this to the last movement of his 4th Symphony, which is a passacaglia.)4

Sources

  1. George S. Bozarth and Walter Frisch, “Brahms, Johannes,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 18, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051879.
  2. Virginia Hancock, Brahms’s Choral Compositions and His Library of Early Music (UK: UMI Research Press, 1983), 38.
  3. George S. Bozarth and Walter Frisch, “Brahms, Johannes,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 18, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051879.
  4. Ibid.

Cut IDs

40105 40188 40201 49297 13166 21906