[5] Beethoven's approach to the theme is to take some of its smallest elements – the opening turn, the descending fourth and fifth, the repeated notes – and build upon them pieces of great imagination, power and subtlety.

About a slightly earlier period, 1815, Beethoven's authoritative biographer, Alexander Wheelock Thayer, writes, "Diabelli, born near Salzburg in 1781, had now been for some years one of the more prolific composers of light and pleasing music, and one of the best and most popular teachers in Vienna.

[8] The oft-told but now questionable story of the origins of this work is that Beethoven at first refused categorically to participate in Diabelli's project, dismissing the theme as banal, a Schusterfleck or 'cobbler's patch,'[a] unworthy of his time.

Not long afterwards, according to the story, upon learning that Diabelli would pay a handsome price for a full set of variations from him, Beethoven changed his mind and decided to show how much could be done with such slim materials.

The most original structures and ideas, the boldest musical idioms and harmonies are here exhausted; every pianoforte effect based on a solid technique is employed, and this work is the more interesting from the fact that it is elicited from a theme which no one would otherwise have supposed capable of a working-out of that character in which our exalted Master stands alone among his contemporaries.

2, 6, 16, 17, 23, &c. the brilliant pianists; indeed all these variations, through the novelty of their ideas, care in working-out, and beauty in the most artful of their transitions, will entitle the work to a place beside Sebastian Bach's famous masterpiece in the same form.

Everything was done by Schindler, a bigger wretch I never knew on God's earth—an arch-scoundrel whom I have sent about his business—I can dedicate another work to your wife in place of it ..."[22] Whether Schindler's story is true or not that Beethoven at first contemptuously dismissed Diabelli's waltz as a Schusterfleck (rosalia / "cobbler's patch"), there is no doubt the definition fits the work perfectly – "musical sequences repeated one after another, each time modulated at like intervals" – as can be seen clearly in these three examples: From the earliest days writers have commented on the juxtaposition between the waltz's simplicity and the vast, complex musical structure Beethoven built upon it, and the widest possible range of opinions of Diabelli's theme have been expressed.

At one end of the spectrum is the admiration of Donald Tovey ("healthy, unaffected, and drily energetic", "rich in solid musical facts", cast in "reinforced concrete"[23]) and Maynard Solomon ("pellucid, brave, utterly lacking in sentimentality or affectation"[citation needed]) and the kindly tolerance of Hans von Bülow ("quite a pretty and tasteful little piece, protected from the dangers of obsolescence by what one might call its melodic neutrality").

Beginning with a perky upbeat and peppered with unexpected off-beat accents, its mix of neutrality and quirkiness makes it a plastic, responsive object for Beethoven's scrutiny.

He sees demarcation points at Variations 8, 14 and 20, which he characterizes as three "strategically placed plateaus [which] provide spacious havens for spiritual and physical renewal in the wake of the exertions which have preceded them".[27]).

A careful study of these late additions reveals that they stand out from the others by having in common a return to, and special emphasis on, the melodic outline of Diabelli's waltz, in the mode of parody.

But the added, structural variations recall Diabelli's waltz, not Bach or Mozart or Cramer, and clearly highlight its most unimaginative aspects, especially its repetition of the C major tonic chord with G emphasized as the high note and the static harmony thus created.

Arriving comically after the sublime Fughetta's arresting conclusion, it opens the concluding section of the series, from the total unraveling of the following major variations and descent into minor, to the determination of the fugue, to the transcendence of the minuet.

Kinderman summarizes, "Diabelli's waltz is treated first ironically as a march that is half-stilted, half-impressive, and then, at crucial points in the form, twice recapitulated in amusing caricature variations.

By means of three parody variations, 1, 15, and 25, Beethoven established a series of periodic references to the waltz that draw it more closely into the inner workings of the set, and the last of these gives rise to a progression that transcends the theme once and for all.

In the second half, there is a remarkable pianissimo passage where the treble holds a chord for four full bars while the bass repeats a little three-note figure over and over, eight times, after which the melody proceeds as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Von Bülow comments, "To imbue this wonderful number with what I should like to call the 'high priestly solemnity' in which it was conceived, let the performer's fantasy summon up before his eyes the sublime arches of a Gothic cathedral.

"[42] Kinderman writes of its "breadth and measured dignity", adding "its spacious nobility brings the work to a point of exposure which arouses our expectations for some new and dramatic gesture."

These variations are so close to the surface of the theme that the amazingly distant keys touched on by their harmonies add only a sense of majesty and depth to the effect without producing complexity.

[44] Tovey describes this variation as "startling", but points out that it follows Diabelli's melody clearly and "changes from quick common to slower triple time whenever it reproduces the sequential passages ... in the theme".

Tovey notes that it reproduces the opening of each half of Diabelli's theme quite simply, although the rest is very free, adding that "as a reaction from the impressively thoughtful and calm fughetta it has an intensely humorous effect".

The structure of this variation is similar to the one preceding, in the exclusive use of three-note figures, the descending-to-ascending pattern, and the switch to stepwise passagework in contrary motion at the midpoint of each half.

[34] Von Bülow sees this as the close of the third main division of the work: "This Variation ... must be hammered out with wellnigh raging impetuosity... More delicate shading would not be in place – at least in the First Part".

Tovey again uses superlatives: "The thirty-first variation is an extremely rich outpouring of highly ornamented melody, which to Beethoven's contemporaries must have been hardly intelligible, but which we, who have learnt from Bach that a great artist's feeling is often more profound where his expression is most ornate, can recognize for one of the most impassioned utterances in all music.

"[49] Von Bülow comments, "We should like to style this number, thoughtful and tender alike, a renascence of the Bach Adagio, as the succeeding double fugue is one of the Handel Allegros.

Eventually, the original two themes of the fugue burst out loudly again and the work races impetuously toward its final climax, a crashing chord and a grand sweep of arpeggios twice down and up the entire keyboard.

Tovey comments: It is profoundly characteristic of the way in which (as Diabelli himself seems partly to have grasped) this work develops and enlarges the great aesthetic principles of balance and climax embodied in the 'Goldberg' Variations, that it ends quietly.

The freedom necessary for an ordinary climax on modern lines was secured already in the great fugue, placed, as it was, in a foreign key; and now Beethoven, like Bach, rounds off his work by a peaceful return home—a home that seems far removed from these stormy experiences through which alone such ethereal calm can be attained.

One can hear the Arietta as yet another, more distant, offspring of the 'waltz', and marvel at the inspirational effect of the 'cobbler's patch'.Solomon describes the closing bars as "the final image – of a tender, songful, profound nostalgia, a vantage point from which we can review the purposes of the entire journey.

The variations by the famous piano virtuosos, especially Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Carl Czerny, Johann Peter Pixis, Ignaz Moscheles, Joseph Gelinek and Maximilian Stadler, are on the whole brilliant but shallow; for Liszt, then only 11, it was his first publication, and his piece is vigorous but hardly characteristic.