Talk:Variations on a Theme by Haydn

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

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

text: Interesting.  I wonder what his evidence is.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:10, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Pleyel

message: "Recent scholarship has revealed that... "
To the author of this section:
Do you have any references for this statement?  I do not want to question your knowledge per se, but I think one drawback of wikipedia is the lack of references, that inhibits the more professional possibilities of Wikipedia.  Your remark about the original composer is nice to read, but without sharing references there cannot be profoundly discussed over this statement, and readers have no reason to believe this statement.
Please refer to verifiability for more information.
Peter--84.193.170.232 14:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  references 

message: *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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: A couple reverts

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

text: I found another reference.  In Julian Littlewood's 2004 book "The Variations of Johannes Brahms", , 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)
replies: text:  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)
thread_title: First-ever free-standing set of variations for orchestra?

message: 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)
replies: text: This requires a "move" of the article, see Help:Moving a page. Tayste (edits) 21:06, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: The Title

message: http://www.barbwired.com/barbweb/programs/brahms_variations.html
173.95.168.87 (talk) 13:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Another source that talks about the source for the actual hymn

message: 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)
thread_title:  Media