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Ludwig van Beethoven

By the end of his life, Beethoven had composed nearly seventy sets of variations. Most of the early ones were based on themes by other composers and were not given opus numbers, which Beethoven reserved for what he felt to be his more substantial, important works.

Although scholars have shown that the Op. 44 Trio was first sketched in 1792, during Beethoven's last year in Bonn, no one has ascertained exactly when it was finished. It may have been composed as a finale to the Trio in E flat major, Op. 1, No. 1, which was written before 1794 and revised in 1795, prior to publication. What is certain is that the Op. 44 Trio was published in 1804 by Hoffmeister in Leipzig. Beethoven probably gave the set of variations an opus number because the theme is one of his own.

Beethoven's theme is as obsessive arpeggiation of the tonic triad that moves to the dominant in the second half of its eight measures. Several features of the theme, including a lengthy pause on a B flat and the prominence of the subdominant (A flat major), are elaborated upon in the ensuing variations. The piano dominates Variations 1 and 2, in which the theme is decorated in a fashion that fills in many of the spaces of the original arpeggios. The third variation features triplet eighth notes in the violin over the piano's duple eighths, producing a welcome fluid motion. The cello takes up the piano's eighth note pattern in the fourth variation, throughout which the violin rests. Here, Beethoven accents the alternation between the tonic and subdominant in the last few measures of the theme through B naturals that progress to C naturals. Triplets return, this time in the active piano part of ariation No. 5. The obligatory minor variation shows up in the seventh spot with a new, Largo, tempo and 6/8 meter. Beethoven again emphasizes the subdominant by creating a cadence on that harmony after nine measures. As the 2/2 meter returns in the eighth variation, the strings play repeated eighth note triplets, outlining the original, major, harmonies of the theme. At the midpoint of the variation the held B flat, now an entire tonic triad, expands to a brief, rhythmically free cadenza for the piano, a device Beethoven employs in his earlier Piano Sonata, Op. 31, No. 2 and the later Fifth Symphony. The bare bones of an already bare theme are all that is left in the ninth variation, which the piano trills to a finish, while the strings perform the original theme at the beginning of the tenth. Decorative turns appear in the strings as the piano inverts the theme's arpeggios in the eleventh variation, whose triplet rhythm continues in the twelfth under a dotted-rhythm pattern that loses focus on the shape of the theme. After another minor key variation at a slow tempo, Beethoven returns to the tonic major for the fourteenth variation, which begins in 6/8 and includes an appended coda in the original meter and Andante tempo, but presents the theme on C minor before a Presto close.