Anton Diabelli (1781-1858); AUT

Anton Diabelli (1781–1858) was an Austrian composer, pianist, guitarist, teacher, and music publisher whose name is permanently linked with one of Beethoven’s greatest works. Born in Mattsee near Salzburg, he received musical training in a monastery and initially prepared for the priesthood before turning to music. He studied briefly with Michael Haydn and eventually settled in Vienna, where he taught piano and guitar and composed prolifically. Diabelli became increasingly important as a publisher, entering partnership with Pietro Cappi and later establishing the firm Diabelli & Co. The company published music by many leading composers and played a significant role in the rapidly expanding domestic music market of nineteenth-century Vienna. Diabelli’s business acumen and understanding of amateur music-making made him an influential intermediary between composers, performers, and the growing middle-class public.

Diabelli wrote operettas, sacred music, songs, chamber works, and a large quantity of approachable piano and guitar music, much of it designed for students and amateur performers. His enduring fame, however, arose from a simple waltz he circulated among prominent Austrian composers in 1819, asking each to contribute a variation for a projected anthology. Beethoven responded not with one variation but with thirty-three, creating the monumental Diabelli Variations, one of the supreme works of the piano repertory. The larger publishing project appeared as Vaterländischer Künstlerverein and included contributions from numerous composers, among them the young Franz Liszt and Franz Schubert. Diabelli’s own compositions, including many sonatinas and works for four-hand piano, remain useful pedagogical repertoire. Although eclipsed as a composer by the extraordinary masterpiece his waltz inspired, his publishing activities and educational music made him an important figure in Viennese musical culture.

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Read biography at allmusic.com.