33 Variations on a waltz composed by Diabelli, a composer of light music. It is considered by some to be the single greatest piece of music written for the piano, and contains everything Beethoven stood for in a single work. There are many questions about it though, like: why 33?
32 has been the magic number many times: Bach’s Goldberg Variations comes to mind, but Beethoven himself did 32 variations as well. Did he deliberately want to outdo himself by adding one more? Furthermore, when he composed this collection, he already finished his cycle of piano sonatas, numbering 32. Musically, 32 began to mean a complete set. In that way did he surpass himself by adding this as his 33rd, like a coda?
Beethoven’s collection would form the first part of the Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, published in 1823 and 1824. The proceeds of the publication were to go to the relief of orphans and widows of the Napoleonic Wars. Along with Beethoven, Diabelli asked 50 other composers to write one variation of this same waltz. The list of contributors includes a very young Liszt.