Variations on the song "Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu
Every Friday, Beethoven is here. To mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, each week Swiss Music Review takes a look at a different work from his catalog. Today, it's the "Kakadu Variations" for piano, violin and cello.
There are scores among Beethoven's works that are known only to insiders: such is the case of the variations on the song "Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu" (I am the tailor Kakadu). We still don't know when this work was composed - but certainly long, perhaps years, before Beethoven first mentioned it in a letter to publisher Gottfried Härtel on July 19, 1816. Despite the years separating them, music critic Paul Bekker even sees it as a "modest counterpart" to the colossal Diabelli Variations op. 120completed in 1823.
Bekker's commentary refers to the organization of the variations themselves, as well as to the long, slow introduction and what Beethoven called the "appendix" (Anhang) to the tenth variation. Whereas in the latter, the theme gradually dissolves into a fugato and then appears only once as a reminiscence, the introduction makes use of the almost paradoxical idea of developing the pre-existing - and indeed very popular - theme into individual motifs: Beethoven virtually recreates the song "Ich bin der Scheider Wetz und Wetz", which forms the basis of the variations and was popular in Vienna in the early 19th century (the tailor's name is soon changed to Kakadu). The original melody comes from the singspiel Die Schwestern von Prag (The Prague Sisters) by Wenzel Müller (1767-1835), premiered in 1794. Another singspiel by this once-popular Viennese composer, Kaspar, der Fagottist, oder: Die Zauberzither (Kaspar the Bassoonist, or the Magic Zither), was composed in 1791 to a libretto based on the collection of exotic fairy tales Djinnistan of Wieland, like the The Magic Flute by Mozart.
Beethoven's contemporaries had already noticed that the Kakadu Variations were not simply entertainment music. In theAllgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger from 1830: "The old song of the tailor Crispinus, alias Wetz, Wetz, Wetz, is put into variations with such wit, imagination and daring that only a master can do it. Of course, the story isn't easy; but it doesn't have to be, because it's certainly not intended for vain trivia."
Aufnahme auf idagio
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