Editing Diabelli Variations (section)

===Variation 15: ''Presto scherzando''===
{{Listen|image=none|type=music|filename=Beethoven - Diabelli Variations - 15-16-17.ogg|title=Variations 15–17|help=no}}
One of the last variations composed, Variation 15 is short and light, setting the stage for the following two loud virtuoso displays. For Barry Cooper, this is another humorous variation poking fun at Diabelli's theme.<ref name="Cooper, Barry 2000, p. 306"/> Tovey comments, "The fifteenth variation gives the whole melodic outline [of the theme] so closely that its extraordinary freedom of harmony (the first half actually closes in the tonic) produces no effect of remoteness." Brendel's title for this variation is ''Cheerful Spook''.

Tovey gives a similar analysis of the variations:

{{quote|The same applies to the large block of two variations, sixteen and seventeen, of which the sixteenth has the melody in the right hand and [[semiquaver]]s in the left, while the seventeenth has the melody in the bass and the semiquavers above. These variations are so close to the surface of the theme that the amazingly distant keys touched on by their harmonies add only a sense of majesty and depth to the effect without producing complexity.<ref name="Tovey, Donald Francis p. 129"/>}}

::[[File:Diabelli Var15 full.jpg]]