Editing Diabelli Variations (section)

===Variation 33: ''Tempo di Menuetto moderato''===
{{Listen|image=none|type=music|filename=Beethoven - Diabelli Variations - 33.ogg|title=Variation 33|help=no}}
Tovey comments:

{{quote|It is profoundly characteristic of the way in which (as Diabelli himself seems partly to have grasped) this work develops and enlarges the great aesthetic principles of balance and climax embodied in the 'Goldberg' Variations, that it ends quietly. The freedom necessary for an ordinary climax on modern lines was secured already in the great fugue, placed, as it was, in a foreign key; and now Beethoven, like Bach, rounds off his work by a peaceful return home—a home that seems far removed from these stormy experiences through which alone such ethereal calm can be attained.<ref name="Tovey, Donald Francis p. 133"/>}}

Brendel's title for this variation is ''To Mozart; to Beethoven'' explaining:

{{quote|In the [[coda (music)|coda]] of the concluding variation, Beethoven speaks on his own behalf. He alludes to another supreme set of variations, that from his own last Sonata, Op. 111, which had been composed before the ''Diabelli Variations'' were finished. Beethoven's Arietta from Op. 111 is not only in the same key as Diabelli's 'waltz', but also shares certain motivic and structural features, while the characters of the two themes could not be more disparate. One can hear the Arietta as yet another, more distant, offspring of the 'waltz', and marvel at the inspirational effect of the 'cobbler's patch'.}}

Solomon describes the closing bars as "the final image – of a tender, songful, profound nostalgia, a vantage point from which we can review the purposes of the entire journey."<ref name="Solomon26"/>

::[[File:Diabelli Var33 full.jpg]]