Franz Schubert
Variations

About Franz Schubert's Variations

The 10 Variations in F major were written in February 1815, the same month as the First Sonata. In that year Schubert joined his father as an assistant school teacher, a job which he came to dislike. Instead he devoted more and more time to composition.

At about the same time, Schubert started forming a few close friendships that were to influence him greatly. One of those was with Anselm Hüttenbrenner, a composer who studied with Antonio Salieri. It was from Anselm Hüttenbrenner that the conductor and composer Johann von Herbeck was able in 1865 to gain access to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, which had remained in Hüttenbrenner 's possession until then. The theme for the 13 Variations, D576 comes from Hüttenbrenner's String Quartet in E major, Op. 3.

In 1821, the composer and publisher Anton Diabelli proposed a collection of variations from fifty Austrian composers on a waltz theme he had written. Schubert responded at once with a C minor variation of the original C major waltz.