Anton Diabelli was born in Mattsee in the Salzburg Flachgau, sang at Salzburg Cathedral as a boy, and studied under Michael Haydn. He left for Vienna and became one of its most powerful music publishers. His accidental masterpiece: a waltz theme he circulated to 51 composers that prompted Beethoven to write the Diabelli Variations.
The Story
Anton Diabelli's story begins in Mattsee, a small lakeside town north of Salzburg in the Flachgau. He was born there in September 1781, the son of a local musician, and grew up singing in the church choir before moving to Salzburg for his education. He sang at Salzburg Cathedral as a choirboy at the Kapellhaus, and his most significant teacher in those years was Michael Haydn, the younger brother of Joseph Haydn and one of the key figures in Salzburg's 18th-century musical life. The lessons shaped both his musical foundation and, eventually, his publishing instincts.
Around 1800 he entered the Benedictine monastery at Raitenhaslach in Bavaria, apparently intending a religious vocation. Bavaria's 1803 secularisation dissolved the monastery and closed that path. He moved to Vienna, worked first as a proofreader and music copyist at the publishing house of Steiner and Co., then as a private piano teacher, and gradually built the expertise and contacts to launch his own firm. Cappi and Diabelli was established in 1818; by 1824 he was running the firm alone as A. Diabelli und Comp.
The episode that made him famous was not planned as fame. In 1819 he composed a simple waltz and circulated it to 51 Viennese composers, asking each for one variation to be published together as a collective tribute to the nation's musical culture. Beethoven's initial response was dismissive. But something in the theme's clumsy, almost comic character caught his attention. He eventually delivered not one variation but 33, completing the work in 1823. The Diabelli Variations (Op. 120) are now among the most celebrated works in the piano repertoire. Diabelli's little waltz inadvertently provided the raw material for one of the peaks of Western music.
His firm published Franz Schubert's Der Erlkonig in 1821, when Schubert was still largely unknown. He also published Czerny, and after Schubert's death in 1828 acquired a large portion of the composer's estate. Mattsee and the Salzburg Cathedral choir school were the places that formed him. Vienna is where he built his empire. The two chapters are inseparable.
