THE VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY JOSEPH HAYDN was created in 1873. The previous year (his tenth after settling in Vienna) Brahms had been invited to lead the choir and orchestra of the Vienna Society of Friends of Music, and over the next three years he conducted a number of major vocal-orchestral works by Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn, as well as his own, the German Requiem, the Song of Destiny and the Song of Triumph. This spurred him to resume work on his long-commenced Symphony No 1, which he completed in 1876. Its predecessor, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, clearly contributed to enriching Brahms’s orchestral writing.
From the early 1870s, his friend Karl Ferdinand Paul, librarian of the Vienna Philharmonic, worked on a biography of Haydn and showed Brahms a transcription of a five-movement work for wind octet found in the Zittau, marked Divertimento No. 1. Brahms was particularly intrigued by the second movement, entitled St. Anthony’s Chorale, and it was this that became the subject of his variations. He worked on the Variations during the summer months of 1873, spent in the picturesque town of Tutzing near the Bavarian lake Starnberg, not far from Munich. He originally wrote a version for two pianos, with the idea of his own performance with Karl Tausig, whom he had already made music with. But after a trial performance with Clara Schumann, he decided immediately to orchestrate the work, and this version was given precedence – it was labelled Op. 56-a and the piano version Op. 56-b.
The premiere performance was on November 2nd , 1873 by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Brahms’ baton; after the great success he also conducted the Variations in Leipzig on February 5th, 1874.
Until the mid-twentieth century there was no doubt about Haydn’s authorship of the Divertimento in B flat major, and it is listed in the complete catalogue of his works compiled by Anthony van Hoboken as Hob. II:46. However, the authoritative scholar H. C. Robbins Landon stated explicitly that the work was not stylistically identical with Haydn’s music, and that the St. Anthony Choralle in the second movement is probably an ancient song of the Pilgrims. This is why today the work is sometimes referred to in recordings and concert programmes as the St. Anthony Variations, in addition to the original title given by Brahms.