ulted, but he feared the nervous strain of such an
undertaking. "I should enjoy it," he said to Rochlitz, "but I shudder at
the thought of beginning works of such magnitude. Once engaged on them,
however, I have no difficulty." His labors on the Mass aged him. In his
prime on its inception, he emerged from his seclusion on completing it,
infirm and broken in health. The idea of the Faust music attracted him,
as it would have been strictly symphonic in character. He occasionally
refers to it subsequently, but never got so far as to enter themes for
it in his note-books. Wagner essayed it, but went no further than to
write the overture. The subject of Faust still awaits a capable
interpreter.

His next commission was a simple one, consisting of an order early in
the spring of 1823 from Diabelli, composer and head of a large
publishing house in Vienna, for six variations on a waltz by him
(Diabelli). The dance was always a favorite musical form with Beethoven
in his lighter moments, and the variation form,--capable of a degree of
sprightliness, vivacity and originality in the right hands which give it
an entrancing effect, to which we come again and again with pleasure,
was something peculiarly his own at every stage of his artistic career.
His earliest essays in composition are in this form. Variations occupy a
prominent part in all his works, whether chamber-music, sonatas or
symphonies. They are introduced perhaps with best effect in the works of
his last years, in the Ninth Symphony, and in the last quartets.

He accepted the order with pleasure and began work on it at once on
reaching his summer quarters. This was congenial work, affording him
relief from the mental strain imposed on him by his labors on the Ninth
Symphony, which was then under way. A price of eighty ducats ($180) was
fixed by the publisher at the outset for the set, but the master enjoyed
his work so much, that the six, when completed, were increased to ten,
then to twenty, and twenty-five, and so on until the number grew to
thirty-three. These variations are extremely elaborate and difficult, a
characteristic of most of his work in these years.

Wagner never tired of exploiting the variation form in his operas,
particularly in the Tetralogy. He frequently refers to Beethoven's
masterly use of it. "Haydn first, Beethoven last, have conferred
artistic value on this form," he says in the article on conducting;
later on in the same work, he says, "the