Just over forty years separate Brahms's Fourth Symphony from Schoenberg's Variations Op.31. Radically divergent maybe, but the handling of variations (the chaconne in Brahms, balanced serialism in Schoenberg), the waltz tempi and a common affiliation with Bach link these masterpieces of Romanticism and dodecaphony.

 

Schoenberg's first twelve-note work for orchestra revolves around a waltz: the Variations Op.31, begun in 1926 and completed two years later. The fourth of these variations is explicitly marked 'Im Walzertempo'. Its arrival is prepared by Variation III, which moves at a somewhat gentler pace, but already adopts the typical rhythm of this popular dance. It clearly harks back to the theme on which the variations are based. The second reference to the musical past first appears towards the end of the Introduction, recurring in the closing bars of the second variation, while in the Finale it assumes a determining, guiding function. This element is the sequence of notes B flat - A - C - B natural, which in German note-names spells B-A-C-H. Many commentators have seen the use of this symbol as Schoenberg's way of dissociating himself from the annexation of Bach by the frequently mechanistic neo-Baroque fashion that was rife in the 1920s. But one can also regard it as simply a counterweight to the 'common touch' of Johann Strauss - Bach is here taken to personify the highest accomplishment of music as an art form.