Riffing like Beethoven

New Zealand poet Anne Kennedy was one of seven children. In 1973, when she was 14, her brother Philip fell to his death at a Guy Fawkes party in Wellington. He was 22. In the Foreword to her recent book, Moth Hour, Kennedy writes simply, almost matter-of-factly, about that tragic time: "The family didn't know what to do about grief. The noisy house went silent...I lay on the red rug in the sitting room and listened to Beethoven's Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, op.120 – over and over, because it was there".

“Beethoven encompasses feelings of life and death and I wanted this book to put grief into the realm of the living and how we deal with it.” Anne Kennedy

 Years after discovering an envelope of Philip's poems, Kennedy wrote Thirty-three Transformations on a Theme of Philip, “riffing like Beethoven” on one of her brother’s poems. These Transformations are the centrepiece of Moth Hour, for which she was a poetry finalist in the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The 2021 Auckland Writers Festival has scheduled a special event in which Kennedy will read some of the Transformations, interspersed with sixteen of Beethoven's Variations played by pianist Sarah Watkins.

Kennedy was herself a good pianist in her late teens, teaching piano and studying composition at university. Michael Houstoun was one of her teachers. When we talked recently, she admitted she no longer thought of herself as a musician.­ “I channelled it all into writing.”  

How did Kennedy translate the idea of musical variations into a big poetic work? "They’re transformations in the Beethovian sense,” she explains, “because they start by replicating the rhythms and language and ideas [of the theme]–but they move very far away from it­­ while still being able to refer back to the original. The very fact of the Diabelli Variations allowed me to take this poem and do these things with it."

It’s unsurprising that “variations” form was a favourite of Beethoven’s. Throughout his oeuvre the music is full of extraordinary motivic and thematic development–he frequently takes an apparently simple musical idea and wrings from it wonderful complexities. An obvious example is the opening motif of the Fifth Symphony, one of the most famous phrases in western music history; as the first movement develops, that recognisable “dit-dit-dit-dah” assumes many guises and provides many different bricks for his splendid edifice.

Beethoven’s 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120 were composed between 1819 and 1823. He began the work when Anton Diabelli invited all of Vienna’s leading composers to write a single variation on his waltz, planning to publish them together. Beethoven was not very interested in either collaboration or Diabelli’s project and decided to create his own set. He also had little respect for the waltz itself and his first few variations are mocking and ironic.

Beethoven set the project aside unfinished to write his huge late work, the Missa Solemnis. When he came back to the Diabelli Variations, just five years before his death, he completed what is not only one of his greatest works for piano solo but a profound exploration of variations form, often compared to Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations. Diabelli’s simple waltz is transformed into variations that run the gamut of musical styles and structures – marches, dances and fugues – and of emotional states from light-hearted humour and unfettered joy to intense melancholy. Virtuosity is required of the pianist and fifty minutes of rapt attention from the audience.

In writing Thirty-three Transformations on a Theme of Philip, Kennedy knew her poem came from a very different place from Beethoven’s composition. “Mine,” she says “came from a very sad place and Beethoven’s was initially ‘piss-taking’ and buffoonish.” She points out, however, that the Diabelli Variations move on from that mockery;  “they expand,” she says, “and gather and take on all sorts of things around them and it was that aspect that inspired me to try the form. This is an account of grief but I wanted it to be more than that.  Beethoven encompasses feelings of life and death and I wanted this book to put grief into the realm of the living and how we deal with it.”

Kennedy describes Moth Hour as the most personal book she's ever written. "I wanted to do something for Philip who died at such a young age and was very talented; I wanted to take his poem and run down the street kind of waving it to everyone." Her book includes the Transformations and also a shorter poem, The Thé, a reference to Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea, mentioned in Philip’s poem and quoted alongside an excerpt from Adrienne Rich’s Moth Hour at the beginning of the book.

Kennedy pulls the threads together in a substantial and beautifully written Afterword, called Pattern/Chaos. Opening with the story of her mother’s impulsive purchase of that red Persian rug on which she listened to Beethoven, Kennedy explores in insightful and shapely prose Philip’s life, his epilepsy, alcoholism and ‘hippiedom’. She places these personal stories alongside thoughts on Beethoven’s musical role between Classicism and Romanticism in 19th century Europe, on New Zealand culture in the 1970’s and the randomness of family grief. Just as Beethoven referred back to his many musical antecedents in the dense and intricate contrapuntal workings of his later Variations, this fine poet ends Moth Hour by weaving many complex strands into a deeply satisfying whole.

Moth Hour by Anne Kennedy is available from bookstores or Auckland University Press.

Auckland Writers Festival 2021 has scheduled a session called The 33: Anne Kennedy & Sarah Watkins - read more and book here

New Zealand pianist Michael Houstoun recorded Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations for Rattle in 2017. Read my NZ Listener review in Houstoun plays the seducer

For more stories about Beethoven on his 250th anniversary, read Happy birthday, Ludwig! and Beethoven, again!