III. There is a return to the major, con moto, 2-4. The theme is given to the oboes, doubled by the bassoons an octave below. There is an independent accompaniment for the lower strings. In the repetition the violins and violas take the part which the wind instruments had, and the flutes, doubled by the bassoons, have arpeggio figures.
IV. In minor, 3-8. The melody is sung by oboe with horn; then it is strengthened by the flute with the bassoon. The violas and shortly after the violoncellos accompany in scale passage. The parts change place in repetition.
V. This variation is a vivace in major, 6-8. The upper melody is given to flutes, oboes, and bassoons, doubled through two octaves. In the repetition the moving parts are taken by the strings.
VI. Vivace, major, 2-4. A new figure is introduced. During the first four measures the strings accompany with the original theme in harmony, afterwards in arpeggio and scale passages.
VII. Grazioso, major, 6-8. The violins an octave above the clarinets descend through the scale, while the piccolo doubled by violas has a fresh melody.
VIII. B flat minor, presto non troppo, 3-4. The strings are muted. The mood is pianissimo throughout. The piccolo enters with an inversion of the phrase.
The finale is in the major, 4-4. It is based throughout on a phrase, an obvious modification of the original theme, which is used at first as a ground bass—“a bass passage constantly repeated and accompanied each successive time with a varied melody and harmony.” This obstinate phrase is afterwards used in combination with other figures in other passages of the finale. The original theme returns in the strings at the climax; the wood-wind instruments accompany in scale passages, and the brass fills up the harmony. The triangle is now used to the end. Later the melody is played by wood and brass instruments, and the strings have a running accompaniment.
The late Max Kalbeck in his long-winded and ponderous Life of Brahms has much to say about these Variations. Which St. Anthony was in Haydn’s mind is immaterial. Kalbeck decided that Brahms’ hero is the St. Anthony of Thebes. Brahms was a friend and admirer of Anselm Feuerbach, the artist, who had painted a life-size Temptation of St. Anthony, the monk kneeling with a book, a scourge, and a skull near him, while a woman begs him to leave his religious meditation and enter into life. This picture was so ridiculed that the sensitive Feuerbach destroyed it, but it had been engraved and photographed.
Kalbeck finds a crescendo of musical psychology in the Variations, which, as they are developed, remind him of musical dissolving views. The seventh Variation pictures the severest test undergone by the saint: “The most atrocious because it is the sweetest.” In this Siciliano he sees the apparition of the tempting woman. The music is “the quintessence of human voluptuousness, which according to Master Eckhart is ‘mixed with bitterness.’ After it comes death. Blessed is the man that has withstood the temptation! The finale, which includes seventeen and more variations, celebrates him.”
Did Brahms have all this in mind when he wrote these Variations? Was not Kalbeck like the man “of meager aspect with sooty hands and face” seen by Captain Lemuel Gulliver at the Academy of Lagado engaged for eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers?