6 Easy Variations on a Swiss Air

Ludwig van Beethoven composed this small series of variations without opus number (now cataloged as WoO 64) in the years between 1790 and 1792, shortly before his moving from Bonn to Vienna, when he was still working for the von Breuning family and taking lessons from Christian Gottlob Neefe. The manuscript of this composition is unusually clean and without errors and does not show the indication for harp, which instead appears in the first print, published in Bonn in 1798 by Simrock.

It is not known exactly if their destination for the harp was in Beethoven’s intentions from the beginning or if it was an initiative of the publisher that he eventually approved.

These Variations are based on the theme of the Swiss song Es hätt ‘and’ Buur e ‘Töchterli, attested in the collections of popular songs since 1781, which tells the story of a pastoral love between the young Dursli and Babeli.