Anton Diabelli was an Austrian composer and music publisher known for his association with Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. During his lifetime he was a popular arranger and composer of accessible and easy works intended for amateurs. He was born in 1781, in the small town of Mattsee, which at the time was located within the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg. This was a large area within Austria which was controlled by the Archbishops of the Holy Roman Empire. Diabelli displayed musical talents at a young age as a member of the choirs at the Michaelbeuern Monastery, and the Salzburg Cathedral. In 1800 he joined the Raitenhaslach Monastery, where he claimed to have received music lessons from Michael Haydn as part of his schooling to become a priest. He deviated from a monastic lifestyle in 1803, after Salzburg became secularized and all the Bavarian monasteries were closed. He moved to Vienna, where he supported himself by giving piano and guitar lessons, and he worked as a music proofreader for the publisher S.A. Steiner & Co. He remained active as a composer, and by this time he had already published his six masses. Diabelli's growing interest in publishing led to the establishment of the Cappi & Diabelli publishing company in 1818 with Pietro Cappi, who was a licensed art merchant. Their arrangements of popular themes and melodies for amateur musicians were an immediate success. The following year, Diabelli came up with the idea for his Vaterländischer Künstlerverein to showcase the composers of Austria. For this patriotic collaboration, he composed a simple waltz theme and sent it to the most important living composers associated with Austria. He invited them to contribute a single variation on his theme and over 50 composers responded, including Franz Schubert, Carl Czerny, and the 12-year-old Franz Liszt. Beethoven also agreed to participate, but he was especially inspired by Diabelli's theme and composed an additional set of 33 variations, which was published separately. Aside from its initial success, Vaterländischer Künstlerverein quickly fell out of favor and has historically received very few performances. However, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, Op. 120 is still widely performed and recorded, and is commonly regarded as the finest set of variations ever composed. By this time Diabelli's publishing company was called Diabelli & Co., since he'd ended his partnership with Cappi in 1823. Diabelli & Co. was very prosperous from publishing the variations, and Diabelli had earned a reputation as a prolific composer of accessible, "light" music. Anton Spina joined Diabelli & Co. in 1824 and took care of the finances and administrative responsibilities. Following Schubert's death in 1828, Diabelli purchased a large volume of his music collection. This included several unpublished works, and many that were owned by other publishers, which established Diabelli & Co. as the sole publisher of Schubert's works. Through the next 20 years, Diabelli & Co. continued to expand and became a major competitor in the music publishing industry. In 1851 Diabelli retired and sold the business to Spina, who eventually passed it on to his son, and he managed it until 1872. Diabelli passed away in Vienna in 1858. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi