Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of his era, and his piano works continue to be widely performed and recorded. He gained renown during the 1830s for his skill as a pianist. Regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the time, he toured Europe during the 1830s and 1840s, often playing for charity. In these years, Liszt developed a reputation for his powerful performances as well as his physical attractiveness. In a phenomenon dubbed "Lisztomania", he rose to a degree of stardom and popularity among the public not experienced by the virtuosos who preceded him.

During this period and into his later life, Liszt was a friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many composers of his time, including Hector Berlioz, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann and Richard Wagner, among others. Alongside Wagner, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School, a progressive group of composers involved in the "War of the Romantics" who developed ideas of programmatic music and harmonic experimentation.

Liszt taught piano performance to hundreds of students throughout his life, many of whom went on to become notable performers. He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work that influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends. Among Liszt's musical contributions were the concept of the symphonic poem, innovations in thematic transformation and impressionism in music, and the invention of the masterclass as a method of teaching performance. In a radical departure from his earlier compositional styles, many of Liszt's later works also feature experiments in atonality, foreshadowing developments in 20th-century classical music.

Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli (French: Variation sur une valse de Diabelli), S.147, is a variation by Franz Liszt composed in 1822 and published in late 1823 or early 1824 as Variation No. 24 of Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, a collection of variations by 50 composers. All the variations were based on a waltz composed by Anton Diabelli, who also published the work. It was this same invitation from Diabelli to write a variation that inspired Ludwig van Beethoven to write his 33 Diabelli Variations, Op. 120, which formed the entirety of Part I of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. TIt is his first known and published work; perhaps composed at the instigation of Carl Czerny, his piano teacher, who also composed a variation and a coda for the set. Liszt was virtually unknown at the time of publishing and he was listed as "Franz Liszt (Knabe von 11 Jahren) geboren in Ungarn" (11-year-old boy, born in Hungary). At the time Diabelli issued his invitations to write the variations (May 1819), Liszt was aged only seven, but by the time of publication, he had turned 12. He was the only child composer to write a variation for the set.

The variation is written in C Minor, in 2/4 time, in the form of an étude. It keeps to the original theme, "in a flowing style of chord passages in an abundance of notes but without any lofty sentiment" in the words of Liszt's biographer Lina Ramann.

Liszt was one of the few of the 50 composers who varied either the time signature or the key signature from Diabelli's original. He changed Diabelli's C major to C minor, and changed 3/4 time to 2/4.

Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variation_on_a_Waltz_by_ Diabelli_(Liszt)).

Although originally written for Piano. I created this Arrangement of Waltz in C Major a Variation On A Waltz By Anton Diabelli (S.147) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).