Lyrical and beautiful, greatly contrasting with the preceding variation, an allusion to Bach. Tovey describes this variation as "a wonderfully delicate and mysterious web of sounds on a figure suggested partly by the treble and partly by the bass of the first four bars of the theme. Acting on a hint given him by the second half of Diabelli's theme, Beethoven inverts this in the second half of the fughetta." Kinderman compares it with the concluding fugue in the last movement of the Sonata in A, Op. 110 and to the mood of "certain quiet devotional passages in the Missa Solemnis", both of which were composed in this same period. Brendel's title for this variation is Pure Spirit.
Lyrical and beautiful, greatly contrasting with the preceding variation, an allusion to Bach. Tovey describes this variation as "a wonderfully delicate and mysterious web of sounds on a figure suggested partly by the treble and partly by the bass of the first four bars of the theme. Acting on a hint given him by the second half of Diabelli's theme, Beethoven inverts this in the second half of the fughetta." Kinderman compares it with the concluding fugue in the last movement of the Sonata in A Op. 110 and to the mood of "certain quiet devotional passages in the Missa Solemnis", both of which were composed in this same period. Brendel's title for this variation is Pure Spirit.