Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation

1988 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 99 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Kofi Agawu ◽  
Walter Frisch
Keyword(s):  
Developing Variation

Developing Variation and Schoenberg's Serial Music

1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Haimo
Keyword(s):  
Developing Variation ◽  
Serial Music

Handel’s Transformative Compositional Practices

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-502
Author(s):  
David Ross Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Original Music ◽  
Developing Variation ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Musical Transformations ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
First Time ◽  
Variation Process

In recent decades singers of Handel’s music have made great strides in recapturing the art of embellishing his music, thus breathing new life into forms such as the da capo aria. Yet Handel’s own “variations”—his development and transformation of musical material in his vocal music, important for understanding his compositional practice with borrowed as well as (presumably) original music—are not yet fully explored or appreciated. Admittedly, scholars have discussed musical procedures such as inserting, deleting, and reordering musical materials, as well as other Baroque combinatorial practices in Handel’s arias, but the musical transformations I discuss here are closer to a specifically Handelian brand of developing variation. To my knowledge, the concept of developing variation has never before been applied to early eighteenth-century music. I explore the relation of developing variation to drama (also rarely done) in two of Handel’s arias, providing a close examination of “Ombre, piante” from the opera Rodelinda and new thoughts about “Lament not thus,” originally intended for the oratorio Belshazzar. Although these arias belong to different genres and different stages of Handel’s career, they both exhibit material that undergoes a kind of progressive variation process that has tangible musical and dramatic ramifications, of interest to opera specialists and performers. Furthermore, both arias have a complicated compositional history; I offer fresh insights into the aesthetic qualities of each version, thereby throwing light on Handel’s possible compositional intentions. This article also discloses for the first time some recurring musical passages shared between “Lament not thus” and other pieces that could influence the listener’s interpretation of certain musico-dramatic gestures.

It Sounds like Brahms

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Joel Lester
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Developing Variation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Violin Sonata ◽  
Rhythm And Meter

Chapter 1 discusses the balance of classicism and romanticism as artistic and expressive underpinnings of Brahms’s style. Brahms was in many ways a composer for whom the past—even the distant past—was still very much alive. Yet he was remarkably innovative. He often used Classical-Era forms, but he adapted them to his expressive ends. He used harmonic progressions identical to those used in similar circumstances by composers of the Classical Era, but also used harmonies as adventurously as Wagner or Liszt. In terms of texture and of rhythm and meter, he was, if anything, more adventurous than many of his contemporaries. The chapter offers a detailed analysis of harmony, dissonance, melody, melodic evolution, texture, rhythm and meter, counterpoint, and developing variation in a single Brahms phrase (from the second theme of the first movement of the A-major Violin Sonata, op. 100). Brahms’s phrase is compared to and differentiated from a similar phrase opening the second theme in Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in A, op. 30, no. 2.

The Developing Variation in Samuel Beckett'sMolloy

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-52
Author(s):  
William E. Grim
Keyword(s):  
Developing Variation

Basic Motivic Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 129-164
Author(s):  
Brent Auerbach
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Standard Procedure ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Elementary Mode ◽  
Developing Variation ◽  
Associative Relation ◽  
Motivic Analysis ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
Source Event

Chapter 5 establishes the rules and guidelines for basic motivic analysis (BMA), the more elementary mode of analysis limited to examining the pitch and rhythmic content of music. The first part of the chapter establishes a standard procedure for reduction, or extracting motives from ornamented melodies; this includes rules for motives spanning multiple phrases. The second part of the chapter establishes rules for associating shapes within a work. Such associations are required to be literal, in stark contrast to Schoenberg’s philosophy of Developing Variation. The allowable transformations in pitch are transposition, inversion, and retrograde, and in rhythm are the duration scaling operations, augmentation and diminution. A single, informal associative relation, “sensed connection,” may be used to indicate an analyst’s artistic intuitions about motivic relationships that are unprovable. A last set of rules delineates a proper format for BMA. An analysis must be structured around a single source event called a Focal Point, that occurs near the beginning and furnishes all or nearly all relevant shapes in the piece. Motives must be derived from the Focal Point in forward order (propagative). Discussion is supported by analyses of excerpts by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Rossini, and Pierre Leemans.

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