Renaissance and Baroque
Variation as a compositional technique is frequently found in Renaissance music, where the ideal of variety and diversification (varietas principle) applies, avoiding exact repetition.
Variations as musical forms appear increasingly from the early 16th century in the form of ostinato variations, i.e. variations on fixed basses/chord progressions, due to the import of the guitar from Spain to Italy. Examples of ostinato variations are the passacaglia and ciacona, which were still important after the Baroque period, as well as dance models such as passamezzo, romanesca or folia.
In the Baroque period, variations were improvised and composed over basso continuo models (e.g. dance variations) or over melodies (e.g. song variations, cantus firmus variations). Since the varied dances and songs of this period were very much standardized, i.e. not normally created by the composers themselves, the composition of variations on them presents special challenges. A composed set of variations had to stand out clearly from already existing variations on the same model and be individually distinctive.
One of the most famous composers of variations was Johann Sebastian Bach. His world-famous Goldberg Variations represented a high point of baroque variation art.
Classic
The era of Viennese Classicism saw the liberalization of variations. Variations were used to develop the pieces, and variations were used as dramaturgical means.
Since 1770, it has been increasingly observed that common themes were varied by assigning a basic model to each variation. These compositional principles were also used by classical composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn. However, these themes were not derived from generally known songs and dances, as in the Baroque period, but one used one's own themes.
In the classical period, there are both through-composed variation sequences in which the variations flow seamlessly into one another - as was common in the Baroque period - and arrangements in which the individual variations constitute short individual movements. The change of the tonal gender in one or more variations is also typical (minore variation: the tonal gender is changed to minor, majore variation: the tonal gender is changed to major).
Mozart was the first in his time to enrich variations with elements of the sonata, thus achieving a self-contained large-scale form and moving away from the series character.
Haydn composed double variations on two themes, which describe a type of playing close to the rondo form.
In classical music, variations are also mixed with other types of form, such as the rondo. In this case, the individual form models of the rondo are varied in each case, and consequently the individual models have a community of substance. A good example of this is the 2nd movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 7th Symphony. In this movement, the variation form is broken out of in part, and fugues also occur. In this case, we have a constant rhythm.
Romance
In the musical epoch of Romanticism, variations succeeded in depicting states of mind, since they offered the possibility of conveying the psyche and human feeling to the listener in the sequence of the individual movements. This type of variation is also called character variation.
Such musical psychograms were achieved, for example, by Robert Schumann with the Études symphoniques Op.13 and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy with the Variations sérieuses.
One varies in order to achieve a large overall form. In the process, the consistent variation of the theme is pushed into the background. The theme is deviated from and may be broken down into details, as in the case of Johannes Brahms and Max Reger (Variations in F-sharp minor, Op. 73).
20th century
In the 20th century, the traditional forms of variation recede into the background. Chapter 22 of Thomas Mann's novel "Doktor Faustus", based on Adorno's "Philosophy of New Music", brings up the idea of the genuinely archaic nature of the musical form of variation. Cf. Jürg Baur's "Archaic Variations" from 1997 (see below).
Variation as a compositional technique, however, is present in the form of "Entwickelnde Variation". "Developing variation" is a term coined by Arnold Schoenberg in his essay "Brahms, the Progressive" to describe the compositional technique of continuous variation. While Schoenberg considers this form of continuous variation to have been partially realized by composers of the Romantic period, the twelve-tone technique elevates "developing variation" to a basic musical principle, since an immanent musical coherence is supposed to exist there due to the use of twelve-tone rows. This idea is taken even further in serialism from the 1950s onwards, which organises not only pitches but also other musical parameters such as dynamics, attack and timbre on the basis of series. This current lasted until about the 1970s and was sometimes very strongly criticized, since the excess of structural organization is difficult to grasp auditorily. In the auditory impression, there are often no significant differences between serialism and aleatoric (random music).
Variation also plays an essential role in jazz - in the form of the interpretation of jazz standards and their improvisational and compositional variation.
