Themes and variations

so the first thing to know about writing themes and variations is that they are built upon preference and style. when your peice is disected, one of the first things a music scholar will look at is the style that the work is written in. so chose styles that you like.

What is style? it is a way of performing a melody as if some one else would, for example one of the charachteristics of Bartok, Dvorak, and other slavic compsers is the use of phrasing. they would find a melody and play the melody over the length of five measures. some times more. often changing comfortable meters such as half note to quarter note rhythms to quarter note to half note rhythms. then he would play the five bar melody in 3/4 time so that the musical phrase had fifteen beats.

this is unusual to western ears becaus mozart used four bar phrases more often.

so once the theme is established then the style is chosen.

see part two for the next step.

No the right forum for this.

Someone move it~