How do write Variations on a Theme?

G'day fellas,

Recently, I've been keen to have a crack at a "Theme & Variations", whether on an original or an existing theme.

May I ask what advice has helped you in the process? Cheers!

Quinn St. Mark

Hey @Quinn St. Mark,

For me there're many things you can do for a theme and variation. Simpler approach like the one in the Twinkle Twinkle little star Variation you can change the accompaniment and add some decorative notes in your melody. You can analyze the interesting motive, both melodic and rhythmic in your theme and use them in subsequent variations. You can analyze the harmonic progression of the theme and progress with complexity in subsequent vatiations. You can add counterpoint to the original theme. Changing keys can be effective as well, for example Beethoven's Variation in F major. Make sure to check out @PeterthePapercomPoser's variation pieces here as they are great.

Henry

Thanks heaps, @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu!

This is most helpful.

Quinn

Wow I can't believe I haven't replied to this topic yet!  This is a good and important question as I believe that variation technique is at the core of composing in general and especially helps composers to learn to balance thematic unity and variety.

When I started writing variations pieces I was very excited about being able to write longer compositions since up till then I struggled with writing anything over a minute long.  But in a variation piece one idea leads to another and the music seems to write itself.  I started with writing my variations in a chaconne/passacaglia style where you base the whole piece on a repeating bass line/harmonic progression and with each repetition of the 8 (or 16) bar pattern I would change small things about the theme.  After many iterations those changes would add up and yield a very different sounding result.  That's a style of writing variations where they play continuously without pause and it's hard to change the texture.  But I soon also explored a way of writing variations where each variation could stand on its own almost as its own separate piece (like Elgar's Enigma Variations).

One of my favorite variation techniques is to split the original theme into its constituent fragments and rearrange them into a new and yet somewhat familiar sounding melody.  Of course, reversing the order of the notes or flipping the pitches upsidedown are the common techniques of retrograde and inversion respectively.  But I think they are overrated as they don't really yield melodies that sound like they're still somehow related to the original theme imo.  I also like adding notes in between the notes of the original theme.  Repeating certain notes in the theme shouldn't be underestimated as an effective tool in the melody construction toolbox as well.  I could probably talk much more about this topic but I'll leave it here for now.

Cheers, @PeterthePapercomPoser,

This was some great insight! I especially found your point about repeating various notes in the theme interesting. 

Quinn

39 minutes ago, Quinn St. Mark said:

This was some great insight! I especially found your point about repeating various notes in the theme interesting.

Thanks!  I think I should elaborate that besides just repeating single notes, repeating or sequencing (repeating at a different pitch level) 3 to 5 note fragments of the theme can also be very useful as the contour of the original theme is retained but with possibly new rhythmic and/or harmonic significance.