Donald Francis Tovey

“ But for the works of Brahms, which invariably retain the classical conceptions while developing them in a thoroughly modern and living language, it can hardly be claimed that the art of variation-writing has advanced since Beethoven. The term is now used for a somewhat nondescript method of stringing together a series of short fantasias on a theme; a method which may be legitimate and artistic in individual cases, but hardly constitutes an art-form. ”

“ Again, the antithesis of tonic and dominant is accompanied in Diabelli’s theme by a part of the melodic figure being repeated a step higher at the change of harmony; and this naturally produces such devices as the answering of the tonic by the super tonic in variation 8, and, still more surprisingly, by the flat super tonic in variation 30. In so enormous and resourceful a work, occupying fifty minutes in performance, it is natural that some variations should drift rather farther from the anatomy of the theme than can be explained by any strict principle ”

“ There is this great disadvantage in variations that neglect the anatomy of the theme, that the only way in which, in the absence of other means of.-connexion, they can show any coherence at all is by more or less frequently harping on scraps of the melody. ”

“ Already in the 16th century instrumental music was assuming such independence as it could attain by means of a primitive variation-form, growing partly out of the habit of playing vocal madrigals on the virginals or similar keyed instruments, or singing the top part as a solo to an instrumental accompaniment, with an overwhelming weight of ornaments beneath which the original madrigal was quite unrecognizable. ”

“ The extreme case of this is the slow movement of the sonata, Op. S7 (commonly called Appassionata) , which is described in the article on Sonata Forms. In this and in many other instances, his method is aesthetically that of the air et doubles, as being the simplest possible means of obtaining variety and climax without leaving the fundamental key. Until his latest works, such sets of variations are never finished. ”