Braye Lute Book Composer (b. c. 1530)
Pavana (Variations on Romanesca) (1560) (Guitar)
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is altered during repetition: reiteration with changes. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre or orchestration.
Variation forms include ground bass, passacaglia, chaconne, and theme and variations.
Theme and variations is a musical form in which the fundamental musical idea, or theme, is repeated in altered form or accompanied in a different manner. It could be used as a solo piece or as movement of a larger piece. Passacaglias and chaconnes are forms in which a repeating bass line or ostinato--typically shorter than a full-scale variation theme -- is heard through the entire piece. Fantasia variation is a form which relies on variation but which repeats and incorporates material freely.
Works in theme-and-variation form first emerge in the history of classical music only in the 1500's. A favorite form of variations in Renaissance music was divisions, a type in which the basic rhythmic beat is successively divided into smaller and smaller values. The basic principle of beginning with simple variations and moving on to more elaborate ones has always been present in the history of the variation form, since it provides a way of giving an overall shape to a variation set, rather letting it just form an arbitrary sequence.
Two famous variation sets from the Baroque era, both for harpsichord, are George Frideric Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith set, and Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations, which together with Beethoven's late variations is widely considered to represent the pinnacle of the form.
In the Classical era, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote a great number of variations, such as the finale of his Clarinet Quintet. Mozart favored a particular pattern in his variations: the penultimate variation is in slow tempo, often acting as a kind of extra slow movement in a multi-movement work; and the final variation is fast and in bravura style.[citation needed] Joseph Haydn specialized in sets of double variations, in which two related themes, usually minor and major, are presented and then varied in alternation; an outstanding examples are the slow movements of his Symphony No. 94 ("Surprise") and Symphony No. 103 ("Drumroll"}.
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote many variation sets in his career. Some were independent sets, for instance the "Diabelli" Variations, Op. 120. Others form single movements or parts of movements in larger works, such as the final movement of the Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica").
Franz Schubert wrote five variation sets using his own lieder as themes. A highlight of these is the slow movement of his string quartet Death and the Maiden (Der Tod und das Mädchen, D. 810), an intense set of variations on his somber lied (D. 531) of the same title. Schubert's Piano Quintet in A (The Trout, D.667) likewise includes variations on The Trout (Die Forelle, D. 550).
In the Romantic era, the variation receded somewhat in importance, but many composers nevertheless created variation sets. A standout was Johannes Brahms, whose Classical tendencies perhaps naturally inclined him to writing variations; some of Brahms's variation sets rely on themes by older composers, for example the Variations on a Theme (thought in Brahms's time to be) by Haydn (1873) and the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel (1861). Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations (1899) is probably his best-known full-length piece.
Variation sets have also been composed by twentieth-century composers, including Sergei Rachmaninoff (Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini), Charles Ives (Variations on America, 1891), Arnold Schoenberg (Variations for Orchestra, Opus 31, and Theme and Variations, Opus 43), Igor Stravinsky (Variations for Orchestra, 1964), Anton Webern (Variations, Opus 27 for piano and Variations, Opus 30 for orchestra), Alban Berg (Act 1, Scene 4 and the beginning of Act 3 scene 1 of Wozzeck), Paul Hindemith, Benjamin Britten (including the The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Purcell) and the Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge), and Mark Alburger (Variations and Theme, 1976; The Twelve Fingers: X. Ten-Finger Variations, 1977; Stolen Students: III. Themes and Variation, 1983; Mary Variations, on Mary Had a Little Lamb, 1983; and Diabolic Variations, on the Dies Irae, 2005).
Skilled musicians who know a theme well can often improvise variations on it. This was commonplace in the Baroque era, when the da capo aria, particularly when in slow tempo, required the performer to be able to improvise a variation during the return of the main material.
Musicians of the Classical era also could improvise variations; both Mozart and Beethoven made powerful impressions on their audiences when they improvised. Modern listeners can get a sense of what these improvised variations sounded like by listening to published works that evidently are written transcriptions of improvised performances.
Improvisation of elaborate variations on a popular theme is one of the core genres of jazz.
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[The early-music group Romanesca]
Romanesca is a song form popular in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries. It was most popular with Italian composers of the early Baroque period.
Originating in Spain, a romanesca is composed of a sequence of four chords with a simple, repeating bass, which provide the groundwork for variations and improvisation. A famous example is "Greensleeves."
Romanesca is also the name of two early music ensembles: one, La Romanesca, founded in 1978 in Australia by John Griffiths; and the other, Romanesca, founded in 1988 in England by Nigel North. Both specialize in the performance of early plucked instruments.
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The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four, seven, eight, ten, and twelve string guitars also exist.
Traditionally guitars have usually been constructed of combinations of various woods and strung with animal gut, or more recently, with either nylon or steel strings. Guitars are made and repaired by luthiers.
Traditionally, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides."
Instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years. The six string classical guitar first appeared in Spain but was itself the product of a long and complex history of diverse influences. Like virtually all other stringed European instruments, the guitar ultimately traces back thousands of years, via the Middle East, to a common ancient origin from instruments then known in central Asia and India. It is therefore very distantly related with contempory instruments such as the Iranian tanbur and setar and the Indian sitar. The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying all the essential features of a guitar being played is a 3300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.
The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra, derived from the Latin word cithara, which in turn was derived from the earlier Greek word kithara, which perhaps derives from Persian sihtar.
Sihtar itself is related to the Indian instrument, the sitar.
The modern guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD, and further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after their conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century.
Elsewhere in Europe, the indigenous six-string Scandinavian lut (lute), had gained in popularity in areas of Viking incursions across the continent. Often depicted in carvings c. 800 AD, the Norse hero Gunther (also known as Gunnar), played a lute with his toes as he lay dying in a snake-pit, in the legend of Siegfried.
By 1200 AD, the four string "guitar" had evolved into two types: the guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several soundholes, and the guitarra latina (Latin guitar) which resembled the modern guitar with one soundhole and a narrower neck.
The Spanish vihuela or "viola da mano," a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries is, due to its many similarities, usually considered the immediate ancestor of the modern guitar. It had lute-style tuning and a guitar-like body. Its construction had as much in common with the modern guitar as with its contemporary four-course renaissance guitar. The vihuela enjoyed only a short period of popularity as it was superseded by the guitar; the last surviving publication of music for the instrument appeared in 1576. It is not clear whether it represented a transitional form or was simply a design that combined features of the Arabic oud and the European lute. In favor of the latter view, the reshaping of the vihuela into a guitar-like form can be seen as a strategy of differentiating the European lute visually from the Moorish oud.
The Vinaccia family of luthiers is known for developing the mandolin, and may have built the oldest surviving six string guitar. Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 – after 1831) has his signature on the label of a guitar built in Naples, Italy for six strings with the date of 1779.
This guitar has been examined and does not show tell-tale signs of modifications from a double-course guitar although fakes are known to exist of guitars and identifying labels from that period.
Renaissance and Baroque guitars are substantially smaller and more delicate than the classical guitar, and generate a much quieter sound. The strings are paired in courses as in a modern 12 string guitar, but they only have four or five courses of strings rather than six. They were more often used as rhythm instruments in ensembles than as solo instruments, and can often be seen in that role in early music performances. (Gaspar Sanz' Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española of 1674 constitutes the majority of the surviving solo corpus for the era.) Renaissance and Baroque guitars are easily distinguished because the Renaissance guitar is very plain and the Baroque guitar is very ornate, with inlays all over the neck and body, and a paper-cutout inverted "wedding cake" inside the hole.
[8532 Lasso / 8530 Bray Lute / 8525 Palestrina]