A Dictionary Of Musical Themes Pdf
Teena Ruiter
A theme is a musical idea constituting the main melody of the composition; contrasting themes are two or more themes which are quite different from each other such as smooth and lyrical contrasting with angular and disjointed.
The musical basis upon which a composition is built. Usually a theme consists of a recognizable melody or a characteristic rhythmic pattern. The theme may sometimes be called the subject. A melodic figure or phrase that is the basis for a composition or a section of a composition. Themes can and are repeated many times in many different formats and by many different voices or instruments. *Some very good examples of thematic presentation are the closing credits for any and all of the Star Wars movies. The ending music presents all the themes presented in the movie.*a theme is a complete tune or melody which is of fundamental importance in a piece of music. Thematic metamorphosis or thematic transformation describes a process used by Liszt and others in which a theme may undergo transformation to provide material to sustain other movements or sections of a work, where new and apparently unrelated themes might otherwise have been used.
A melodic pattern constituting the basis of a musical composition.
A melodic figure or phrase that is the basis for a composition or a section of a composition. Themes can and are repeated many times in many different formats and by many different voices or instruments. *Some very good examples of thematic presentation are the closing credits for any and all of the Star Wars movies. The ending music presents all the themes presented in the movie.*
The question concerns western classical music. I have tried reading about and understanding the difference between variations and development, and what I understand is that development is more complex: a variation is something which uses a particular motif and alters it, whereas development can involve motifs from various parts of the composition.
Variation: one musical theme/melodic material that already has been presented is the object of the variations. Variations of that material (one already existing material/melody/theme). Variations normally don't change the melody content neither interrupt/cut pieces out of the original material, but can be very creative with all other aspects like rhythm, dynamic, note length and ornaments.
Development: works the material already presented also, but here the melodic material can be developed/altered and/or presented just fragments of the original material; it is also possible the development will include material from other melodies/themes that have already been presented.
It is posible that a variation is very complex, with tonality changes, ornamentations or other changes to the melodie aspect, so it looks like a development, but still only one melody/element at a time.
It is also possible a development to keep the ideas of the theme melody, so it can look like a variation. Still the idea of variations is to use one theme/melody presented and keep the melodic material quite "original", the development going "forward" in music making a sum/resume of one or many ideas presented and/or even with new melodic/harmonic changed to that material.
There is a line of composition called "Developing variation" which makes variations using serial and mathematic models to make variations of a theme, this produces music that is sometimes difficult to associate with the theme and thus is a "developing variation".
Though the term "theme and variations" implies that what is fundamentally being varied is the theme, what is usually preserved in a variation is the length, phrasing, and chord progressions that accompanied the original presentation of the theme. So if you listen to something like the first movement of Mozart's K331 -- -- you will hear that every variation preserves the chord progressions (even in the minor mode variation) and length of each chord.
In a development section, the succession of chords is one of the first things that tends to be changed -- the basic motives -- the smaller parts that make up a theme -- may be preserved, but they are often recombined in such a way that the original chord progressions and phrasing make little sense.
The Harvard Dictionary of Music defines variation as, "A technique of modifying a given musical idea". It is commonly associated with the form of a piece or movement. These variations consist of alterations to the idea such as elaborations, key/modality change, voice exchange, reharmonization and more.
The Harvard Dictionary of Music defines development as, "Structural alteration of musical material". In its definition it gives this nice little distinction, "Development may also usefully be distinguished from variation, the former involving a true structural transformation, the latter merely and ornamental change such as a melodic elaboration or a shift in dynamics or orchestration".
Development tends to take things and chop them up into little pieces and put them in different places or change the size of them or shape much more than variation. A variation might include some of those aspects but it will retain its structure.
If you take a 16-bar tune and repeat it with a different accompaniment, different harmony, minor key instead of major... but it's still recognisably the same 16-bar tune, you've written a variation. If you take a melodic fragment, a rhythm, an interval even, and 'play with it', maybe combining and contrasting it with another fragment of the same (or another) tune, you're developing.
I think we can let Variation go a bit beyond the Harvard Dictionary "...merely an ornamental change such as a melodic elaboration or a shift in dynamics or orchestration." But once the original structure ceases to be apparent, we're getting into the realms of development.
Variations come in sets, with clearly delineated sections - you could easily label 'Theme', 'Variation 1', Variation 2' etc. at regular intervals. A development will be continuous.
Listen to the first movement of Beethoven 5th Symphony for a development. Listen to Mozart's variations on 'Ah vous dirai-je, Maman' for a set of variations. (I'm sure you can find your own source for the Beethoven.)
A turning point in Buchanan's life came about 1927 when she met John Powell, a composer and pianist from Richmond, who not only employed themes from folk music in his works but also believed ardently in preserving Anglo-Saxon cultural forms. Powell inspired Buchanan to study and collect folk music and to use its musical themes in her compositions. She included performances by folk musicians in the first Virginia State Choral Festival, which she and Powell organized in 1928.
In 1931 Buchanan cofounded and directed the White Top Folk Festival, held each year (except 1937) until 1939. The festival, which took place atop a mountain in Grayson County and gained nationwide attention in 1933 when Eleanor Roosevelt was guest of honor, was only part of what Buchanan saw as her larger work of preserving and disseminating the traditional music of the region. From 1933 to 1936 she organized a series of prefestival seminars that brought folklorists, composers, and writers together with traditional musicians for classes and concerts. Through these meetings, and later through correspondence with such folklorists as Phillips Barry, Anne Gilchrist, and Donald Knight Wilgus, Buchanan continued to study and write about folk music. Her Folk Hymns of America (1938) explored traditional use of secular tunes for sacred songs. Buchanan also provided musical arrangements for many of the traditional hymns she had collected from family members and other informants. The collection was well received by musicians and scholars alike.
Buchanan called all her folklore activities the "White Top work." Besides the establishment of one of the nation's first large regional folk festivals, her accomplishments in this field include published articles on the White Top festival and on other aspects of folk music, four book-length manuscripts on folk music and folklore, and her collection of more than 800 traditional songs, mainly from southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky, and Tennessee. This collection is particularly valuable because Buchanan, with her musical training, was one of the few collectors to record tunes as well as lyrics on paper in the years before the widespread availability of recording machines.
In 1936 Buchanan moved to Richmond to work for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Music Project and withdrew from active involvement in the White Top festival, partly as a result of her new position and partly from escalating disagreements with promoters John Augustus Blakemore and John Powell over the growing commercialization of the festival. Buchanan's husband, who had remained in Marion and from whom she had become alienated, died on 15 September 1937. She sold their Smyth County home and to support herself taught music at the New England Music Camp in Kennebec County, Maine, at the University of Richmond as a professor of musical theory, and at Madison College (later James Madison University) in Harrisonburg. In 1948 Buchanan retired from teaching to devote more time to her manuscripts and compositions. Three years later she moved to Paducah, Kentucky, to be near her family. Buchanan worked with the National Federation of Music Clubs as its national folk music archivist from 1958 to 1963. Through correspondence with members and folklorists all over the country, she collected more than a thousand folk songs that were deposited in the Archive of Folk Music at the Library of Congress. In 1963 Annabel Morris Buchanan took a six-month world tour, after which she returned to Paducah, where she died on 6 January 1983. She was buried in Round Hill Cemetery in Marion. Later that year, when Marion music enthusiasts reactivated the Monday Afternoon Music Club, the organization she had founded was renamed in her honor the Annabel Morris Buchanan Federated Music Club of Smyth County.
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