CHAPTER VII.
THE VARIATION FORM—THE MINUET.

The process of musical development we have been considering in previous chapters has tended gradually but surely towards freedom of expression and, at the same time, definiteness of form. As this process has advanced, melodies have become less and less constrained, yet the forms themselves have crystallized into certain accepted types. The ideal of all this progress was unity and variety; in other words, composers felt the desire to expand their powers of expression and saw that this expansion must in the nature of things conform to certain ?thetic principles and obey certain laws. Mere luxuriance of speech without order or system means confusion; but order and system without living feeling means aridity. These two elements must go hand in hand, and in the music of masters like Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms they do.

The so-called variation form admirably illustrates these tendencies. From its very beginning down to the present day there has been a constant re-adjustment of its expressiveness and its formal interest; a constant attempt to strike the right balance between the two qualities. The form is almost as old as music itself. From the earliest times composers have felt the necessity of varying their tunes by one device or another. Even before the other primitive forms had crystallized, crude variations existed, and we find old hymn tunes or popular songs repeated over and over again with elaborate changes of phraseology or with contrapuntal devices. Certain arid processes—such as writing a tune backwards—were sometimes employed, and a study of the whole range of the variation form in its early stages reveals a constant fluctuation.

I. VARIATIONS BY JOHN BULL.

Among the most interesting of these early attempts to solve the problem are certain pieces by the English composers for the harpsichord who lived in the latter part of the sixteenth century. John Bull (1563-1628), a chorister in the Chapel Royal of Queen Elizabeth, was one of the most famous of these, and he has left us several pieces in variation form, one of which, "Courante Jewel," is well worth our attention.

The courante (Fr. courir, to run) is one of the old dance forms that became imbedded in the suite, where it followed the opening[20] Allemande. This particular example of the courante illustrates the habit, common at that time, of writing pieces based on well known dance rhythms such as we have studied in Chapters IV and V. Composers attempted to provide further interest in their pieces by giving them special titles. We find, for example, one of Byrd's harpsichord pieces called "Galiardo, Mrs. Mary Brownlo," and one of Bull's entitled "Pavana, St. Thomas Wake." This tendency in English music towards definiteness of idea, and away from all that is vague, has been already noted in our chapter on "Folk Songs."

The "Courante Jewel" is an interesting example of a form of variation that has now become practically obsolete. It consists of four separate melodies, each immediately followed by its variation. The plan might be expressed by the following formula: A, a; B, b; C, c; D, d, the large letters representing the themes and the small letters the variations. The first theme begins as follows:

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FIGURE XXVIII. From first theme of Bull's "Courante Jewel."