The evolution of Chopin’s variation technique
Zofia Chechlińska · 2019
The way in which variations are designed, their function and the extent to which they permeate a work alter over the course of Frederic Chopin’s oeuvre and vary in different genres. Thus, an attempt to show the changes that occurred in Chopin in the respect requires that generic specificities be taken into account. Chopin first employs a model with variation in the Variations in E major, from that year. The pinnacle in the development of ornamental variations in Chopin falls around 1833. New features in Chopin’s variations manifest themselves in works completed around 1839. Different phases in the development of Chopin’s work were distinguished in the twentieth-century literature. In Chopin’s variations from the mid-1830s, it is impossible to point to specific dominant features. The similarities and differences between attempts to chronologise the changes in Chopin’s works shows that not all the elements of compositional technique evolved at exactly the same time and to exactly the same degree.