Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Symphonic Variations on an African Air, op. 63: Form, Techniques, Topics

The theme-and-variations genre has a long history: having originated in late Renaissance Spain, it has continued to attract composers to the present day. During that span composers have developed numerous techniques for creating variations and for organizing them into sets.1 One feature of the genre that has remained a constant challenge for composers is the form’s paratactic nature. As Jan LaRue puts it, “in the rigid pattern variations found commonly from the late Renaissance to the early twentieth century, no growth [i.e., formal process] is less imaginative ... the inevitable repetition ... turns the growth into a sort of musical link-sausage.”2 But of course the best composers have always been able to counter this tendency, producing highly effective works of art. Analysis of variation sets must consider both the individual variations and the set as a whole. Robert Hatten has suggested that the character variation provides fertile soil for topical analysis, which