Variation

Variation (pronounced vair-ee-ey-shuhn)

(1) The act, process, or accident of varying in condition, character, or degree.

(2) Amount, rate, extent, or degree of change.

(3) A different form of something; variant.

(4) In music, the transformation of a melody or theme with changes or elaborations in harmony, rhythm, and melody.

(5) In ballet, a solo dance, especially one a section of a pas de deux.

(6) In astronomy, any deviation from the mean orbit of a heavenly body, especially of a planetary or satellite orbit.

(7) In admiralty use as applied to nautical navigation, the angular difference at the vessel between the direction of true north and magnetic north; also called magnetic declination.

(8) In biology, a difference or deviation in structure or character from others of the same species or group.

(9) In linguistics, any form of morphophonemic change, such as one involved in inflection, conjugation, or vowel mutation.

1350-1400: From the Middle English variation (difference, divergence), from the Middle French variation, from the Old French variacion (variety, diversity) and directly from the Latin variationem & variātiōn (stem of variātiō) (a difference, variation, change), from the past participle stem of variare (to change) (the source of the modern English vary).  The use in the context of musical composition wasn't common until the early nineteenth century.  Variation is a noun and the (rare) adjective is variational; the noun plural is variations.

The available synonyms themselves show an impressive variation: deviation, abnormality, diversity, variety, fluctuation, innovation, divergence, alteration, discrepancy, disparity, mutation, shift, modification, change, swerve, digression, contradistinction, aberration, novelty, diversification, mutation, alteration, difference.  Apart from the English variation, European descendants include the French variation, the Italian variazione, the Portuguese variação, the Russian вариация (variacija), the Spanish variación and Swedish variation.

Glenn Gould and the Goldberg Variations: 1955 & 1981

Published in 1741, JS Bach’s (1685-1750) Goldberg Variations consists of an aria and thirty variations.  Written for the harpsichord, it’s named after German harpsichordist & organist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756), thought to have undertaken the first performance.  The work is now thought part of the canon of Baroque music but before 1955, was an obscure piece of the Bach repertoire, a technically difficult composition for the hardly fashionable harpsichord and known mostly as a device for teachers to develop students’ keyboard skills.  Even for aficionados of the Baroque, it was rarely performed.

Glenn Gould (1932—1982) was a Canadian classical pianist, his debut album on the then novel twelve-inch vinyl LP an interpretation of the Goldberg Variations, played on the piano.  A quite extraordinary performance and a radical approach, played at a tempo Bach surely never intended and with an electrifying intensity, it was beyond mere interpretation.  The work was also his swansong, uniquely for him, re-recorded in 1981 and issued days before his death.  Eschewing the stunningly fast pace which made its predecessor famous and clearly the work of a mellower, more reflective artist, for those familiar with the original, it’s a masterpiece of controlled tension.

In 2002, Sony re-released both, the earlier essentially untouched, the later benefiting from a re-mastering which corrected some of the technical deficiencies found in many early digital releases.  Although critics could understand Gould thinking there were aspects of the 1955 performance which detracted from the whole and why he felt the second version a better piece of art, it’s still the original which thrills.