The child, the young man, the man alone is seated at the keyboard. Gathered around the instrument, Society expects him to entertain, to please it. The Musician must give proof of his talent as a virtuoso and, if possible, demonstrate at the same time that he also possesses talent as an improviser, but only within a given framework, always observing the courtesies by never imposing himself beyond measure, giving pleasure to everyone by embellishing and varying a familiar tune - someone else’s tune. He is not expected do have an idea of his own ; the academic exercise consists in appropriating another musician’s idea and exploiting it according to well defined canons. From the time he began to celebrate the music of other composers in his variations, Mozart’s fifteen-odd sets of variations present us with a broad panorama of the most popular repertoire among European audiences and of their musical preferences, because only familiar and recognisable themes and tunes were used. National celebrations in the Netherlands, with themes taken from the anniversary festival music for William of Nassau, and popular Dutch music for K24 and K25 ; French songs (Ah vous dirai-je, maman K265 ; La Belle Françoise K353 ; Lison dormait K264 ; Je suis Lindor K354). And numerous composers in vogue at the time : Gluck K555, Grétry K352, Duport K573, Fischer K179, Salieri K180, Sarti K460, Paisiello K398, but so few on his own themes K500, K581. Variations are a game, a game of memory involving the remembering of the theme and of the tune in its exploitation in which it is still recognized, but transformed in the course of the series (which contains six, never fewer, to twelve variations). A game of virtuosity, too, in inventing original ideas and ornaments around the given theme ; a game of velocity in all the transformations authorized by the conventions (semiquavers, demisemiquavers, triplets and trills) ; and a game of changing the mood by altering the tempi, and the obligatory variation in a minor key. In this sense variations, often composed on the spur of the moment on a specific occasion, represent a veritable work of improvisation. But that, too, is part of the pleasure of the game. Although Mozart did not attain to the level of appropriation-transformation in the genre that Beethoven was to achieve in the Diabelli Variations - which represent an extreme degree of sophistication and genius in this precise form and its transfiguration - Mozart’s piano variations must not be regarded as a minor genre in his output. Quite the contrary, they bear witness to the spontaneity of his inspiration when they were the outcome of a playful investigation and as such they teach us a great deal about the composer. The full range of the freedom of Mozart’s creative procedure is laid before us, in which is all contained the development of a genre : issuing from the most galant of traditions, the variation escapes from its confined, conventional acceptation and is raised to a new level of maturity. END
