In recent years scholars have adopted theories of musical narrative in order to interpret large-scale trajectories in various genres of common-practice piano music, including an assortment of character pieces, first movements of sonatas, and other forms from multi-movement works. Despite this growing literature they have refrained from tracing narrative trajectories across theme and variations. Does the recursive nature of the genre render narrative analysis moot?
In this paper I seek to address this question through a narrative analysis of Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Paganini Op. 35, Book I for solo piano. My interpretation relies on an eclectic methodological approach, one that depends heavily on Byron Almén's theory of musical narrative (Almén, 2008) and Heinrich Schenker's theory of tonal structures. Details of agency (Monahan, 2013), musical borrowing (Burkholder, 1994), topics, and voice-leading supplement my analysis.1 Rather than discussing each variation in succession, my analysis focuses on tracing a number of marked events across a selection of the variations.
Brahms borrows the famous theme from Paganini's Caprice in A minor Op. 1, No. 24 for his Op. 35 variations. The pronounced association of this borrowed theme to its original composer and his image as a virtuoso effectively initiates a narrative conflict between two fictional composer-personae: "Paganini" (representing order) and "Brahms" (representing transgression). My examination of Brahms's variations reveals a comic archetype featuring emergence as a discursive strategy, in which Brahms's persona (the transgressive element) grows in importance across the set, acquiring a higher rank value over Paganini's virtual presence.