The Composition Characteristics Of Mikhail Glinka’s Piano Variations

Throughout the life of Glinka,he composed around 50 piano works,of which ten are piano variations.This paper focuses on studying these ten piano variations.As a favorite music genre of Glinka,piano variations are common to see among Glinka’s works.It is apt to say that Glinka was a founder of Russian variations in the 19 th century.Good at composing beautiful and graceful melodies in variations,Glinka demonstrated his well-trained skills in the melody method.His combination of Western European composition skills with Russian national music blazed the trail for development of Russian national music and shed light on the development direction for Russian composers.Compared with other music genres,piano variations dominate in Glinka’s composition of piano works.Besides,his composition activities spanned a long period of time,which almost covered different periods of time.These piano variations could best reflect changes of Glinka’s piano music compositions.Therefore,piano variations are highly typical and representative in Glinka’s piano works.In this paper,literature research,inductive analysis,summary,practice-oriented performance,audio and visual approach,and music score approach are combined to summarize and analyze the existing materials.Additionally,the author’s experience is referred to for a summary of the composition process of Glinka’s piano variations.Next,music scores are also deeply examined from the perspective of themes,structural characteristics,and variation approaches to reveal composition characteristics of Glinka’s piano variations.Finally,combining theory with practice,the author briefly analyzes the performance experience.It is hoped that this research can provide some positive implications for performers and other scholars,and make some contributions to further research into Glinka’s piano music.