Variation form was first originated and developed in the sixteenth century in Italy and Spain, and has become one of the most used compositional forms till the twentieth century. It often appears in the keyboard music, for example, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the collections of Beethoven variations, Schumann’s Abegg Variations, Brahms’s Handel Variations, also Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli, etc. With this huge numbers of compositions set in the variation form, it is evident that the variation form is of significant importance.

The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 discusses the development of variations from the middle age to the Classical and the Romantic periods. Chapter 3 offers an analytical and interpretive discussions on Beethoven’s Variations in F major, op. 34. Chapter 4 is on Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli, op. 42. Chapter 5 concludes the foregoing discussions.