The Music Stem / The Musician's Library / Composer's Handbook / Character Variation
Composer's Handbook
A character variation keeps a theme's pitches but changes its mood.
Recast a gentle theme as a march with dotted rhythms and brass.
Even quarters in strings become dotted-eighth and sixteenth figures in trumpets and horns.
Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique (the idée fixe)