Musical Borrowing
An Annotated Bibliography

Contributions by Marc Geelhoed

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[+] Auner, Joseph H. "Schoenberg's Handel Concerto and the Ruins of Tradition." Journal of the American Musicological Society 49 (Summer 1996): 264-313.

In the early 1930s, Schoenberg transcribed and recomposed compositions of the Baroque era to reaffirm his position in the lineage of German composers during a time when Germany was under the government of the National Socialists. Schoenberg described his Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra as "freely transcribed" from Handel's Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 7. Its reworking is different from that of Schoenberg's arrangements of Bach and Brahms, as it alters the original much more, using techniques such as reharmonization, the addition of contrapuntal parts, and compressing and expanding the material. Schoenberg reinterprets Handel's music most freely in the third movement. In so doing, he created a duality between the past and the present and contrasted Baroque tonality and compositional techniques with the chromatic/atonal traditions of the twentieth century. Schoenberg also transposed the third movement to a new key, changed the tempo from Andante to Allegro grazioso, and imposed a formal Sonata-Allegro plan onto the material. This work suggests Schoenberg's identity crisis as German and Jewish as well as the larger social and cultural world of the 1930s (specifically 1933), when the work was composed.

Works: Schoenberg: Cello Concerto (264, 285-86), Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (265-69, 271, 287-313).

Sources: Georg Matthias Monn: Keyboard Concerto F. 41 (264); Handel: Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 7 (265-66, 287-313).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed, Matthew Altizer

[+] Barry, Barbara R. "The Hidden Program in Mahler's Fifth Symphony." The Musical Quarterly 77 (Spring 1993): 47-66.

Following his health and conducting crises in 1900, Mahler turned to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as a model for his own Symphony No. 5. The opening motive of the Beethoven symphony serves to unify the entire symphony, and the opening trumpet motto of Mahler's symphony serves a similar function. That motto is itself based on Beethoven's opening motive, and the key regions Mahler uses are the same as Beethoven (the second movement of both is in the submediant). The Trauermarsch of the second movement is a varied form of the first movement's, which is similar to the way the Scherzo in the Beethoven is based on an altered form of the symphony's opening motive. The moments in Mahler's work when earlier material returns are based on Beethoven's practice.

Works: Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp Minor (51-66), Symphony No. 2 in C Minor (52-53), Symphony No. 1 in D Major (58).

Sources: Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor (51-55, 57, 61-2); Mahler: Kindertotenlieder (58, 60), Des Knaben Wunderhorn (59), Rückertlieder (59-60); Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (60); Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major (65).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Berrett, Joshua. "Louis Armstrong and Opera." The Musical Quarterly 76 (Summer 1992): 216-41.

Louis Armstrong's prolifically wide-ranging tastes regarding art and music find their outlet in his incorporation of operatic fragments in his improvised solos. Armstrong was inclined to imitate operatic gestures such as recitative style, as exemplified by his solo in Blue Again. Armstrong also played operatic cadenza-like passages in certain breaks, such as in I Can't Give You Anything But Love (234). In other instances, Armstrong quoted operatic themes, such as Verdi's Rigoletto quartet and "Vesti la giubba" from Pagliacci. By quoting Pagliacci and Rigoletto, he was showing that his artistic influences were not limited to the pantheon of New Orleans cornet virtuosos of the early twentieth century. Armstrong did not distinguish between "high" and "low" art; it was all jazz to him, and his quotations of well-known music are a demonstration of this belief.

Works: Louis Armstrong: Cornet/Trumpet solos on Araby (220), Blue Again (222, 235), New Orleans Stomp (223), Dinah (223-24, 234, 236), Tiger Rag (225), New Tiger Rag (225); Armstrong and Bechet: Jazz improvisations on Kansas City Man Blues (228), Texas Moaner Blues (229); Louis Armstrong: Cornet/Trumpet solos on Potato Head Blues (229); Armstrong and Bechet: Jazz improvisations on Cake Walking Babies from Home (230, 234); Louis Armstrong: Cornet/Trumpet solos on West End Blues (231-36); Armstrong and Bechet: Jazz improvisations on Mandy Make Up Your Mind (232), Early Every Morn (233); Louis Armstrong: Cornet/Trumpet solos on Beau Koo Jack (235), Once in a While (235), Can't Give You Anything But Love (235).

Sources: Verdi: Rigoletto (218, 222-23, 231-32); Gounod: Faust (220); Ponchielli: Dance of the Hours (221), Gershwin: Lady Be Good! (223); Sindig: Rustle of Spring (225); Leoncavallo: Pagliacci (225); Porter Steele: High Society (227, 232); Bizet: Carmen (231); Eva Dell'Acqua: Villanelle (232-33); Suppé: Poet and Peasant Overture (233).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: Eytan Uslan, Marc Geelhoed

[+] Bruns, Steven Michael. "'In stilo Mahleriano': Quotation and Allusion in the Music of George Crumb." American Music Research Center Journal 3 (1993): 9-39.

The works of Gustav Mahler have exerted a profound influence on those of George Crumb, especially in the latter's settings of Federico Garcia Lorca's poetry. These influences include formal and tonal designs, instrumentation, notation, poetic imagery, motivic structure, and theatrical effects. Self-quotation is also present in Crumb's music, as in the finger-cymbal crashes in Echoes of Time and the River and Night Music I. Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde has also been a fertile source for Crumb, as his Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death borrows from it heavily. The use of a guitar and mandolin in Mahler's Symphony No. 7 is echoed in Crumb's Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death, Eleven Echoes of Autumn, 1965, and Makrokosmos I. An oboe figure from the Mahler is obviously evoked in Ancient Voices of Children.

Works: Crumb: Night Music I (9-14, 16-17, 22), Echoes of Time and the River (9, 14, 20), Ancient Voices of Children (10, 24-33), Eleven Echoes of Autumn, 1965 (12-15, 20, 24, 33), Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death (14-15, 17-20, 26), Makrokosmos I (15-17), Night of the Four Moons (21-24, 33), Five Pieces for Piano (36).

Sources: Bartok: Out of Doors (11); Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (10, 15, 17, 33, 35-6), Das Lied von der Erde (12, 15, 17, 20-33), Symphony No. 6 (17, 33), Symphony No. 5 (20), Das Klagende Lied (20), Symphony No. 9 (21); Haydn: Symphony No. 45, Farewell (21-22); Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (29), Symphony No. 4 (29).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Downes, Olin. "Porgy Fantasy: R. R. Bennett Makes Symphonic Work from Gershwin Opera." New York Times, 15 November 1942, 7 (VIII).

Robert Russell Bennett's Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture for Orchestra is similar to his "symphonic synopsis" of Jerome Kern's Show Boat. Bennett did not alter Gershwin's melodies or his orchestration. Bennett did compose new material for the work, in the form of "connective tissue" to link the various sections together. He did not present the excerpts in order, but began with the Second Act, moving to the Third, and finally back to the First and to the well-known songs.

Works: Robert Russell Bennett: Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture for Orchestra (7).

Sources: Gershwin: Porgy and Bess (7).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Filler, Susan M. "Mahler and the Anthology of Des Knaben Wunderhorn." Journal of the Canadian Assocation of Schools of Music 8 (1978): 82-111.

Das himmlische Leben, a Wunderhorn text-setting from Mahler's Fourth Symphony, provides much of the material for that work, and portions of it were incorporated into the first and third movements of the Third Symphony. It was originally to be included in the Third Symphony as its final movement, and, later, as its second movement, though Mahler ultimately changed his mind about both ideas. The fifth, choral movement of the Third Symphony was originally to be part of the Fourth. These changes of mind and heart show the composer's inspiration coming from a single source that resulted in two very different symphonies.

Works: Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor (90-102), Symphony No. 4 (95-96, 99-100), Symphony No. 5 in C sharp Minor (102, 107), Symphony No. 10 (102), Symphony No. 9 (103).

Sources: Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn (90-107).

Index Classifications: 1800s, 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Griffiths, Paul. "Quotation-->Integration." In Modern Music: The Avant-Garde Since 1945, 188-222. New York: George Braziller, 1981.

The move from quotation to integration can be summarized under four headings: (1) Out of the Past, (2) Out of the East, (3) Collage, and (4) Integration. The music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was too close to composers' own time to be approached without an ironic detachment, so the much more distant past can be used without being labeled conservative. Plainsong melodies and twentieth-century techniques of variation are used by Peter Maxwell Davies to create un-fifteenth-century sounding melodies. For example, his opera Taverner uses the sequence Victimae paschali laudes, which is parodied and used as a symbol of the Resurrection. Davies uses plainsong to question his own music and methods and those of his contemporaries, in an attempt to convince himself of his work's genuineness. The East has exerted a marked influence on composers since 1950, including Messiaen, Cage, Reich, and LaMonte Young. The percussion-based ensembles in works by Boulez and Stockhausen have exotic Eastern resonances, but this influence has been seen less in works by Eastern composers themselves. Takemitsu, for example, seems to be more inspired by Debussy, Boulez, and Feldman than any particular Eastern orientation. Collages have been composed in order to test the present against the past, and vice versa, and to improve audience contact by providing a familiar subject. Cage's works of the 1960s, such as Williams Mix, Fontana Mix, Variations IV, and HPSCHD, were attempts to bring together real-world sounds and composed music (both live and on tape), often including much multi-media apparatus. Bernd Alois Zimmermann, however, often brings together musical worlds with the intent of setting the quoted material in relief, in direct contrast to the methods of Cage, whether it comes from Bach, Prokofiev, or Berg. Integration is similar in style to collage, but the two differ greatly in intent. In integration, the original material is suppressed in order to serve the new work, as is the case in the third movement of Berio's Sinfonia. The assembly of so many quotations is accomplished so well that the work may well be considered a new creation. Again unlike Cage, the work is an organized picture of disorder, rather than disorder itself. Stockhausen's Hymnen is also an integration, this time of national anthems. Recordings of various anthems are intermodulated within each other, setting up juxtapositions of the anthems. Hymnen sets up a stream of electronic sound around, between, and through the presentation of the anthems, seemingly drifting from one region to another.

Works: Messiaen: Couleurs de la cité céleste (190-91), La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (191, 196); Peter Maxwell Davies: Taverner (190, 192), Alma redemptoris mater (191), String Quartet (191), Blind Man's Buff (192), St. Thomas Wake (192), First Fantasia on an In nomine of John Taverner (192), Second Fantasia on an In nomine of John Taverner (192-93), Worldes Blis (192-93), Ave maris stella (193), Prolation (193), St. Michael Sonata (193), Symphony (193), A Mirror of Whitening Light (193-5); Jean-Claude Eloy: Equivalences (197), Faisceaux-diffractions (197), Kamakala (197), Shanti (197); Henze: L'autunno (197); Tristan (197); Stockhausen: Telemusik (199-200, 206-7, 210, 213); Cage: Credo in Us (200), Variations V (200-201), Fontana Mix (200), Theatre Piece (201), Variations IV (201); Cage and Lejaren Hiller: HPSCHD (201); Eric Salzman: The Nude Paper Sermon (201); Crumb: Ancient Voices of Children (202), Night of the Four Moons (202); Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Die Soldaten (202), Antiphonen (202), Nobody knows the trouble I see (202), Présence (202), Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu (202-3), Photopsis (203), Monologe (203-5); Michael Tippett: Symphony No. 3 (203); Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 in A Major (203); Mauricio Kagel: Ludwig van (203), Variationen ohne Fuge (203-8); Stockhausen: Kurzwellen (206), Opus 1970 (206-7); André Boucourechliev: Ombres (206, 220); Berio: Sinfonia (207-9, 219-20); Stockhausen: Hymnen (210-13); Henri Pousseur: Echos de Votre Faust (213), Jeu de miroirs de Votre Faust (213), Votre Faust (213), Miroir de Votre Faust (213-14), Couleurs croisées (214), Les ephemeredes d'Icare (214), Mnemosyne II (214), Racine (214), Répons (214), Invitation à l'utopie (214), Icare apprenti (214), Die Eprobrung des Petrus Hébraïcus (214-15), Stravinsky au future (215), L'effacement du Prince Igor (215, 217); Peter Schat: Canto general (216, 218), To you (216); George Rochberg: Blake Songs (219), Contra mortem et tempus (219), Music for the Magic Theater (219), String Quartet No. 1 (219), String Quartet No. 2 (219), String Quartet No. 3 (219), Symphony No. 2 (219), Symphony No. 3 (219), Violin Concerto (219).

Sources: Machaut: Messe de Notre Dame (189); Plainchant: Victimae paschali laudes (190); Monteverdi: Vespers (191); Plainchant: Dies irae (193); Berg: Wozzeck (202); Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor (203); Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor (208), Symphony No. 4 in G Major (208); Henri Pousseur: Votre Faust (213); Stravinsky: Agon (215-16); Webern: Variations, Op. 27 (216).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Husarik, Stephen. "John Cage and Lejaren Hiller: HPSCHD, 1969." American Music 1 (Summer 1983): 1-21.

The performance of John Cage's and Lejaren Hiller's HPSCHD, for seven harpsichords, tape, and a menagerie of multimedia, at the University of Illinois in 1969 was an event unlike any other, and especially unlike MUSICIRCUS, put on at the same university two years previous. For HPSCHD, Cage and Hiller set out to write a computer program that could divide the octave 52 ways, since this was something a computer could do that a human could not. Mozart's Musical Dice Game was used to come up with the material for the seven solo harpsichord parts, in conjunction with the I-Ching. For Solo Harpsichord II, 20 "passes" of the original part devised from the Dice Game and I-Ching were performed. Solo Harpsichords III and IV played the same material, but with replacement parts culled from Mozart piano sonatas included in place of some measures from the Dice Game. Parts V and VI were similar to III and IV, except that their replacement measures came from Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Gottschalk, Busoni, Cage, and Hiller piano pieces. Solo Harpsichord I was a transcription of the tape-orchestra part in which the octave was divided into 12 tones. Finally, VII played any Mozart piece or anything else anybody else was playing, at any time. Cage's interest in what happened when many layers were superimposed was the impetus behind the work, in addition to exploring different levels of microtonality.

Works: Cage and Hiller: HPSCHD.

Sources: Mozart: Musical Dice Game, K. 294d/K. Anh. C 30.01 (7-9), Piano Sonata in D Major, K. 284 (7), Piano Sonata in C Major, K. 330, Piano Sonata in G Major, K. 283, Fantasy in C Minor, K. 475, Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 281; Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, Appasionata (8); Frédéric Chopin: Prelude in D Minor, Op. 28 (8); Robert Schumann: Carnaval (8); Ferrucio Busoni: Sonatina No. 2 (8); Cage: Winter Music (8); Hiller: Sonata No. 5 (8).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Jablonski, Edward. "An Almost Completely New Work: Gershwin's Own Suite from Porgy and Bess." The American Record Guide 25 (August 1959): 848-49.

Gershwin's own Suite from his opera Porgy and Bess is a large improvement on the suites composed by Morton Gould and Robert Russell Bennett, in that the orchestration is left alone more often and less new material is written into it than in the other two versions. Basically a "scissors and paste job," the new suite includes some music cut from the opera itself, along with many of the hit songs. The suite demonstrates Gershwin's considerable mastery of orchestral writing and orchestration as well.

Works: Gershwin: Catfish Row: Suite from Porgy and Bess (848-49).

Sources: Gershwin: Porgy and Bess (848-49).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Marschner, Bo. "Stravinsky's Le baiser de la fée and Its Meaning." Dansk årbog for musikforskning 8 (1977): 51-83.

Despite Stravinsky's protestations to the contrary, it is possible to find meaning in his music, especially in Le baiser de la fée. As the work borrows from Tchaikovsky and makes reference to Richard Wagner a great deal, meaning can be found by examining Le baiser de la fée's borrowing and incorporations. The ballet's climax uses the half-diminished seventh chord, which is identical to the "Curse structure" of Wagner's Ring and the "Tristan structure" in Tristan und Isolde. Incidentally, this particular chord is also found in many of the Tchaikovsky works from which Stravinsky borrows. This structure is used abundantly throughout Le baiser de la fée, by both avoiding it and eventually capitulating. This is one example of a "symbol" that can be traced throughout the work and that can be said to carry "meaning."

Works: Stravinsky: Le baiser de la fée (51-83).

Sources: Tchaikovsky: Soir d'Hiver (62), Tant Triste, Tant Douce (62), Polka peu dansante (63), Ah, qui brûla d'amour (63, 68); Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (64, 70, 71); Tchaikovsky: Humoreske (71-73, 81-82), Reverie du Soir (72, 81), Berceuse de la Tempête (75-76); Wagner: Das Rheingold (76).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Mueller, Richard. "Bali, Tabuh-Tabuhan, and Colin McPhee's Method of Intercultural Composition." Journal of Musicological Research 10 (March 1991): 127-75; 11 (May 1991): 67-92.

In composing Tabuh-Tabuhan, Colin McPhee aimed to integrate Balinese music into the Western symphonic idiom such that it would appeal to Western audiences without losing its distinctiveness. By using authentic Balinese series of notes such as the pèlog and the jejogan incorporated with other motives (ganderangan and rindik), McPhee created a structure unique to both Balinese and Western traditions. McPhee also wanted to "re-create" Balinese music for a Western audience who could not hear this music performed on its original instruments. To this end, he incorporated the overtones of the different-sized gongs of the gamelan instruments into the orchestral texture, achieving the sounds he heard without their original creators.

Works: Colin McPhee: Tabuh-Tabuhan (127-75, 67-92).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Roseberry, Eric. "Britten's Purcell Realizations and Folksong Arrangements." Tempo, no. 57 (Spring 1961): 7-28.

The Britten and Imogen Holst performing edition of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, five songs from Orpheus Britannicus, and a realization of The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation show Britten's eclectic disposition as a composer. Britten's arrangements an improvement of those of Edward J. Dent (1925) and Cummings (1887), due to Britten's attention to more modern treatments of dissonance and less willingness to hold himself to "textbook" voice-leading principles. Britten felt that Purcell had given a framework that could incorporate almost any realization, but holds himself to "the rules of the game." Britten's ten Irish folksongs settings show the composer's similar pull to use more modern harmonic ideas in older music. The accompaniments often avoid cadences, and are "harmonically elusive."

Works: Britten/Purcell: Dido and Aeneas, (8, 13-24) Orpheus Britannicus, (8-10), The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation (10-13), Ten Irish Folksongs (24-28).

Sources: Purcell: Dido and Aeneas, (8, 13-24); Thomas Moore: Irish Melodies (24-28).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed

[+] Stempel, Larry. "Not Even Varèse Can Be an Orphan." The Musical Quarterly 60 (Summer 1974): 46-61.

Despite Varèse's claims to being entirely independent-minded, an early mélodie not intended for publication, Un grand sommeil noir, shows distinct traces of being composed with forebears in mind. Fauré, Hahn, and Debussy all set texts by Paul Verlaine, and Dirk Foch, Raoul Laparra, and Gustave Sandrew set the text of Un grand sommeil noir, but it was Debussy's L'Ombre et arbres that Varèse used as a model for his setting. Both settings make use of the octatonic scale and of a matrix of a half step followed by a tritone, a pitch set that would also appear in Varèse's Arcana. The final measures of Varèse's mélodie are an exorcism of Debussy from his own style, accomplished by harking back to the end of Act IV of Pelléas et Mélisande.

Works: Varèse: Un grand sommeil noir (53-61), Arcana (56-57).

Sources: Debussy: Ariettes Oubliées (57), L'Ombre et arbres (57-59), Pelléas et Mélisande (61).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Marc Geelhoed



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