Musical Borrowing
An Annotated Bibliography

Contributions by David Oliver

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[+] Benham, Hugh. "The Formal Design and Construction of Taverner's Works." Musica disciplina 26 (1972): 189-209.

Although in his formal procedures Taverner is considered to follow in the footsteps of his English predecessors to a large degree, certain features are original, including parody technique. All the passages in Taverner's Mass Mater Christi are derived from "vitalis cibus," a phrase from the parent antiphon. The bulk of Taverner's setting is in exact parody, entailing only minimal changes such as melodic decoration and minor rhythmic variants; his approach almost nears contrafactum. Yet Mater Christi also provides some examples of less strict modeling and imitation of the antiphon phrase, exhibiting Taverner's awareness of the possibilities of parody technique.

Works: Taverner: Western Wynde (191-93), Mater Christi (201-8), Small Devotion (208).

Sources: "Western Wynde" (191-92), Mater Christi, antiphon (201-8), Christe Jesu, antiphon (208-9).

Index Classifications: 1500s

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Blanchard, Gérard. Images de la musique de cinéma. Paris: Collection Médiathèque, 1984.

Within the context of an examination into film music as a component equally crucial to the film as the images on the screen, musical borrowing is discussed with special attention paid to the musical cliché. The use and creation of musical clichés in film music derives first and foremost from the recontextualization of "classical" music in film. The musical cliché is analogous to the literary. In some cases, the classifications and associations assigned to the musical cues of the silent films derive from already established semiotic codes, but in most cases film composers were creating and re-creating cultural and psychological points of reference in the ears and minds of the film spectators. In the process of recognizing the real social importance of these musical clichés, their respective archetypes are uncovered.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Brown, Royal S. Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Certain characteristics of "classical" music (in styles from Baroque to late Romantic) were adopted and changed in the music of the early cinema. On the surface, film music from the mid 1920s through the early 1940s shares certain aesthetic principles with the music of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, such as a similar manipulation of themes and motives. Although many existing compositions were employed in early film scores, the aesthetics of the music newly composed for film are the primary focus (Chapters 2-3, pp. 12-66). The "Interviews" section (pp. 269-334) offers candid discussions of and useful insights into the compositional process of film music composers, such as the comment from Harold Shore that "You're constantly in the music library digging up old records, writing new pieces, parodying pieces of this or that."

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Derr, Ellwood. "A Foretaste of the Borrowings from Haydn in Beethoven's Op. 2." In Joseph Haydn: Bericht über den Internationalen Joseph Haydn Kongress, Wien, Hofburg, 5.-12. September 1982, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda, 159-70. Munich: G. Henle, 1986.

A number of compositional procedures in the three Op. 2 piano sonatas by Beethoven appear to be derived from two 18th-century theoretical treatises, which were known to both Haydn and Beethoven. The demonstrations in Mattheson's Der vollkommene Capellmeister of creating a new melody from pre-existing isolated fragments in different keys and meters apply to Beethoven's integration and transformation of material from Haydn, to whom the sonatas are dedicated. Two songs by Haydn provide motives for the first movement of Op. 2, No. 1. Examples show that Beethoven's sonata is closely allied with material from Haydn, not only in the Matthesonian recombination of fragments but on larger-scale harmonic and melodic levels as well. [Table of musical data from Haydn found in Beethoven's Op. 2. in Appendix 1]

Works: Beethoven: Piano Sonata, Op. 2, No. 1 (164), Piano Quartet in C major WoO (164).

Sources: Haydn: "The Spirit's Song," Hob. XXVI a:30 (160-62), "Fidelity," Hob. XXVI a:40 (160-62), "The Wanderer" Hob. XXVI a:32 (164), Piano Trio in E major, Hob. XV:28 (164).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Musical borrowing is discussed within the context of a theoretical discourse on film music, particularly in part I (chapters 1-5). Early and contemporary film music has drawn on several 19th-century genres, including English musical theater (for melodrama) and Wagnerian opera (for leitmotif). Two different yet complementary theories can be used to consider the affective roles of music in film: the semiotic concept of ancrage, in which music anchors the instability of visual signification, and the psychoanalytic theory of suture, which explains the ability of film music to create subjectivity in spectators. The late-19th-century musical aesthetic in the film scores of Max Steiner proves particularly significant in the effect his scores have had on subsequent film composers.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Newsom, Jon. "'A Sound Idea': Music for Animated Films." The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress (Summer 1984): 279-308.

The use and adaptation of existing music in animated films involved more than mere selective quotation. While small segments and entire movements of "classical" pieces from the 18th to the early 20th centuries were sometimes animated, composers were most often required to be adept at altering the formal structure of an existing work to accommodate the requirements of the animated film. In the lighter, more eclectic style of animated shorts, scores like those by Scott Bradley exhibit characteristics of Stravinsky, including octatonicism, tonally disjunct melody figurations, and orchestration. In major animated films such as those of Disney, Tchaikovsky's ballet music was similarly adapted. Significantly, the forms in which these existing works were used represented the first exposure to these pieces for many spectators of these animated films.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Pruslin, Stephen. "'One If by Land, Two If by Sea': Maxwell Davies the Symphonist." Tempo, no. 153 (June 1985): 2-6.

Over the course of his first three symphonies, Davies explores the same system of minor thirds and tritones that governs the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. While the symphonies of this "triptych" may be related to each other by this key scheme (F-Ab-B-D), they represent different compositional and aesthetic concerns of Davies. His first two symphonies, evoking respectively landscape and seascape, draw upon the aesthetics and ideals of other composers, including Sibelius, Beethoven, and Debussy. For the First Symphony, the scherzo of Sibelius's Fifth Symphony served as a model. For the more formally strict Second Symphony, Davies draws upon the harmonic and stylistic idiom of Debussy's La Mer. In each of the four movements of his Third Symphony, Davies articulates the same architectural outline, in which he borrows Renaissance spatial concepts and proportions and reworks them abstractly in time. The finale of this symphony, as with the slow final movement of the First Symphony, represents a response to the Mahler symphonic tradition.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Rosar, William. "Music for the Monsters: Universal Pictures' Horror Film Scores of the Thirties." The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 40 (Fall 1983): 390-421.

The main title of the original Dracula (1930) consists of an abbreviated version of scene 2 from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Whether conscious or not, the composer Heinz Roemheld was carrying on into sound pictures a convention from silent films, in which Tchaikovsky's piece was used as a misterioso. Original pieces from the 18th and 19th centuries were often employed in the scores of these "B movies," as producers naively believed this would bring sophistication and class to their films, the quality of which was admittedly substandard. The harmonic language peculiar to pieces such as Stravinsky's Firebird and Petroushka and the whole-tone scale in particular have become characteristic of horror film music since the early 1930s.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Turnbull, Michael. "The Metamorphosis of Psyché." Music and Letters 64 (January/April 1983): 12-24.

In 1678, Lully made revisions to Psyché, his tragédie-ballet of 1671, and transformed the work into a tragédie en musique, or opera. A significant amount of material from the original tragédie-ballet was unaffected by the change, as the 1671 version of Psyché was similar to opera in a number of respects. Lully was able to adopt a number of forms from his pre-operatic days in the divertissements of the new tragédies en musique, for example. While some material from the original version may seem redundant or out of place in the 1678 opera, they serve as reminders of and highlight Lully's evolutionary process. Ultimately, the metamorphosis from tragédie-ballet to tragédie en musique is successful, but the operatic Psyché is unable to avoid the shadow of its former self.

Index Classifications: 1600s

Contributed by: David Oliver

[+] Wegman, Rob C. "Another 'Imitation' of Busnoys' Missa L'homme armé--and Some Observations on Imitatio in Renaissance Music." Journal of the Royal Musical Association 114 (1989): 189-202.

Antoine Busnoys's Missa L'Homme armé served as a model not only for Obrecht's Missa L'Homme armé but also for an anonymous Missa de Sancto Johanne Baptista (ca. 1480s or 1490s), which is also closely related to Obrecht's Mass. The anonymous Mass cycle raises many questions surrounding its creation. Musical imitatio would at first seem most relevant to this case. The concept of imitatio, as defined by Renaissance rhetorical theory, is scarcely applicable to Renaissance music, however, and should therefore be used only with circumspection. In considering the musical practices of borrowing, quotation, and imitation as counterparts of rhetorical imitatio, problems of semantic ambiguity and historiographical distortion are certain. Willem Elders's approach of considering these compositional practices as creating a symbolic connection to pre-existent material eliminates these problems, but it is concerned only with symbolism. The term "intertextuality," borrowed from literary criticism, is most appropriate here.

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: David Oliver



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