Although musical borrowing has been an area of study for over a century, it has never been considered as a field that extends over the whole of music history. A study of borrowing in this way may help to answer analytical, interpretative, and historical questions. Analytical tools developed to study borrowing in one musical era can give insight into music of other eras as well. A typology of the uses of existing music in new compositions would comprise several distinctions: (1) the relationship of the new work to the borrowed piece, (2) the elements of the existing work that are borrowed, (3) the structural relationship of borrowed material to the new work, (4) the alteration of the borrowed material, (5) the musical function of the borrowed material, and (6) the associative or extramusical meaning of the borrowed material.

Index Classifications: General

Contributed by: Felix Cox