As a means of facilitating communication with his audience, Peter Maxwell Davies employs parody technique. His works reflect both the OED definition of "a composition in which an author's characteristics are ridiculed by imitation" and the 16th-century definition, in which a chanson or motet was drawn upon for the Mass setting, either by using its theme as a cantus firmus or by subjecting the material to some more elaborate process of modification and fragmentation. An examination of the musico-dramatic structure of Davies's opera Taverner provides examples of both varieties of the technique.

Works: Peter Maxwell Davies: Taverner, St. Thomas Wake (Foxtrot for Orchestra) (21).

Sources: St. Thomas Wake (21), John Taverner: In Nomine (22), Gloria Tibi Trinitas (25), Davies: Second Fantasia on Taverner's 'In Nomine', Victimae Paschali Laudes (plainsong) (29).

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Contributed by: Amy Weller