Intertextuality may be defined as "the view of a literary work as a text whose richness of meaning results from its location in a potentially infinite network of other texts." In adapting this notion for music, intertextuality operates on two essential levels: stylistic and strategic. A purely stylistic intertextuality arises when a composer makes reference to the conventions of an earlier style or musical tradition without evoking any particular earlier work. Beethoven exploits stylistic intertextuality in the third movement of his String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132, where the music is imbued with richer meaning through the conscious evocation of Renaissance and Baroque styles. Strategic intertextuality arises when a composer makes reference to a specific earlier work or works. A "spectacular, perhaps unique, example of strategic intertextuality" occurs in the third movement of Berio's Sinfonia, which represents the end of a chain of intertextual references involving the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, Schumann's "Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen" from Dichterliebe, and Bach's Cantata No. 19 ("Es erhub sich ein Streit") along with an extensive collage of shorter quotations from musical, literary, and non-literary sources.

Index Classifications: General, 1900s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer