That Bach's Christmas Oratorio consists in part of parodied movements from secular cantatas has been problematic for the work's reception. However, Bach's parody technique can be justified on economic, stylistic, and aesthetic grounds. An examination of the Christmas Oratorio demonstrates that Bach carefully reworked his models to harmonize with the new text and the new occasion. Three main aspects of Bach's parody technique may be discerned in the Christmas Oratorio: first, movements are transposed to conform to the overall tonal structure of the work; second, movements may be reorchestrated in order to better correspond with the affect of the new text; and third, the re-texting of the music is carried out in a skillful fashion that is rhetorically appropriate in the new setting. The Christmas Oratorio is, therefore, a highly individual work which owes its success to Bach's careful consideration of the consequences of parody. In the new work the parodied movements are integrated structurally as well as meaningfully into the new setting.

Works: Bach: Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248.

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher

For various reasons Bach's output of secular cantatas is not very well known. This is the case despite the very ambiguous demarcation between Bach's sacred and secular music as well as the evident passion and skill he exhibits in many of the secular compositions. As the secular cantatas provided Bach with a wealth of musical material to draw upon, the use of parody technique is a central concern to this repertory. Although the argument that parody was a direct result of Bach's need for economy is certainly relevant, there indeed exist cases where the transformation of an existing work into a new one is so advanced that one must consider other factors. The oratorio-type works that Bach composed later in his Leipzig years, for example, rely to a large extent on very skillful parodies of movements from pre-Leipzig secular cantatas. It is likely that as his career progressed, Bach made greater use of parody procedure as the fund of existing source material grew. An understanding of the relationship between original and parody must consider the possibility that Bach's music was so rich that it was readily adaptable to widely divergent texts.

Works: Bach: Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten, BWV 202 (191); Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet, BWV 212 (193); Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen, BWV 66 (194-5); Mass in B Minor, BWV 232 (198-9, 201); Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, BWV 68 (200); Easter Oratorio, BWV 249 (201-2); St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244 (202-3); Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248 (203-4).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher

The issue of musical borrowing in Handel's music has contributed to an atmosphere of ignorance and suspicion in the 200-year history of Handel scholarship. This has resulted from a failure to recognize the importance of craftsmanship and rhetorical imitation as important aspects of Handel's compositional technique. While writings on Handel in the early eighteenth century are generally uncritical of Handel's borrowing procedure (to the extent that Handel significantly improves on his models), a certain uneasiness about the composer's borrowings is manifested in writings from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, especially in English scholarship. Writings on Handel in the nineteenth century are generally characterized by disapproval of Handel's procedure as lacking originality and even suggesting immorality. This attitude has changed only slowly in the twentieth century, and only in the past twenty years has scholarship begun to approach a more balanced view of Handel's borrowing technique and its significance to his style. In order to achieve this balance it is necessary to develop more useful tools, such as catalogues of Handel's borrowings and self-borrowings and a bibliographical survey of relevant literature, as well as clearer terminology to describe types of musical borrowing in Handel.

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher

The "problematic" nature of Bach's parody technique has been extensively commented upon in the last century. Recent discussions have focused on the role of musical figures and word-to-tone relationships in assessing the effectiveness of parody compositions, although the work of Werner Neumann, Werner Braun, and others have begun to alter this picture. Bach's four Lutheran Masses, which consist of twelve arias and choruses borrowed from four different cantatas, exhibit the means by which the borrowed musical substance may be applied to texts of highly divergent meaning. Although there are indeed incongruities between the music and text on the level of the individual word, the general affect of the new setting is effective enough that these problems are of little consequence. Musical figures carry denotative significance only with respect to an underlaid word; a re-texting of a piece, then, involves a wholesale transformation of the composition's meaning. A proper performance, therefore, should strive to adapt the inherently versatile music to the ideas of the new text.

Works: Bach: Mass in A Major, BWV 234 (54-55), Mass in G Major, BWV 236 (55-57).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher

Reinhard Keiser's opera Die römische Unruhe, oder Die edelmüthige Octavia (1705) has long been recognized as a source of material for Handel in the first decade of the eighteenth century. However, further study reveals that music from Keiser's opera was used by Handel in various compositions for some fifty years, from Aminta e Fillide (1708) to The Triumph of Time and Truth (1758). These examples reflect Handel's typical borrowing procedure: a characteristic motive or phrase is appropriated and subjected to elaboration and development, sometimes in a vastly different context, which far surpasses the original parameters of the model. As such Handel repaid his debt to Keiser throughout his life.

Works: Handel: Ariodante (74-75), Orlando (75-76), Aminta e Fillide (76-77), Agrippina (76-78), Rodelinda (78), Berenice (79), Solomon (79), The Triumph of Time and Truth (79-80).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher

Although there are few examples in Jean-Philippe Rameau's vocal Oeuvre of self-borrowing, there do exist numerous instances of this technique in his operatic symphonies. There are two primary sources for borrowed material: pieces that he had already published for solo harpsichord, with or without other instruments; and symphonies from earlier operas. Borrowing of material for symphonies was especially prominent during revivals of existing operas. Rameau's technique of self-borrowing is fundamentally different from that of Bach and Handel in that the original and new work tend to serve similar functions.

Works: Rameau: Les Fêtes de Ramire (54-55), Les Fêtes d'Hébé (55), Les Indes galantes (55).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher

The multidimensionality of Bach's borrowing technique defies efforts to characterize it with terms such as "parody" or "transcription." The derogatory associations that these terms carry obscure the variety of Bach's techniques, such as reorchestration, intensification of counterpoint or melodic material, and even "reminiscence" of material from a different location in the same work. For example, the Triple Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1044, is not a simple transcription of the concertino from the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, but a reworking that results in a far greater complexity of texture, while the opening of the Gloria from the Mass in A Major, BWV 234, is a parody of the last movement of Cantata 67 yet resembles the Kyrie from the same Mass, for which no model can be found. The idea of "transcription" is clearly too narrow to describe some works whose relationships extend beyond the ostensible model to other compositions. Bach's parody technique should be regarded as an elaboration of pre-existing works into new compositions, as well as a manifestation of his power of invention.

Works: Bach: Triple Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1044 (115-16), Cantata, BWV 146, Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal (117), Harpsichord Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1052, Mass in A Major, BWV 234 (117-19), Mass in F Major, BWV 233 (117-22), Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro in E-flat Major, BWV 998 (122-23).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher, Sergio Bezerra

Quotation must be understood as a subdivision of the larger field of borrowing, which is a principal component of composition and can be categorized in terms such as conscious vs. unconscious and legitimate vs. illegitimate. Whereas legal and ethical views of quotation have been historically variable, purely musical criteria employed by musicians have emerged to evaluate quotation practices. Quotation is distinguished from thematic reworking and plagiarism by virtue of its specifically extramusical function, intended to be heard by the listener. Quotation may be employed (1) to evoke time, place, or circumstance, (2) as musical wit, (3) as the basis for parody or caricature, or (4) as the basis for exposition of serious content.

Works: Debussy: La bôite à joujouz (136); Busoni: Arlecchino (136); Mozart: Piano Rondo in A minor, K. 511 (136); Berg: Lyric Suite (136).

Index Classifications: General, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher, David Lieberman

Public disapproval with certain elements of Rameau's Les Indes galantes led the composer in 1735 to issue some of the opera's instrumental music in the form of harpsichord pieces, titled Quatre grands concerts. The collection, largely neglected by scholars, provides insight into Rameau's methods of reworking while filling a chronological gap in the composer's keyboard output. The reworkings are clearly intended for performance on keyboard despite the possibility of performance on multiple instruments. Rameau's modifications to the original pieces are extensive: they involve a general thinning of texture, recomposition of inner lines, significant alterations to accompaniments, mimicry of orchestral textures through chordal writing, and liberal addition of ornamentation idiomatic to the keyboard. In addition, cuts are made in the originals in several locations for the benefit of the new texture.

Works: Rameau: Quatre grands concerts.

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher

The subject of parody procedure in Bach's music has been approached with uneasiness and skepticism by writers for at least the past 100 years. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers, including Rust, Spitta, and Schweitzer, have exhibited a tendency to minimize the extent of Bach's borrowing procedure and to simultaneously reify his status as "Germany's greatest church composer." On the other hand, later twentieth-century scholars, such as Schering, Smend, Neumann, and Finscher, have approached Bach's parody technique more directly, defining its parameters more clearly while attempting explanations which at times assume an apologetic tone. Descriptions of parody procedure in Bach's era, in contrast, tend to be uncritical of it as a method but insist on a skillful application of new text to the existing music. A consideration of parody procedure in Bach's Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) demonstrates that the joining of the new texts with the older music was carried out with great care. The implications suggested by this work and others for our understanding of Bach's parody procedure are manifold: a number of explanations--including those of economic necessity, "neutrality" of the music with respect to the original text as a prerequisite for parody, and the desire to further elaborate existing material--may be accepted without contradiction as long as an apologetic attitude is not adopted. In the final analysis Bach's borrowing procedure should be seen as a vital method by which a given piece of music is qualitatively elaborated upon.

Works: Bach: Mass in B Minor, BWV 232 (9), Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248 (14-17).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher

Since the time of Forkel, the study of the music of Vivaldi has generally been carried out with respect to Bach, and has resulted in an overemphasis on the former composer's concertos. While Forkel to some extent oversimplified the significance of Vivaldi to Bach's music, it is nevertheless the case that the study and transcription of Vivaldi's concertos played an important role not only in the formation of Bach's musical style, but also in the development of his "musical thinking." Bach recognized that Vivaldi had developed a system for the composition of instrumental music that was based on a threefold process of order/organization (Ordnung), connection/continuity (Zusammenhang), and relation/proportion (Verhältnis). This process transcends superficial considerations of genre and directly addresses the elaboration of musical material from germinal ideas. Bach's transcriptions of Vivaldi's concertos represent an opportunity to observe this process of "musical thinking" as it unfolds in the elaboration of musical motives. The compositional process consists, then, in the exploration of the potentialities of core ideas: their organization and reorganization, their contribution to the unity of the movement, and their relationship and proportion with respect to other ideas. Such a system of "musical thinking" was instrumental not only in the formation of Bach's style, but also in the gradual dominance of instrumental music in the eighteenth century.

Works: Bach: Concerto for Harpsichord in F Major, BWV 978 (75-83).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Alexander J. Fisher