MacDowell made frequent use of motives associated with music of the American Indians, although he disavowed the notion that this practice amounted to the creation of an American national music. His principal source of Indian melodies was Theodore Baker's German dissertation Über die Musik der nordamerikanischen Wilden. MacDowell seems to have been particularly drawn to a "dirge" motive derived from a "Kiowa song of a mother to her absent son" appearing in the Baker, for the motive appears in several works. Compared to similar efforts by his contemporaries, MacDowell finds a method of incorporating Indian motives in his music that is not contextually incongruous and that avoids overwhelming the melodies through over-harmonization.

Works: MacDowell: Sonata tragica, Op. 45, Suite No. 2, "Indian," Op. 48, Woodland Sketches, Op. 51, Sonata No. 3, "Norse," Op. 57, Sea Pieces, Op. 55, Fireside Tales, Op. 61, New England Idyls, Op. 62.

Index Classifications: 1800s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

The body of materials upon which Stravinsky based Pulcinella are organizes and clarified. First, Stravinsky's remarks on the process of composing Pulcinella are proven unreliable. Second, a table shows the Pulcinella source materials housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel. Elements once falsely attributed to Pergolesi are movements from ten trio sonatas by Domenico Gallo, an air and a gavotte for keyboard by Carlo Monza, and a concerto attributed to Count Unico Wilhelm von Wassenaer. Verifiable Pergolesi sources are a movement from a cello sonata, eleven pieces from his operas Il flaminio and Lo Frate 'nnamorato, and one from his cantata Luce degli occhi miei. As a postscript, the discovery of an intermediary score of Pulcinella in the Stefan Zweig Collection of the British Library shows something of Stravinsky's compositional process and connects the sketches held at the Paul Sacher Stiftung with the fair copy piano score, also in the British Library.

Works: Stravinsky: Pulcinella.

Sources: Pergolesi: Twelve Sonatas for Two Violins and Bass (46, 49-50, 54-55, 62-63); Domenico Gallo: Trio No. 7 (49, 50-51, 62-64); Alessandro Parisotti: Arie Antiche, "Se tu m'ami" (46, 62-63); Carlo Monza: Pièces Modernes pour le clavecin, Suite in E Major, Air (51-52, 62, 64); Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer: Concerti Armonici, no. 2 (52-53, 62-63); Carlo Monza: Pièces Modernes pour le clavecin, Suite in D Major, Gavotte (53-54, 62, 64); Pergolesi: Il Flaminio, "Mentre l'erbetta pasce l'agnella" (55, 62-63), "Con queste paroline" (55, 62-63), Luce degli occhi miei, "Contento forse vivere" (55, 62-63), Lo Frate 'nnamorato, "Pupilette, fiammette d'amore" (55, 62, 64), "Chi disse c'à la femmena" (55, 62-63), "Gnora credeteme ch'accosi è" (55, 62-63), Nina's aria from Act III, scene 3, introduction (56, 62-63), "Sento dire non c'è pace" (56, 62-63); Pergolesi: Il Flaminio, "Benedetto maledetto" (62-63).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

In an interview Foss discusses his Phorion (Greek for "stolen goods") as a "controlled chance" composition based on the prelude from J. S. Bach's Partita for Solo Violin in E. Designed so that each performance is unique, the work incorporates Morse code and instructs performers to "race" each other through technically challenging passages of Bach's music. Foss also discusses critical reaction, including a German orchestra that took a vote on whether to perform the "desecration" of Bach, prompting Foss to observe that "the Germans are a very tender and sensitive people." (Foss, a Jew, left Germany as a refugee in 1933.) Bach is not harmed by Phorion; his music exists intact independently of its treatment in this work. If audiences are uncertain how to respond, that is Foss's intent. Violence in art, such as Foss is committing here, in fact communicates a message of non-violence.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

Schoenberg's setting in A Survivor from Warsaw of the Shema Yisrael has an audible similarity to traditional melodies used for this prayer. The emphasis of the minor second as the concluding interval in Schoenberg's version evokes the "Avavoh Rabboh" Jewish cantillation mode, closely related to the Phrygian mode of Western music. Schoenberg seems to have constructed the basis twelve-tone row used in this piece with its application to the Shema in mind. Heller joins Christian Schmidt in disputing the contention of Wilfried Gruhn that other material in this work also has sources in traditional Jewish music.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

Bloch turned to his Jewish identity for inspiration in part because the latent hostility toward Jews in his native Geneva left him ostracized from that city's musical life. His incorporation of Jewish materials in his music ranges from direct quotations, which are consciously intended, to materials associated with Jewish music but not directly quoted from any particular source, which are less consciously recalled. The latter include Jewish cantillation modes, less specifically Jewish exotic scales allowing for melodic skips of an augmented second or fourth, and rhapsodic, quasi-improvised passages.

Works: Bloch: Baal Shem Suite, Abodah, Suite Hébraïque,Israel Symphony,Avodath Hakodesh, Schelomo, Voice in the Wilderness.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

Music for Four Stringed Instruments was first composed in August, 1917, as a tribute to Victor Chapman, the first American aviator killed in World War I and the son of a friend of the composer. Before its publication in 1923, it underwent several revisions, and in publishing the work Loeffler withheld the written program and dedication to Chapman's memory that accompanied the 1919 premiere performance. The revisions emphasize the thematic role of the plainchant melody Resurrexi in the first movement. This chant also appears in the second movement, but there the central role is played by Victimae paschali. The programmatic, episodic third movement also employs Resurrexi, but the climactic statement is of a motive from a plainchant antiphon used in the funeral service. The pervasiveness of the Resurrexi music suggests a spiritual interpretation: an affirmation of spiritual victory over earthly sorrow.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

Despite Adorno's interpretation of Berg's quotation practice as deliberately disjunct, Berg's quotations are painstakingly incorporated into the surrounding musical context, as demonstrated by an analysis of his use of the Carinthian folk song in his Violin Concerto. Berg's quotations fall into four categories: (1) Quotations from Schoenberg, especially Schoenberg's early works; (2) thematic references to works from different stylistic spheres which Berg incorporates into his own idiom; (3) quotations in Wozzeck and Lulu that function as ironic commentary on the stage action; (4) quotations that form an integral part of the surrounding motivic network. The folk-song quotation in the Violin Concerto is an example of the last type. Berg's self-borrowings are largely from a collection of early sonata fragments, dating from 1908 to 1909, and are also of the fourth category. The quotations may work simultaneously on a variety of levels: as the sort of technical problem Berg requires as a creative stimulus; as representative of Berg's desire to retrieve musical ideas important to the evolution of his musical language; and as reminiscences of his period of study with Schoenberg. There is detailed discussion of these self-borrowings as they appear in Wozzeck and the String Quartet, Op. 3. The article's appendix offers a detailed list of Berg's works in which borrowings have been identified and the sources of the borrowings.

Works: Berg: Four Songs, Op. 2, String Quartet, Op. 3, Wozzeck, Chamber Concerto, Lyric Suite,Lulu, Violin Concerto.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

Two of the principal motives in Rhapsody in Blue are direct borrowings from two of W. C. Handy's compositions, "Beale Street Blues" and "St. Louis Blues." Gershwin also employs a three-against-four accent cycle that is a prominent feature of Handy's style. A sidebar disproves the persistent rumor that the E major main theme of Rhapsody in Blue was inspired by Gershwin's hearing of the "Chimes of Erie" at St. Peter's Cathedral in Erie, Pennsylvania; the chimes were installed at St. Peter's four years after the publication of Rhapsody in Blue.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

Ives's music reflects the musical situation of its time as well as the music of his contemporaries. He was the earliest composer to engage the musical legacy of previous centuries, tonality and form, as an issue unto itself. His closest predecessor was Mahler, with whom he shared an interest in combining the very simple or even banal with the extremely complex, and an interest in using popular materials that are transformed, deformed, and fragmented in their application. Among his contemporaries, Ives most resembles Schoenberg in his willingness to conclude works in an atmosphere of tonal uncertainty, but he rejects Schoenberg's evolutionary vision, which sees atonality as an historical necessity, representing an impermeable barrier between the old and the new. Ives explores the issue of tonality as a dead language, not by excluding tonality from his music, but by including tonal fragments, or "ruins," in an atonal context. Detailed analysis of the song "The Things Our Fathers Loved" demonstrates how Ives used tonal melodies recollected from his youth explicitly in order to associate tonality itself with a lost past.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

Newlin surveys selected Bloch works from 1921 to 1947. Jewish characteristics, such as melodies incorporating the augmented second, appear not only in explicitly Jewish works, but also in works without overt programmatic significance, such as the Violin Concerto. The America symphony, which eschews Jewish characteristics, quotes extensively from various American musics, but "the stringing together of so many unrelated ideas" has interfered with Bloch's inspiration. The Avodath Hakodesh effectively combines "universal with 'racial' traits," including a lengthy quotation from liturgical chant.

Works: Bloch: Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), America, an Epic Rhapsody in Three Movements.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: David Lieberman

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