In a late volume of Analecta Hymnica, Clemens Blume selected eighteen texts that are "Tropi ad Offertorium 'Recordare.'" The first two in his edition have an extant polyphonic setting, while the remainder are known only in plain-chant settings or by their texts alone. The second text, O vera, o pia, is the newly identified contrafactum setting. It ends with the troped word nobis, an anomaly which falls outside the rhyme scheme of the text. This feature, rare in condunctus texts, prompted a search for the source of its tenor. The melody is that of the last verse of the Offertorium Recordare, Virgo Mater, which closely follows the chant melody, taken from W1. From a stylistic and historical viewpoint, the most important aspect is the use of a troped word in the text, a practice that had hitherto been found only in motets among polyphonic works outside the obviously troped settings.

Index Classifications: Polyphony to 1300

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

The early seventeenth century witnessed the rise of the English dramatic genre known as city comedy or citizen comedy, a play characterized by a contemporary London setting, recognizable character types from the social milieux between manual laborers and prosperous merchants, colloquial diction, and predominantly satirical tone. Another marked feature, overlooked by musicologists until recently, is its realistic use of contemporary English music, thus providing a unique documentation of the varied musical practices and beliefs of contemporary London. It must also be considered the first English dramatic genre to make regular use of musical parody, over a century before the ballad opera emerged. The music in these plays is a mixture of original compositions, popular existing songs, and their parodies, all of which help to show the city and its people in many moods. Songs selected for parody were drawn from the contents of published books of songs and ayres, from the popular ballad repertory, and from other plays. All songs were sung as unaccompanied monodies, regardless of the texture of the original. Musical parody in the city comedies can be divided into three distinct types, in which respectively (1) a song text is altered to fit the specific circumstances under which it is to be sung on stage; (2) the circumstances surrounding the origin of the song are imitated (often through the treatment of a broadside ballad); and (3) a song or musical scenario from another play is imitated as part of a reference to, or a parody of, that other drama.

Works: Thomas Dekker and John Webster: Northward Ho (358-59), George Chapman, Ben Johnson and John Marston: Eastward Ho (360-65).

Sources: Robert Jones: "My thought the other night," Second Booke of Songs and Ayres (358-59), "A Sorowfull Sonet made by M. George Mannington, at Cambridge Castle. To the tune of Labandala Shot," A Handefull of Pleasant Delites (360-61).

Index Classifications: 1600s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

The idea that Joseph Haydn was the predominant influence on Mozart's 1773 Viennese string quartets (K. 168-173) began with Otto Jahn and has been repeated and elaborated in much of the Mozart literature. Stylistic traits such as motivic development, irregular phrase length, contrapuntal texture, fugal finales, inversion of the subject, slow introductions, and so on are not specific to Haydn, but are either part of a broader Viennese tradition or have precedents in Mozart's earlier works. Nearly every observer of these quartets has noted the thematic similarity of the second movement of K. 168 with Haydn's Op. 20, No. 5, fourth movement. But a more convincing model is Ordonez's Quartet in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3, in which almost every parameter suggests a direct influence. The quartets K. 168-173 were intended for a specifically Viennese taste; many of the movements conform to a character reportedly favored by Joseph II, since Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart made the trip to Vienna in order to be in place if the Imperial Kapellmeister Florian Leopold Gassmann were to die. After they returned to Salzburg, Mozart wrote two symphonies, the first of which, the "Little" G minor Symphony, K. 182, has been linked with Mozart's supposed encounter with the "crise romantique" in Austrian music, as represented by Haydn and Vanhal among others. Yet the symphony is indebted to the music of Gassmann (his Quartet in G minor, Hill 476, No. 2 in particular) and to Mozart's knowledge of the repertoire in the "pathétique" style intended for Joseph II.

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

Work on the Neue Bach Ausgabe stimulated research into J. S. Bach's copies and arrangements of other composers' works. The Acroma missale by Giovanni Battista Bassani, published 1709, is a collection of six four-voice settings of the Ordinary with instrumental accompaniment, contained in sixteen part-books. Bach's arrangement differs from the original in two important points: (1) it is written as an eight-part score and (2) only the first four sections of the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, and Sanctus with Osanna I) are present. Bach includes in his settings the intonation words of the Credo (which were omitted by Bassani, except in Mass No. 3), and in the case of Mass No. 5 this is a lengthy setting that could be regarded as a separate little (thus far unknown) composition. Analysis of watermarks and handwriting establishes Bach's son Gottfried Heinrich as the copyist and dates the different pieces to the period between 1735 and 1747. However, questions about the reason and purpose of Bach's copying of this unoriginal work remain largely unanswered.

Works: J. S. Bach: Sechs Messen von Bassani (Mus. ms. 1160).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

Gregorian chant was a rich source of inspiration for Josquin. About half of his motets (ca. 50 pieces) incorporate traditional Gregorian melodies. The chants used most often are antiphons and sequences. Eighteen different antiphons can be found in Josquin's antiphon motets, including the four great Marian antiphons, of which he uses Ave Maria three times and the others each twice. He incorporates nine sequences wholly or in part, using two of them twice, Inviolata and Victimae paschali laudes. The motets may be classed in six groups: groups I and II comprise motets in which the chant is clearly recognizable because its text differs from that of the motet and because it is treated as a cantus firmus in long note values (sometimes treated canonically as well); groups III through V comprise motets in which the text in all voices is that of the chant, whether it is treated canonically, as a migrant cantus firmus, or as a paraphrase; and group VI consists of fifteen motets which do not fit into any of the preceding groups.

Index Classifications: 1400s, 1500s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

Although the parody mass never attained the same importance in England as it did elsewhere in Europe, English composers of the early sixteenth century were aware of parody techniques. Three masses in the Peterhouse part-books, Missa O bone Jesu by Robert Fayrfax, Missa Salve intemerata by Thomas Tallis, and Missa Mater Christi by John Taverner, each borrow polyphonic material from a votive antiphon by the composer of the mass. The use of parody technique, rather than being motivated by liturgical considerations, may have been prompted by a desire to be free of the demands of specific liturgical connections. Contrary to their Continental colleagues, Tudor composers tended to transfer borrowed material more or less intact, making only those rhythmic alterations necessary for the declamation of another text. In Tavener's mass, however, the reworking is more extensive than has been thought. More than half of it is freshly composed, while only about a quarter of Tallis's mass is new material. Since Fayrfax, Taverner, and Tallis based these masses on models of their own composition, their choice of models was not motivated by the desire to pay homage to another composer. Taverner's influence, on the other hand, was manifested in works by composers who followed him, even as late as William Byrd, through the employment of compositional techniques that Taverner had used in his parody masses.

Works: Rasar: Missa Christe Jesu; Fayrfax: Missa O bone Jesu; Tallis: Missa salve intemerata,Strene Mass; Taverner: Missa Mater Christi, Western Wind Mass, Small Devotion Mass (or Sancte Wilhelme Mass), Meane Mass, Playnsong Mass; Tye: Western Wind Mass, Enge bone Mass, Meane Mass; Shepperd: Western Wind Mass, Frances Mass.

Index Classifications: 1500s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

In the middle third of the fifteenth century, contrafacta of Italian, French, and Netherlandish works frequently appear in Germany. Two more contrafacta in the Lieder of Oswald von Wolkenstein can now be added to the six already known. Both poems, Mein herz das ist versert (No. 101 in the Wolkenstein Edition) and Weiss, rot, mit praun verleucht (No. 111) are set to a work from the Italian Trecento, Landini's ballata Questa fanciulla. Although No. 101 is not a literal translation of the Italian text, the two poems show similarities in content. Wolkenstein is also influenced by the verse form (the "endecasillabo") of his Italian model. He preserves only the bipartite structure of the ballata, while the overall form is removed from its refrain model. Finally, in both Wolkenstein manuscripts only the tenor has a text, a purely German feature characteristic of the "Tenorlied." Thus Landini's ballata, in which the tenor had a supporting function, was transformed in Germany into a song for tenor and an upper-voice accompaniment.

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

Mozart borrowed the opening theme of Boccherini's String Quartet in C several times. The most extensive borrowing occurs in the last movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata in D major, K. 576, where he uses the Boccherini sequence as the incipit and basis of the principal subject. The sequence itself offers numerous possibilities for treatment. Other references are present in the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457, the finale of his Piano Concerto in E flat major, K. 449, and the finale of the Sonata for Violin and Piano in D major, K. 306. Mozart was immeasurably more original in "stealing" Boccherini's theme than Boccherini was in inventing it, producing some of his greatest works while using a mediocre model.

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

Musical allusions as an aesthetic principle (and not "creative impotence," as some critics sought to present it) were a part of Mahler's artistic creation from the beginning. At least at the start of his career, Mahler could count on the familiarity of his Viennese audience with certain musical ideas, no less than with numerous quotations from works of Schiller, Goethe, or the Antiquity, which belonged to the standard education of central-European bourgoisie. The first song from his cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is based on a citation from Schubert's Mainacht, a song often performed in the circle of Mahler's friends. The poetic images in Mahler's text are also similar to those of Schubert's poet, Hölty. In the same song there is a second connection, to Marschner's "Romanze vom bleichen Mann" from the opera Vampyr. The third song is permeated by motives from the Ring, especially from Götterdämmerung. Allusions to motives are made at appropriate points in the text; for example, the phrase "nicht bei Tage, nicht bei Nacht, wenn ich schlief" ("not by day, not by night when I was asleep") is set to the descending chromatic line of the "Sleep" motive from the Ring. In the final song, apart from Wagner, Mahler quotes Schubert's Wegweiser and, most obviously, a lengthy excerpt from Donizetti's opera Don Sebastian in which a character witnesses his own funeral. The latter, a march theme Mahler remembered from performances heard ten years before, alludes to the mood of his character at the end of the cycle. The orchestral postlude consists of a twice repeated progression, a stepwise ascending minor third, common to all three of Mahler's models, Schubert, Wagner, and Donizetti.

Works: Gustav Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Das klagende Lied.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic

The fourth movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959 (1828), is closely related to the third movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in G major, Op. 31, No. 1 (1802), which Schubert knew. Similarities between the two Allegretto finales are visible in the formal structure of the opening theme, the partial chromaticism of the thematic material, some rhythmic patterns, harmonic progressions, and overall form. Another conscious borrowing occurs in Schubert's Grand Rondeau in A major for piano four hands, D. 951, which is based on the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90; in this case, unlike the previous one, Schubert composed a work that differed considerably in emotional expression from Beethoven's, despite similarities in form. There is also a less obvious parallel between the second movements of Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat major, D. 929, and Beethoven's Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70, No. 1.

Index Classifications: 1800s

Contributed by: Mirna Polzovic