There is evidence to suggest that Schoenberg modeled the first movement of his Third String Quartet (1927) on the first movement of Schubert's String Quartet in A minor, Op. 29 (1824). Schoenberg's incessant eighth-note ostinato in the second violin and viola at the opening of the movement shows a clear allegiance to the perpetual eighth notes at the opening of the Schubert. But what is especially noteworthy is Schoenberg's unique manipulation and recasting of the traditional elements of sonata form within the new environment of the twelve-tone system.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer

Within a discussion of Monteverdi's understanding and use of tonality, the two versions of Lamento d'Arianna are singled out as a paradigm case. Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna is the only surviving portion of the opera Arianna, written for performance in Mantua in 1608. Sometime in the ensuing years (probably around 1610), Monteverdi arranged the lament for five vocal parts, and this version appears at the opening of his sixth book of madrigals, published in Venice in 1614. A bar-by-bar comparison of the two settings reveals that the five-part version was much more than a mere transcription of the original. Although the monody can be divided quite easily into four sections as marked by the fermatas, Monteverdi expands the music considerably (and modifies the text accordingly) when reworking the lament into a four-madrigal cycle. An analysis of the reworkings notes that the madrigal more fully realizes the tonal implications inherent in the original monody.

Works: Monteverdi: Lamento d'Arianna (165-85).

Sources: Monteverdi: Arianna (165-85).

Index Classifications: 1600s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer

During his studies with Zachow, Handel is known to have copied works by the Viennese organist and composer Johann Caspar Kerll. Handel's sketches for Messiah reveal that the double counterpoint at the opening of the fugue "Let all the angels of God" was derived from a canzona by Kerll (no. 14 of the modern edition). Considering this borrowing along with the self-borrowings from the Italian duets that have already been identified in Messiah may shed light on how Handel was able to compose the work so quickly.

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer

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

A detailed study of Archduke Rudolph's Forty Variations on a Theme by Beethoven (1818-19) is provided on pp. 69-118. The variations represent the culmination of Rudolph's years of composition study with Beethoven, and they stand at the core of his oeuvre. In the spring of 1818 Beethoven wrote out a four-measure Liedthema, "O Hoffnung" (WoO 200), and sent it to Rudolph as an assignment in variations composition. Rudolph took to the assignment with great enthusiasm, producing a set of forty variations on the "O Hoffnung" theme. Beethoven kept a close eye on Rudolph throughout the writing process; his corrections and suggested revisions can be found on Rudolph's original manuscript. The first thirty-five variations are "strict" in that they bear a direct bar-by-bar structural correspondence with the original theme. But the last five of the set are "fantasia" variations, deviating greatly from the original in length and harmonic design. The final variation (no. 40) adopts the theme as the subject of a four-voice fugue that extends for ninety-six measures. The fugue especially reveals Rudolph's allegiance to the pianistic style of his teacher in many ways, including the lengthy passages in consecutive thirds and sixths, the long sustained trill under which new melodies emerge, and the unconventional pedaling in the final measures.

Index Classifications: 1800s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer

The ideas of literary critic Harold Bloom may serve as the model for a new theory of mapping musical influence. Bloom's theory (as first proposed in The Anxiety of Influence in 1973) rests on the notion that the true subject matter of poetry is poetry itself; every poem is seen as a "misreading" or "misprision" of a precursor poem or poems. Bloom divides poets into two categories, "strong" and "weak." What differentiates a "strong" poet is his ability to confront his anxiety of influence; a strong poet is one who wrestles with his great precursors to achieve his own originality. In appropriating Bloom's idea for music, compositions become "relational events" rather than "closed and static entities." The model is tested through an interreading of two compositions--Brahms's Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5, and Reger's Träume am Kamin, Op. 143, No. 2--with respect to their essential precursor, Chopin's Berceuse, Op. 57. Reger is shown to have weakly "misread" the Berceuse; although Reger places himself in direct competition with Chopin by overtly adopting the compositional strategy of the precursor (a series of increasingly florid variations over a one-measure ostinato figure, a figure that is virtually identical in both pieces), he fails to go beyond Chopin and forge an original meaning of his own. In contrast, Brahms's Romanze is shown to be a "strong" misreading of the Berceuse. Bloom's six "revisionary ratios" (clinamen, tessera, kenosis, daemonization, askesis, and apophrades) are evoked to demonstrate how Brahms is able to echo Chopin and yet go beyond his precursor, forging his own originality. For example, Bloom defines clinamen as the "initial swerve from the precursor," akin to the rhetorical trope of irony. The harmonic strategy of Chopin's Berceuse is one of extreme tonal stability, being composed almost entirely over a tonic-dominant ostinato; in making his "initial swerve" from Chopin, Brahms departs markedly from this strategy by setting his series of variations (the music most directly reminiscent of the Berceuse) as the D major middle section within a larger ternary design, framed by contrasting music in F major. Brahms's alternate strategy in the Romanze exemplifies Bloom's clinamen: "the framing action of the F major music 'ironizes' the Berceuse reminiscence of the middle section so that it says one thing ('tonal stability') and means another ('tonal instability')."

Works: Brahms: Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5; Reger: Träume am Kamin, Op. 143, No. 2.

Sources: Chopin: Berceuse, Op. 57.

Index Classifications: General, 1800s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer

The stylistic homogeneity of 18th-century music poses difficulties when one tries to assert resemblances between themes. Unless we can demonstrate that the composer expressly intended for there to be a specific thematic connection between his music and another piece, our claims of a definite resemblance between two Classical themes are usually greeted with considerable skepticism. When faced with a lack of concrete biographical evidence, we should therefore subject the themes to a rigorous screening process before we can reasonably assert that one theme consciously resembles another. The first criterion is statistical background: while the resemblance between two themes A and B might be striking, if it can be shown that there are also several other themes that equally resemble A and B then the significance of the original relationship is greatly reduced. The second criterion is structural similarity, which must consider at least three aspects: (1) melodic contour; (2) rhythmic function; and (3) tonal and harmonic background. This screening process is put to the test in works by J. S. Bach, J. C. Bach and Haydn, proving that seeming thematic resemblances between works or between movements of the same work are coincidental. The article concludes with examples from two symphonies--one by Rosetti (DTB XII/I) and Haydn's Symphony No. 103--in which a thematic resemblance between a slow introduction and the following fast movement is strong enough to assert a definite intent on the part of the composer.

Works: Haydn: Symphony No. 103 (234); Francesco Antonio Rosetti: Sinfonia in Dis (234).

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer

A detailed analysis of Debussy's "Feux d'artifice," the last of his twenty-four Préludes for piano, reveals a network of musical ideas and transformational relations that shape the overall form and character of the piece. A melodic fragment of the French national anthem "La Marseillaise" appears during the coda. The most obvious role of this quotation on the surface level is to evoke a spirit of French nationalism, which seems especially appropriate considering the immediate prewar period when Debussy composed this music. Yet on a deeper level of structure, the quotation of "La Marseillaise" achieves greater significance in that its headnote represents the culmination of a large-scale ascending chromatic progression initiated at the second reprise (from m. 82).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer

Beethoven's homage to Napoleon in his Symphony No. 3 has been the subject of much debate and extensive research. Of all the movements in the symphony, it is the Marcia funebre second movement that provides the most telling evidence of Beethoven's allegiance to French Republican music of the 1790s. The passage beginning at m. 19 of the Marcia funebre seems to be a direct parody of a passage from Gossec's Marche Lugubre (beginning at m. 30). Yet most of the musical devices that Beethoven employs--such as the imitations of drumrolls, cadential unison passages, and lyrical hymnlike themes--are not overt borrowings, but rather represent a unique assimilation of conventions culled from the earlier tradition.

Index Classifications: 1800s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer

It is well known that fifteenth-century composers typically used a chanson melody as a cantus firmus when writing masses. There is evidence to suggest that the added contrapuntal voices often quoted or alluded to chansons independent of the melody used in the tenor. Several cases of this appear in works by Dufay, Ockeghem, Caron, Faugues, and others. This technique allowed these composers to make multiple allusions to secular texts within a single passage, enriching the sung mass text with new layers of meaning. Since a central concern of the Italian humanists was to offer modern interpretations on religious themes by way of popular allusions, it seems that in this respect the ideals of the northern composers resonated strongly with humanism, challenging the notion that their music was purely "scholastic."

Works: Busnois: J'ay mains de biens (228-29); Anonymous: Fortune, n'as-tu point pitié (230-31, 241); Agricola: Je n'ay dueil que de vos viegna (230-31, 245); Faugues: Missa Pour l'amour d'une (233, 247); Cornago: Missa Ayo vista lo mappamundo (234, 237, 247-48); Seraphinus: Credo (234-36); Faugues: Missa Je suis en la mer (234-36); Dufay: Gloria (236-37); Faugues: Missa Le serviteur (237-38); Caron: Missa Clemens et benigna (237-39); Anonymous: Missa L'homme armé (240); Ockeghem: Missa Caput (240-41); Compère: Le renvoy d'ung cueur esgaré (240-41); Caron: Missa Sanguis sanctorum (241-43); Dufay: Missa Se la face ay pale (243-44); Ockeghem: Missa (245-46).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Mark S. Spicer