Stanley Cavell’s style of philosophical writing, which incorporates numerous borrowings of other philosophical texts, can be likened to musical borrowings by Ignaz Friedman, Luciano Berio, and Richard Beaudoin. Borrowing strategies in both music and philosophical texts exist along a continuum of borrowing procedures, with points such as “works without explicit borrowing,” “local borrowing,” and “critical borrowing.” Within this continuum, Cavell mostly employs “local,” “structural,” and “critical” borrowing procedures. There is a long tradition of philosophers who have engaged with “writing about the writings of other writers,” though Cavell takes this stylistic trait to an extreme; in fact, his writings involve using the words of others to such a high degree that some might consider there to be little of his own “self” remaining. The borrowing procedures of Cavell’s Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow can be likened to Ignaz Friedman’s Gavotte from the Sixth Sonata for Violin by J. S. Bach Arranged for Piano. Both of these works employ lengthy quotations to play a sophisticated game of meaning with their sources, with the composer serving as a sort of “intellectual guide” along the way. Cavell’s procedures of borrowings in Philosophical Passages are similar to those of Berio’s Sinfonia. Both borrow from one main literary document, ignoring major parts of the original source, and include material of their own making alongside the borrowed material. Finally, borrowing procedures in Cavell’s Philosophical Passages can also be likened to the author’s own Etude d’un prelude IV—Black Wires. Both approaches to borrowing involve nested histories and commentaries, which act like a dialog between authors who never coexisted. Borrowings—both musical and literary—are important because they reveal essential aspects of their transcribers.

Works: Ignaz Friedman: Gavotte from the Sixth Sonata for Violin by J. S. Bach Arranged for Piano (95-97); Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (98-99); Richard Beaudoin: Etude d’un prelude IV—Black Wires (99-102).

Sources: Johann Sebastian Bach: Partita in E, BWV 1006 (95-97); Chopin (composer) and Martha Argerich (performer): Prelude in E Minor, Op. 28, No. 4 (100-102).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

British composer Michael Nyman’s style could be characterized as a combination of musical quotations fused with minimalist compositional characteristics. Often his music establishes a dialogue with the past, engaging the listener with an active reevaluation of the original quoted work. In the soundtrack to Peter Greenaway’s film Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), Nyman based the entire score on elements of the music of Purcell, especially on ground basses and archetypes of functional harmony, gradually reducing out elements of Purcell’s stylistic language until just common harmonic patterns remained. This creates a sense of tension between the present and the past. In Drowning by Numbers, Nyman borrows from Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364. Nyman employs two different techniques of borrowing: variation and montage. Variation technique describes a process by which Nyman systematically varies every musical element associated with a borrowing (such as rhythm and pitch); this technique creates a sense of alienation between the two different musical eras (Classical and modern). Montage technique describes a process by which Nyman cuts up source material and brings it together again in a new framework; the individual compositional cells remain very close to the original, but their combination is quite different and introduces a new kind of formal coherence. These techniques of musical borrowing can also be seen in Nyman’s String Quartet No. 1 (1985), which borrows from works by Schoenberg and John Bull, creating a commentary on the music in which it is based. Nyman creates a dialectic between the two, with Bull representing traditional musical practices and Schoenberg representing more radical or modern practices, fully asserting himself as a European composer of the classical tradition in the process. Two charts (28, 33) summarize the borrowings in Drowing by Numbers and the String Quartet No. 1.

Works: Peter Greenaway (director) and Michael Nyman (composer): score to The Draughtsman’s Contract (26); Michael Nyman: Drowning by Numbers (27-32), In Re Don Giovanni (30), String Quartet No. 1 (33-37).

Sources: Purcell: Chasing Sheep is Best Left for Shepherds (26); Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364 (27-32), Don Giovanni (30); John Bull: Walsingham (33-37); Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2 (33-35).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

Traditionally, modulation is associated with either key or with metric procedures; however, this term can be expanded to incorporate style. “Style-modulation” occurs when different musical styles within a single work are employed in as controlled a way as any other compositional element. Often popular music, especially genres derived from African-American traditions, incorporate style-modulations. Style-modulation is not necessarily brought about by musical quotations, but often has a direct relationship to them. If a quotation is recognizable and departs from established continuity, it may be an example of a style-modulation, such as the Bach chorale in Berg’s Violin Concerto or Chopin’s Funeral March in Satie’s Embryons Desséchés. A work with many quotations, such as Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, is not necessarily an example of a style modulation, however, as the quotations do not break from the work’s overall continuity. In twentieth-century works in particular, the moment of style-modulation often creates a force of an epiphany. Charles Ives is a good example of a composer whose music includes style-modulations, especially in pieces such as the Concord Sonata,Country Band March, and the Fourth Symphony.

Works: Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord, Mass., 1840-60) (208), Symphony No. 4 (208); Berg: Violin Concerto (210); Satie: Embryons Desséchés (210); Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (210-11).

Sources: Simeon B. Marsh: Martyn (208); Ives: Country Band March (208), String Quartet No. 1 (208).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

György Ligeti’s only opera, Le Grand Macabre (1977, revised 1996), an example of grotesque realism, uses many techniques of parody and collage, though such techniques resist categorization because of the vast array of incorporated procedures. An analysis of Le Grand Macabre works to unveil the work’s narrative and meta-musical implications in relation to these techniques of musical borrowing and the relevant source material, suggesting that the work is governed by two different narrative trajectories. Ligeti’s uses of operatic conventions in this opera are related to specific sources and techniques; such conventions suggest that Ligeti assigns distinctive stylistic or timbral idioms to typecast main characters. For example, a parodic strategy via troping of stylistic types from the lover’s duet (Scene 1), which draws on Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea; a second example is Piet the Pot’s “drunken” aria (Scene 1), exemplifies the technique of troping incongruous stylistic topics through abrupt shifts in musical discourses, while drawing on Berg’s Wozzeck. All three scenes in the opera share a parallel construction which culminates in a polymetric or polytemporal collage. In each scene, a trope of chaos and deconstruction is established through these collages, which is offset by either buffa elements or pastoral topics. The expressive states of ludicrousness and horror are explored in tandem, culminating in the third movement where the distinction between these two expressive states becomes increasingly blurred. Le Grand Macabre is in some ways an “anti-opera,” because of its overall narrative of ambivalence, which comes about primarily due to the blurring of expressive states. Thus, the aesthetic of this work is not “postmodern” but is better defined as “oppositional” postmodernism, which is concerned with a critical deconstruction of tradition.

Works: Ligeti: Le Grand Macabre.

Sources: Verdi: Falstaff (34-35); Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppea (36); Berg: Wozzeck (36-37); Gluck: Alceste (43); Stravinsky: l’Histoire du Soldat (43).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

In composing his serialist works, Messiaen suffered from an anxiety of Viennese influence, manifested as a strong desire to show how his serial methods can produce a totally different music from that of the Second Viennese School. However, certain aspects of Messiaen’s serial music are modeled on famous Viennese dodecaphonic works, as both similarities to and distinctive differences from these works may prove. Livre d’orgue, a set of seven pieces for organ, provides a good case study for these modeling procedures. For example, a significant difference from the Second Viennese School in the first movement is that his serial permutations are not the four “classic” order transformations (prime, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion); instead, Messiaen uses other permutations which do not necessarily include the whole row, permutations that are unique to his work. This demonstrates that Messiaen was going out of his way to avoid serial techniques of the past, which is confirmed in excerpts from Messiaen’s writings. An example of a similarity to Viennese dodecaphonic music can also be found in the first movement. Several trichords and hexachords, as well as their permutations, specifically evoke the music of Bartók and Webern. Furthermore, certain large-scale permutations evoke the first section of Berg’s Wozzeck as well as the second movement of Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21. This demonstrates that Messiaen was still influenced by the music of these composers, which he knew well.

Works: Messiaen: Livre d’orgue (5-29).

Sources: Berg: Wozzeck (23); Webern: Symphony, Op. 21 (23).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

Because repetitions in music are over-generalized and under-analyzed, a framework is needed for analyzing transformations of repetitions which happen with an explicit change of context, including clear definitions for terms such as segment, criterion, instantiation, coincidence, realization, musical context, idea, and structural interpretation. This allows for a discussion of how repetitions are altered within a particular musical context, instead of simply noting that repetitions exist. Musical borrowings or quotations fulfill the setup conditions for recontextualization—repetition with an explicit change of context—but it is important that the context of these musical borrowings is actively transformed. In other words, quotations that are simply set down in a new context and are not “actively transplanted” are not recontextualized. The quotation of the opening of Tristan und Isolde in Berg’s Lyric Suite is an excellent example of a musical borrowing that is also recontextualized.

Works: Berg: Lyric Suite (64-65).

Sources: Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (64).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

Messiaen’s Cantéyodijayâ, a single-movement work for solo piano best known for its incorporation of total serialism, contains numerous thematic, harmonic, and rhythmic features that derive from other Messiaen works. So many gestures, passages, and harmonic excerpts are self-borrowed that only 53 of the 347 measures of this work cannot be traced to other Messiaen pieces. Short melodic phrases (1-3 measures) are taken unchanged from the Turangalîla Symphony and from Cinq Rechants. These melodic self-quotations often contain the same timbres, rhythms, and pitches, making their source material clear. Instead of incorporating harmonic changes based on the “Modes of limited transposition” as in other works, in Cantéyodijayâ Messiaen reprises earlier harmonic progressions, such as those in Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jesus and the Turangalîla Symphony, and relies on earlier formulations such as the “Chords of inverted transposition on the same bass note.” Past rhythmic procedures are also incorporated in Cantéyodijayâ, as well as other self-borrowed compositional features such as serial organization and large-scale formal designs. On the whole, these self-quotations create a “collage” of Messiaen’s works of the past, by retaining their core technical features. A multi-page table summarizes thematic, harmonic, and rhythmic features of Cantéyodijayâ that derive from other Messiaen works.

Works: Messiaen: Cantéyodijayâ (60-71).

Sources: Messiaen: Turangalîla Symphony (63-65), Cinq Rechants (64), Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jesus (65-66).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

Two paradoxical interpretations of Charles Ives’s use of borrowed music coexist: an authorial reading and a reading based on the element of lost time (“temps perdu”). The mature music of Charles Ives is internally teleological, building pieces or movements out of “memory fragments” of pre-existing American popular or sacred tunes and quoting the entire tune only at the end of the work (a form called “teleological genesis” or elsewhere “cumulative form”). An authorial reading of this technique situates the meaning of the piece in the creation of a peak experience, which itself intimates to the audience a transcendental understanding of the music beyond the sound itself. Listeners might consider thinking of Ives’s use of “memory-fragments,” or musical borrowings, through the filter of Ives’s personal experiences with his sources, which they may discover (at least in part) through his writings. The second reading of this phenomenon is that striking dissonance, “memory fragments,” and musical manipulation in Ives’s mature pieces represent his attempt to protect a treasured American past from the effects of adulthood and the modern world. Ives’s stylistic plurality in his mature years can be heard as a radical attempt to recover traditional securities of the past, a narrative thread (the “Motive of Lost Wholeness”) common in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thought in general. Such pieces depict the past as only existing imperfectly in memory; thus listeners are invited by Ives to embark on a musical journey in search of lost time.

Works: Ives: The Fourth of July (747), Symphony No. 3 (747), Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord, Mass., 1840-60) (747), String Quartet No. 2 (747), Violin Sonata No. 2 (747-49), Violin Sonata No. 4 (749-50), Violin Sonata No. 3 (750).

Sources: Robert Lowry: Need (750); Asahel Nettleton or John Wyeth (attr.): Nettleton (747); David T. Shaw: The Red, White, and Blue (Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean) (747-49); William Bradbury: Jesus Loves Me (749-50).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Kate Altizer, Chelsea Hamm, Daniel Rogers

Ian Wilson is an Irish-born modern composer whose works often reflect the violent conflict and its devastating effects that Wilson experienced while living in Belfast and Belgrade. One such work, Messenger, was written in Belgrade during the NATO campaign of the 1990s. The second movement of Messenger is almost unique in Wilson’s output, as it is one of only three works acknowledged by the composer to contain musical borrowings. This movement contains an allusion to Brahms’s Lullaby, Op. 49, No. 4; this musical borrowing is unique in Wilson’s work because it is a recognizable musical motif that is used to suggest something quite specific. This allusion to Brahms’s Lullaby is recapitulated in the middle of the fourth movement, another rarity for Wilson. In the second movement the allusion appears in a sparse texture and repeats the Lullaby’s opening minor third quite often. In the fourth movement the allusion is shorter (only three measures), and the often repeated minor third is transposed down a half-step from the second movement. Other recent works by Wilson do not contain allusions to outside musical sources, but do contain some elements of self-quotation. For example, a concerto for piano and strings, titled an angel serves a small breakfast, returns to a technique he first used in his 1998 concerto for piano and strings, Limena. The piano parts of these two works share much melodic material, and the parts of both accompaniments comprise reworked melodic material from the motives of the piano part. an angel serves a small breakfast also contains brass chorales in a style that is highly reminiscent of Messiaen.

Works: Ian Wilson: Messenger (3-4), an angel serves a small breakfast (5-6).

Sources: Brahms: Lullaby, Op. 49, No. 4 (3-4); Ian Wilson: Limena (5-6).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

Many questions about musical collages still remain to be answered, especially with regard to the relationships between the seemingly disparate elements on their musical surface. Analysis shows that seemingly disparate features in Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, George Rochberg’s Music for the Magic Theater, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Musique pour les Soupers du Roi Ubu, are actually governed by a multitude of associations that create unconventional structures and relationships. Chromatic saturation within pitch (not pitch-class) space in the Sinfonia provides the motivation for relating disparate passages in this collage, while aggregate completion and the saturation of certain motivic units connects seemingly disparate passages in the Music for the Magic Theater. Finally, the lack of aggregate completion and several inconclusive gap-fill processes lead to a lack of closure in Musique pour les Soupers du Roi Ubu, which is used in tandem with other musical features to provide dramatic meaning. Analyses of these three musical collages should not ignore contrasts in musical language, but instead should embrace them as fundamental building blocks, emphasizing the associations and relationships between seemingly disparate elements which make up the work’s structure. Organic unity should not be attempted to be “proven” in these works, but the idea of total disjunction of the musical surfaces of these collages is an illusion.

Works: Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (64-81); George Rochberg: Music for the Magic Theater (81-87); Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Musique pour les Soupers du Roi Ubu (87-94).

Sources: Mahler: Symphony No. 2 (64-66, 69); Mozart: Divertimento in B-flat Major, K. 287 (81-86); Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique (87-90); Wagner: Die Walküre (87-90).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

Musical collages are distinguished from other forms of musical borrowing because of the excessive amount and diversity of quoted material, as well as the degree to which the quoted material retains its individuality. Techniques for analyzing musical collages are few, and the process of modulation in musical collage still remains to be examined. The term “modulation” refers to the shift between distinct harmonic domains, the recurrence of a main or dominant sound world, and sharp contrasts and the efforts to reconcile these contrasts. There are several modulatory techniques of collages. Overlap is a technique that traverses the spectrum in terms of varying degrees of subtlety and can function on different conceptual levels. Types of overlap include pitch convergence, which encompasses pitch connections at different levels of abstraction, and textural dispersal/emergence, which is produced when two quotations sound simultaneously and are subjected to a process of fragmentation. In chromatic insertion, chromatic passages fulfill a modulatory function, filling in the intervening tonal space between surrounding passages of quotations. Finally, rhythmic plasticity denotes the ways in which the rhythmic profile of the music is manipulated in order gradually to introduce or to lead away from a quotation.

Works: Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (298-99, 302-4, 310-15, 326-27); George Rochberg: Music for the Magic Theater (299-300, 304-310, 318-27); Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Musique pour les Soupers du Roi Ubu (300-301, 305-307, 317-18, 326-27).

Sources: Mahler: Symphony No. 2 (298-99, 302-4, 310-12, 321-24); Mozart: Divertimento in B-flat Major, K. 287 (300-301, 307); Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique (301, 304-5, 317-18); Wagner: Die Walküre (301, 304-305, 317-18).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

To secure Ives’s compositional reputation against modernist criticism, revisionist scholars have adapted the untenable position that Charles Ives was a modernist composer. Such characterizations attempt to situate his music within Western European tradition and refute the categorization of Ives as an experimentalist. Two critical processes, the idea of experimentalism and the use of musical analysis, are important to understanding how Ives’ reputation was created. In post-1974 Ives scholarship, music analysis is often used as a determinant of aesthetic value. It is frequently employed to “prove” that Ives’s music is systematic and logical, and by extension is skilled and therefore valuable. This motivation also lies behind scholarship which demonstrates how Ives’s music is more “traditional” and how it relates to European art music. For example, some scholars have tried to show how Ives’s uses of musical borrowings fit into a European tradition. Such traditionalist studies seek to redefine the term “experimentalism” as it was originally conceived in the 1930s by Cowell—a type of music which deliberately sought to break with European tradition—to a term that signifies compositional uniqueness. The motivations of such analyses, which have attempted to place Ives’s musical reputation within a context of “skill and value,” should be examined. Perhaps Ives’s music, aspects of which (such as his uses of pre-existing music) intentionally undermine conventions, should not be subject to formalist analysis and scholars should instead examine the validity of evaluating Ives through a modernist lens rather than characterize his music as modernist.

Works: Ives: Tone Roads No. 1 (104), Study No. 5 (104), The Cage (104), Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord, Mass., 1840-60) (105-6).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Kate Altizer, Chelsea Hamm, Amanda Jensen

The central movement of Messiaen’s La nativité du Seigneur, titled “Les enfants de Dieu,” contains a previously undiscovered paraphrase of the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Musically, certain melodic dyads and most of the harmonic progressions of the “Liebestod” are incorporated into “Les enfants”; furthermore, both share similar uses of harmonies and particular rhythmic gestures. Other surface features also support the idea of a “Liebestod” paraphrase, such as their shared key signature. This incorporation of pre-existing musical material is best described as a Lisztian paraphrase, as the passage still sounds more like Messiaen than Wagner, though its structure is clearly based on that of the “Liebestod.” With regards to meaning, the chorale-like “Liebestod” paraphrase seems to represent the verse from Galatians: “And God sent into their hearts the spirit of his Son, who cried, Father, Father,” a reading also supported by Messiaen’s preface to the work. Thus Tristan and Isolde, as children of God, will fulfill their love in death, as Christ’s love for humankind was fulfilled. Instead of a completely programmatic musical depiction of the nativity, Messiaen invokes its full redemptive powers, which is only explicit if the reference to the “Liebestod” is made apparent.

Works: Messiaen: “Les enfants de Dieu” from La nativité du Seigneur (19-25).

Sources: Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (19-23, 25).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

The influence of Hebrew cantillation, the ritual chanting of readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services, can be traced in Steve Reich’s music from the mid-1970s to the early-1990s. After Reich studied cantillation, the sound aspects of spoken language, such as intonation, timbre, melodic cadences, and metric accentuation, became the defining elements of musical structure in many of his compositions. In Eight Lines (1979), there are long melodic lines which were constructed according to a procedure of “motivic addition” similar to that of Hebrew cantillation. In Tehillim (1981), Reich uses Psalms in Hebrew as the poetic source for his musical settings. Furthermore, the rhythmic structure of the work is based on the structure of the words: a pattern of two and three beats, which Reich preserved metrically and in the vocal line of this work. Different Trains incorporates taped speech fragments of Holocaust survivors. The intonation and pitch level of the original speech fragments determine the harmonic framework of the composition, including its tonal shifts to different harmonic planes. The Cave incorporates techniques of the previous three compositions. Speech samples become the basis of this composition, and its music reflects these samples’ melodic and rhythmic profiles. These text-setting techniques restore the union between the “sound” aspect of speech and the semantic meaning of the words, a direct result of the influence of Hebrew cantillation.

Works: Steve Reich: Eight Lines (543-45), Tehillim (545-48), Different Trains (548-50), The Cave (550-51).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm

Ben Johnston’s Fourth String Quartet was commissioned by the Fine Arts Quartet and was completed in the summer of 1973. This centric work has only one movement, a theme and variations form on the traditional American hymn Amazing Grace. The fusion of this borrowed material and the heterogeneous composition in its entirety creates a unified effect that seems to be highly influenced by the mature works of Ives. At the beginning of the work the hymn is presented in such a way that, harmonically, fifths and fourths seem to be the only intervals treated as consonant, while all other intervals are handled as non-harmonic tones. The Pythagorean ratios created by these intervals are 3:2 (fifths) and 4:3 (fourths). In the ensuing variations, Johnston introduces several new proportions and applies them to different rhythmic layers and harmonic intervals in a variety of ways. This combination of the old—a form that is anachronistic—and the new—cutting edge compositional techniques based on proportions—creates a unique and fascinating composition that is easier to comprehend than most “modern” music. Furthermore, Johnston’s positive attitude towards the past, as exhibited by his Fourth String Quartet, might be regarded as homage to his mentor, Harry Partch.

Works: Ben Johnston: Fourth String Quartet.

Sources: John Newton and William Cowper: Amazing Grace (149-59).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Chelsea Hamm