Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd is not a musical, but an opera, and has suffered by not being performed by opera companies for opera audiences. In Sweeney Todd, Sondheim shows his knowledge of the Western art music tradition through musical borrowing, leitmotif-like motivic recurrence, stylistic allusion to canonic composers and popular musics, harsh dissonance and bi-tonality, mixed meter, and other techniques. Such techniques provide the work with dramatic cohesion and musical integrity.

Works: Stephen Sondheim: Sweeney Todd.

Sources: Anonymous: Dies Irae (20, 24-25).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

In the United Kingdom, the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 does not except parody from copyright violation. Since then, both the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property in 2006 and the Intellectual Property Office in 2008 stated that including an exception for parody would be in the best interests of producers and consumers. In 2009 the Intellectual Property Office reversed their position, rejecting an exception for parody. Yet such an exception should be made, as demonstrated by considering the conditions for parodic use under the current laws and the arguments for and against the exception of parody. In certain situations, direct borrowing of significant portions of music is necessary for the success of the parody, and often the necessity directly depends on various factors surrounding each individual case; this is where copyright fails to protect the parodist.

Works: Rick Dees: When Sonny Sniffs Glue (792); 2 Live Crew: Pretty Woman (792); Saturday Night Live: I Love Sodom (794).

Sources: Jack Segal and Marvin Fisher: When Sunny Gets Blue (792); Roy Orbison: Oh, Pretty Woman (792); Steve Karmen: I Love New York (794).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Hip-hop draws influence directly from 1970s African American culture. Many prominent hip-hop artists, including Public Enemy, Ice Cube, and the Fugees, mention this decade in their music as one in which blacks began to assert themselves politically and culturally. This is demonstrated primarily by hip-hop musicians and producers borrowing the music of Blaxploitation films, which often portrayed African American pimps and drug dealers fighting against white authority. Hip-hop borrows musically and culturally from these Blaxploitation films’ introductory theme music for the main characters, politically charged content, and focus on the ghetto. While these films and their music do not uniformly glorify or demonize black poverty, drug abuse, and violence, the hip-hop community has borrowed their material almost exclusively to show street credibility.

Works: Jay-Z: Reservoir Dogs (49); Smoothe Da Hustler: Hustler’s Theme (49); Snoop Doggy Dogg: Doggystyle (52); Dr. Dre: Rat Tat Tat Tat (53); Ol’ Dirty Bastard: Got Your Money (54).

Sources: Isaac Hayes: Theme to Shaft from Shaft (49); Curtis Mayfield: Freddie’s Dead from Super Fly (49); Willie Hutch: Brother’s Gonna Work It Out from The Mack (53); Rudy Ray Moore: The Signifying Monkey from Dolemite (54).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Hip-hop’s joining together of samples to create a sonic whole is not done to express a “postmodern” stance mocking the linearity and rationality of modernism, but is done to honor black funk musicians of the past, especially James Brown and George Clinton. “Live” in black culture can mean “excellence,” and in recordings connotes a live-performance aesthetic which is contrary to the polished sound of the recording industry. Brown and Clinton sought to create this live aesthetic in their recordings through crowd noise and other signifiers of live performance. Comparing James Brown’s Make It Funky to Public Enemy and producer Hank Shocklee’s Fight the Power (which samples the Brown track) shows that the funk ideals of the 1970s are utilized in hip-hop. Thus, “live” in hip-hop is not in a binary with recorded sound, but is an act of “re-memory,” or a piecing together of a history by “remembering” critical pieces of the past.

Works: Eric B &Rakim: I Know You Got Soul (117); Janet Jackson: That’s the Way Love Goes (118); Public Enemy: Fight the Power (119-20).

Sources: James Brown: Papa Don’t Take No Mess (118), Make It Funky (119).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Nepalese “mix music” utilizes the latest technologies to produce music which borrows sound bites and sonic styles from both foreign popular music and indigenous music. These “mixes” rapidly juxtapose musical styles without an organizing form, and seek to celebrate sonic multiplicity instead of idiomatic unity. Yet despite the sonic similarity or sameness of the new work and its source materials, the meaning of the new music becomes different from that of the sources’ cultural and contextual meanings. These differences in meaning are illuminated through ethnographic methods, as can be seen in Nepalese heavy metal and in Nepalese mixes.

Works: Mongolian Hearts: Unbho Unbho (178-79); Brazesh Khanal: Deusee rey extended mix (180-82).

Sources: Anonymous: Deusee rey (180).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Snyder and Berlin’s “coon song” That Opera Rag is a strong case study for examining the complex attitudes towards class, race, nationality, and gender in the early 1900s. That Opera Rag, despite its many conventional features, has three which defy expectations: a mediant relationship between the two tonal areas of A minor and F major, operatic (as well as popular) quotations, and irregular phrase lengths resulting from the opera quotations. This song perhaps began as an instrumental example of “ragging the classics” by combining highbrow operatic music with lowbrow ragtime conventions, and can be heard as a spoof of operatic grandeur. The lyrics, which utilize minstrelsy misspellings, “humorously” portray black housepainter Sam Johnson as an opera neophyte who misidentifies the quotations. Johnson’s recognition of operatic music represents a contemporary fear for white Americans that African Americans were asserting cultural aspirations through the appreciation of opera. Yet That Opera Rag was also used in the Broadway play Getting a Polish, in which a (white) Montana widow tries to transcend her “common” status by seeking refinement in Paris. May Irwin, the star of Getting a Polish, used That Opera Rag as an unconventional vehicle to stardom by performing these racist songs in a masculine fashion; she gained much renown and success despite being a woman and not being traditionally attractive. Thus, critical interpretation of the song renders multiple levels of commentary which represent the coexisting and contradictory cultural spaces that existed in America in the early twentieth century.

Works: Ted Snyder and Irving Berlin: That Opera Rag; Irving Berlin: When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam’ (389).

Sources: Verdi: Miserere from Il Trovatore (387-88); Bizet: Toreador Song from Carmen (389); Donizetti: Sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor (389); Henry Bishop: Home! Sweet Home! from Clari, or the Maid of Milan (389); Ted Snyder and Irving Berlin: That Opera Rag (389-90).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Progressive rock, a loose label for music which combines elements of rock and roll with those of various forms of art music from around the world, has in the past been viewed by critics and scholars as being most successful (or most appalling) when elements of “high” and “low” culture are synthesized. However, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s popular “free transcription” of Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky frequently shifts between different styles, suggesting that its success is due not to stylistic synthesis but an “ever-changing, channel-surfing quality.” Pictures at an Exhibition, which was played at every Emerson, Lake, and Palmer concert from 1970 to 1988, allowed fans to react to the changes in texture as they happened, dancing when it was appropriate and cheering when Emerson would destroy his organ in the final “Great Gate of Kiev” movement. These fans showed an interest in being “present” at concerts, enjoying each subjective moment as it happens now, like the counter-cultural hippies from the 1960s. This is related to Susan Sontag’s call in “Against Interpretation” for greater focus on “presentness” in art criticism, and to Tom Gunning’s “cinema of attractions” concept, which states that in films before 1908 the audience’s focus was not on the plot narrative but on the moment-to-moment spectacle.

Works: Emerson, Lake, and Palmer: Pictures at an Exhibition (247-53).

Sources: Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (247-53).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

The relationship between Ives’s musical forms and his political beliefs manifests itself in his music, where Ives created progressive sonic backgrounds to house his regressive views of America in the form of American tunes (quoted or otherwise). Ives identified America as New England before the Civil War: a prominently rural, white and Protestant community. His main challenge in creating a true American music was to incorporate tunes of Americana in a musically authentic way. The music needed not to sound American, but intrinsically be American. Ives utilized two compositional techniques to accomplish his aims. The first is the creation of a sparse “acoustic horizon” in which various pieces can be quoted, altered, or layered. The second is a cyclical form that is created when the end of the piece recalls the beginning, though not necessarily the beginning melody. These two methods of composition create the world that Ives thought was destroyed by urban modernity, the old-fashioned America he idealized so much.

Works: Ives: Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day (466) and Washington’s Birthday (470) from A Symphony: New England Holidays.

Sources: Ives: Prelude and Postlude for a Thanksgiving Service (466); Edwin Pearce Christy: Goodnight Ladies (470).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Devin Chaloux, Cynthia Dretel, Nathan Landes

By examining the criticism and liner notes written by The Roots’ drummer Questlove (Ahmir Thompson), the notion that sampling is what determines authenticity in hip-hop can be questioned. Though Questlove frequently admits that sampling is highly important to hip-hop, he notes that many of the earliest and some of the most successful hip-hop recordings use studio instrumentalists performing “samples” of hit breaks and grooves. He also notes the ability of producers to sample is severely limited by the amount of money required to license many well-known samples. When performing and recording with The Roots, Questlove has sought to recreate the sound and rhythmic character of sampled drums through various studio techniques and playing in a funk-based, relatively invariable fashion. Examples of this can be found on “Dynamite” and “Double Trouble” from Illadelph Halflife. The Roots have also utilized beatboxers Scratch and Rahzel, who can imitate the sounds of samples and record scratching in their beatboxing. Such efforts to mimic sampled sounds on “traditional” instruments demonstrate both the importance of sampling for hip-hop and the desire to explore other avenues of music making while staying true to hip-hop’s essence.

Works: De La Soul: Transmitting Live from Mars (868); Biz Markie: Alone Again (868); Afrika Bambaataa: Planet Rock (874); Grandmaster Flash: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel (874); Sugar Hill Gang: Rapper’s Delight (874); Yes: Owner of a Lonely Heart (876); Common: Like Water for Chocolate (876); The Roots: Concerto of the Desperado (880).

Sources: Jim McGuinn and Gene Clark (songwriters) and The Turtles (performers): You Showed Me (868); Gilbert O’Sullivan: Alone Again (Naturally) (868); Kraftwerk: Trans-Europe Express (874); Funk Inc.: Kool is Back (876); Lionel Bart: Theme from From Russia with Love (880).

Index Classifications: 1900s, 2000s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Hip-hop DJs take previously recorded material in the form of vinyl LPs and reorganize and alter the recorded sounds to create new music. As DJ techniques and routines have grown increasingly complex, DJs such as DJ A-Trak and DJ Radar and others such as filmmaker John Carluccio have created methods of notating DJs’ musical and technical choices. By examining three forms of scratch notation developed by hip-hop DJs (including the widely-used Turntablist Transcription Methodology, or TTM), various uses for notation can be shown, ranging from idiosyncratic memory-aid to symbolic justification for “art” and “work” status. These uses are linked to those practiced throughout the history of Western art music.

Works: Grandmaster Flash: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel (90-91); DJ Radar: Antimatter (94), Concerto for Turntable (96-97).

Sources: DJ Babu: Super Duck Breaks (88); DJ Q-Bert: Toasted Marshmallow Feet Breaks (88); Chic: Good Times (91); Queen: Another One Bites the Dust (91).

Index Classifications: 1900s, 2000s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Around 1840, comic blackface minstrelsy became popular with both high and low society audiences as a result of its combining visual and ideological elements from the established “blackface context” with musical elements borrowed either directly or stylistically from the European operatic repertoire. Comparing parodies and other reworkings of contemporary operatic favorites to their sources, it is evident that there were a variety of borrowing practices at work in blackface shows. Through advertising the productions as both novel and yet akin to other legitimate forms of entertainment, and promoting themes of a sentimental and nationalist nature, these shows were capitalizing on the vogues of the time.

Works: Nelson Kneass: I Dreamed Dat I Libed in Hotel Halls (349-52), See! Sir, See! (352-57).

Sources: Michael William Balfe: “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls” from The Bohemian Girl (349-52); Vincenzo Bellini: “Vi ravviso o luoghi ameni” from La Sonnambula (352-57).

Index Classifications: 1800s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Despite a current lack of English-speaking musicians covering Italian songs, in prior decades (especially the 1960s) there was much covering of Italian music by non-Italians and non-Italian music by Italians. Many of these covers would maintain the music of the original song while changing the lyrics, either through approximate translation or a complete re-writing of the meaning of the original text. This brought about musical modernity for Italian canzone. A theory of “coverability” suggests that songs written in the classical and pre-rock veins are most easily covered because they provide recognizable structure and melody and are based in notation. In contrast, rock and roll is based in orality and performance, and songs like Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile and Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, which are defined by particular recordings, resist replication. The “cultural imperialism thesis” of Francesco Alberoni applies to these covers: songs from the USA and the UK are the most likely to be hits (and thus likely to be covered) in other countries, followed by those of other European countries, down to those countries whose songs are unlikely to be covered.

Works: I Dik Dik: Senza luce (442), Sognando California (442); The Rokes: Che colpa abbiamo noi (442); Patty Pravo: Ragazzo triste (443); Bing Crosby, Richard Tucker, and Gracie Fields: Come Back to Sorrento (452); Elvis Presley: It’s Now or Never (452), Viva Las Vegas (452); Al Hoffman, Leo Corday, and Leon Carr (songwriters) and Dean Martin (performer): There’s No Tomorrow (452); Lou Monte: Don’t Say Forever (452); Vic Damone and Frank Sinatra: I Have But One Heart (452); Stevie Wonder: Il sole è di tutti (457).

Sources: Procol Harum: Whiter Shade of Pale (442); Bob Lind: Cheryl’s Going Home (442); John Phillips and Michelle Phillips (songwriters) and The Mamas &The Papas (performers): California Dreamin’ (442); Sonny and Cher: But You’re Mine (443); Ernesto de Curtis: Torna a Surriento (452); Eduardo di Capua and Alfredo Mazzucchi: ’O sole mio (452); Teodoro Cottrau: Santa Lucia (452); Salvatore Gambardella: O’ marinariello (452); Stevie Wonder: A Place in the Sun (457).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Due to the elevation of jazz to a “high art” in the mainstream media during the 1980s, members of the hip-hop community interested in projecting such high-art ideologies began to associate themselves with jazz music. “Jazz rap,” which sampled jazz and used “conscious” lyrics in the spirit of bebop’s perceived highbrow nature, was seen as a form of high art within the hip-hop community starting in the early 1990s, and those who wished to justify its high art status argued that it was more authentic than the “lower,” more popular subgenres of rap music. Groups such as De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, and Gang Starr utilize “jazz codes”—sounds, lyrical references, and imagery identified by audiences with jazz—to associate themselves with jazz music.

Works: A Tribe Called Quest: Verses from the Abstract (445), Check the Rhime (445), Jazz (We’ve Got) (445-46); Digable Planets: It’s Good to Be Here (449), Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) (450-52).

Sources: Bronislaw Kaper (composer) and Lucky Thompson (performer): On Green Dolphin Street (446); Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: A Chant for Bu (446); The Honeydrippers: Impeach the President (451-52).

Index Classifications: 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes

Klezmer music, which is generally associated with old-world Eastern-European Judaism and Yiddish culture, manifests itself as a revived repertory in the work of DJ Sophie Solomon and DJ SoCalled (Josh Dolgin). By creating a fusion of klezmer with hip-hop performance and production techniques (including sampling), the duo constructs a contemporary “Hip Hop Khasene,” or hip-hop wedding, musically reenacting one of the ritual components of the wedding on each track of their 2003 album HipHopKhasene. In doing so, Solomon and SoCalled question concepts of musical and cultural authenticity in the face of changing cultural worlds, and create a sonically constructed contemporary Yiddish identity.

Works: Solomon and SoCalled: HipHopKhasene.

Sources: Abe Schwartz: Sadugerer Chusidl (256).

Index Classifications: 2000s, Popular

Contributed by: Nathan Landes