Clandestine Quotation and Micro-Quotation As Compositional Resources in The Trumpet Concerto Necessary Steps

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2015-04-03
Clandestine Quotation and Micro-Quotation as

Compositional Resources in the Trumpet
Concerto Necessary Steps
Peter J. Learn
University of Miami, peterjlearn@gmail.com
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(2015). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 1370.
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UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
CLANDESTINE QUOTATION AND MICRO-QUOTATION AS COMPOSITIONAL

RESOURCES IN THE TRUMPET CONCERTO NECESSARY STEPS
By
Peter James Learn
A DOCTORAL ESSAY
Submitted to the Faculty

of the University of Miami
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts
Coral Gables, Florida
May 2015
2015
Peter James Learn
All Rights Reserved
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Musical Arts
CLANDESTINE QUOTATION AND MICRO-QUOTATION AS COMPOSITIONAL

RESOURCES IN THE TRUMPET CONCERTO NECESSARY STEPS
Peter James Learn
Approved:
______________________________ ______________________________
Dorothy Hindman, D.M.A. Juan Chattah, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Music Assistant Professor of Music
Theory and Composition Theory and Composition
______________________________ _______________________________
Charles Mason, D.M.A. M. Brian Blake, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Music Dean of the Graduate School
Theory and Composition
______________________________
Melissa de Graaf, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Musicology
LEARN, PETER JAMES (D.M.A., Music Theory and Composition)
Clandestine Quotation and Micro-Quotation as (May 2015)
Compositional Resources in the Trumpet
Concerto Necessary Steps.
Abstract of a doctoral essay at the University of Miami.
Doctoral essay supervised by Professor Dorothy Hindman.

No. of pages in text. (338)
This document proposes to examine the aesthetic ramifications of quotation as
applied in musical composition. While this essay focuses on the techniques of
clandestine and micro-quotation, other methods of quotation employed as a
compositional device are also examined, citing pertinent examples from the literature. In
order to provide context to this discussion, this essay includes a broad survey of the
history of quotation in Western art music, as well as a focused discussion of recent
works. For the purposes of this document, the scope of the sample group is limited to
concert music. Drawing upon the research of Burkholder, Reynolds, and others, in
addition to empirical observations, the author posits a taxonomy comprised of three basic
categories of the use of quotation as a compositional device. Direct, referential quotation
is distinguished from significant manipulation or use at deeper structural levels, which in
turn is differentiated from hidden or clandestine quotation. These categories are
principally based on the level of perceptibility of given borrowing procedures. While this
categorization is primarily based on the musical features of particular works, salient
musicological facts are also brought to bear on certain cases. The aesthetic and rhetorical
impact that quotation has on a composition is also considered, especially in the music of
Peter James Learn, and particularly in his trumpet concerto, Necessary Steps.

Acknowledgements
Dedicated to my parents,
and to Dennis Kam and Dorothy Hindman,
without any of whom this would not have been possible.
Thanks also to Lansing McLoskey and Robin Holloway
for their valuable insights into the whys of quotation
and their fascinating music.
To Melissa de Graaf, for putting up with
the inquiries into minutiae.
And to D, David, Daniel, Miri, and Richard, for all the moral support
and impromptu therapy sessions.
iii

CONTENTS

LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES.....................................................................................vi
LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................xviii
LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................xxi
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER
1. HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND CONTEXT .................................................. 11
Medieval and Renaissance .................................................................................... 12
Variation and Baroque Practices ........................................................................... 21
Classical and Romantic Borrowing ...................................................................... 28
2. DIRECT, RECOGNIZABLE, AND REFERENTIAL QUOTATION ................... 33
Charles Ives........................................................................................................... 34
Music for the Magic Theater................................................................................. 40
Three Dire Medical Emergencies ......................................................................... 49
Faust Fantasy........................................................................................................ 52
Shant ..................................................................................................................... 55
3. MANIPULATED, JUXTAPOSED, AND STRUCTURAL QUOTATION ........... 63
Sinfonia ................................................................................................................. 66
Rewriting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony ............................................................ 78
Quartettrope.......................................................................................................... 85
Chop'n ................................................................................................................... 91
Mosaique ............................................................................................................. 100
iv

4. CLANDESTINE QUOTATION AND MICRO-QUOTATION ........................... 119
OK-OK ................................................................................................................ 122
Robin Holloway .................................................................................................. 129
Nancarrow Meditations ...................................................................................... 134
Apollonian Echo.................................................................................................. 145
5. POTENTIAL USES OF QUOTATION AS A COMPOSITIONAL TOOL AND

ITS RHETORICAL RAMIFICATIONS ............................................................... 164
Extra-referential Reasons to Borrow .................................................................. 175
Linguistic Models and Embedded Topics........................................................... 178
Ethical Considerations and Aesthetic Authority ................................................ 185
Why Use Quotation? ........................................................................................... 192
6. REMARKS ON AND ANALYSIS OF NECESSARY STEPS
I. Conception, Composition, and Analysis...................................................... 197
II. Clandestine and Micro-Quotation .............................................................. 230
7. NECESSARY STEPS: A CONCERTO FOR TRUMPET AND ORCHESTRA ....... 254
APPENDIX: PETER JAMES LEARNS TRANSCRIPTION OF JOHN COLTRANES

GIANT STEPS ................................................................................................................. 323

BIBLIOGRAPHY
REFERENCES CITED .......................................................................................... 328
MUSICAL WORKS CITED ................................................................................. 334
LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
CHAPTER 1
Ex. 1.1: Organum over Viderunt omnes chant, attributed to Leonin by Anon IV. ...13
Ex. 1.2: Eleventh-century Viderunt omnes chant, which Leonin used as a cantus
firmus. ...............................................................................................13
Ex. 1.3: Dufays Nuper rosarum flores, first entrance of the isorhythmic tenors. ...14
Ex. 1.4: Terribilis est locus iste. ...............................................................................14
Ex. 1.5: Laus tua Deus troped into Gloria A. ...........................................................15
Ex. 1.6: Dufays Missa se la face ay pale, Kyrie. .................................................16
Ex. 1.7: Dufays Ballade, Se la face ay pale. ............................................................17
Ex. 1.8: Kyrie from Josquins Missa lhomme arm. ...............................................17
Ex. 1.9: Secular popular song, lHomme arme. ........................................................17
Ex. 1.10: Josquins Missa pange lingua, Kyrie. ....................................................18
Ex. 1.11: St. Thomas Aquinass Pange lingua gloriosi. ...........................................18
Ex. 1.12: Josquins Missa fortuna desperata, Kyrie. ............................................19
Ex. 1.13: Antoine Busnoiss ballade, Fortuna desperate. ........................................20
Ex. 1.14: Pitches from Taverners work, basis for In Nomine genre. ...................21
Ex. 1.15: John Bulls Walsingham, from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. ...........23
Ex. 1.16: William Byrds Walsingham, from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. .....23
Ex. 1.17: Opening of J. S. Bachs Sarabande and Partita in C Major, BWV 990. ...23
Ex. 1.18: Overture to Jean-Baptiste Lullys Bellrophon, LWV 57. ........................24
Ex. 1.19: Beginning of Corellis Op. 5, No. 12, variations on La Folia. ..............26
Ex. 1.20: Basis for J. S. Bachs Passacaglia in C Minor. .........................................27
vi

Ex. 1.21: Beginning of the second movement of Mozarts Piano Concerto No. 12, in
which the theme from J. C. Bachs overture appears. ......................29
Ex. 1.22: J. C. Bachs overture to the second act of Le calamita de cuori. .............29
Ex. 1.23: Entrance of the first student drinking song in the Academic Festival
Overture. ...........................................................................................32
Ex. 1.24: Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus. ................................................32
CHAPTER 2
Ex. 2.1: Final section of Ivess String Quartet No. 2, final movement, first violin. .35
Ex. 2.2: Quarter- and full-hour Westminster Chimes (also known as Cambridge or
Westminster Quarters). The original chimes at Great St. Marys,
Cambridge, are in F, while Big Ben tolls the hour on E. ..................35
Ex. 2.3: Beginning of aria I Know my Redeemer Liveth, from Handels

Messiah. ............................................................................................36
Ex. 2.4: Beethovens motive as used by Ives in his Concord Sonata. ......................37
Ex. 2.5: End of Ivess West London. ....................................................................38
Ex. 2.6: Mozarts Divertimento quoted in Music for the Magic Theater. ................43
Ex. 2.7: Beginning of the Adagio from Mozarts Divertimento, K. 287. .................43
Ex. 2.8: Allusion to measure 13 of the Adagio of Mahlers Ninth Symphony (1908)
in Magic Theater. ..............................................................................44
Ex. 2.9: Adagio from Mahlers Ninth Symphony, measures 11-13. ........................44
Ex. 2.10: Allusion to Dserts in Magic Theater. ......................................................45
Ex. 2.11: Passage from Dserts that Rochberg was quoting, at measure 242. .........46
Ex. 2.12: Passages from Magic Theater that utilize Pendereckis techniques
(strings only). ...................................................................................46
Ex. 2.13: Examples of these techniques in Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. 47
Ex. 2.14: Rimsky-Korsakovs Flight of the Bumblebee, from The Tale of Tsar
Saltan. Piano arrangement by Sergei Rachmaninoff. .......................50
vii

Ex. 2.15: Introduction to Anaphylactic Shock!, from Three Dire Medical

Emergencies for wind ensemble, entrance of the piccolo
foreshadowing. ..............................................................................51
Ex. 2.16: Full quotation of Bumblebee in Anaphylactic Shock! .......................51
Ex. 2.17: Beginning of Faust Fantasy. .....................................................................54
Ex. 2.18: Motive from Faust, Faust Symphony, in the bassoons immediately before
rehearsal D. .......................................................................................54
Ex. 2.19: Some Mephistopheles music in Faust Fantasy. ........................................54
Ex. 2.20: Music from Mephistopheles in Faust Symphony, reduction. ................55
Ex. 2.21: References to the lyrical Gretchen/nostalgia themes in Faust Fantasy. 55
Ex. 2.22: Passage in Faust Symphony to which I was alluding, woodwind

reduction. ..........................................................................................55
Ex. 2.23: Passage referring to The Old Horse in the beginning of Shant. ............56
Ex. 2.24: The Old Horse. .......................................................................................57
Ex. 2.25: The Boys of the Ballinamore in Shant, clearly presented in cello part in
measure 53. .......................................................................................57
Ex. 2.26: The Boys of the Ballinamore. ................................................................57
Ex. 2.27: Motives from The Ballad of the Blind Sailors, referenced in Shant at two
simultaneous speeds. .........................................................................58
Ex. 2.28: The Ballad of the Blind Sailors. ............................................................58
Ex. 2.29: Across the Western Ocean, fleetingly alluded to in measure 108 of
Shant. ................................................................................................59
Ex. 2.30: Across the Western Ocean. ....................................................................59
Ex. 2.31: Bidin Fheilim in Shant. .......................................................................59
Ex. 2.32: Bidin Fheilim. .....................................................................................60
Ex. 2.33: Were All Bound to Go, reproduced almost verbatim in Shant, from the
pick-up to measure 150. ....................................................................60
viii

Ex. 2.34: Were All Bound to Go...........................................................................61
Ex. 2.35: Were All Bound to Go, referenced again briefly in Shants coda. .......61
CHAPTER 3
Ex. 3.1: Beginning of third movement of Sinfonia, winds only. ..............................69
Ex. 3.2: Beginning of Mahlers Scherzo, measures 5-13. ........................................69
Ex. 3.3: Passage directly before rehearsal H in the third movement of Sinfonia. ....70
Ex. 3.4: Beginning of the first return of the refrain in the Mahler, measure 149. ....71
Ex. 3.5: Passage at rehearsal BB in the Berio. ..........................................................72
Ex. 3.6: Analogous passage in the Mahler, from half way through the fourth refrain,
measure 260. .....................................................................................73
Ex. 3.7: Beginning of Rewriting Beethovens Seventh Symphony, strings only. ......80
Ex. 3.8: Measures 117-126 of Rewriting, strings only. ............................................81
Ex. 3.9: End of the second section of Rewriting, with its rhythmic Postminimalist
texture. ..............................................................................................81
Ex. 3.10: Beginning of the third section of Rewriting, winds only. .........................82
Ex. 3.11: String glissandi between the pitches of the F major scale encountered in
this section. .......................................................................................82
Ex. 3.12: Beginning of the fourth section of Rewriting, strings only. ......................83
Ex. 3.13: First theme of the fourth movement of Beethovens Seventh Symphony,
with its two main motivic cells highlighted. .....................................84
Ex. 3.14: Gordons reassertion of the theme, at measure 1257, at the entrance of the
thunder sheet. .....................................................................................84
Ex. 3.15: Example of off-set timpani at the opening of Beethovens fourth

movement. .........................................................................................85
Ex. 3.16: McLoskey using (027) and 025) sets to alter the harmonic character of the
Webern in measures 20 and 21. ........................................................87
ix

Ex. 3.17: McLoskey using the first row form from the Webern melodically in the
upper voices, in the independent portion of the first movement of
Quartettrope. .....................................................................................88
Ex. 3.18: Beginning of the second movement of Quartettrope. ...............................90
Ex. 3.19: Quoted motive as encountered in the second movement of the Webern,
measures 86-91. ................................................................................90
Ex. 3.20: Allusion to the B Minor Prelude No. 6 in measure 10 of Chopn. ............93
Ex. 3.21: Chopins Prelude No. 6, from Op. 28. ......................................................93
Ex. 3.22: Allusion to the Op. 28 Prelude No. 7 in Chopn. ......................................94
Ex. 3.23: Beginning of Chopins Prelude No. 7, from Op. 28. ................................94
Ex. 3.24: Reference to Chopins Op. 28 Prelude No. 4 and interleaved

quasi-cadenza. ...................................................................................95
Ex. 3.25: Measures 6-12 of Chopins Prelude No. 4. ...............................................95
Ex. 3.26: Beginning of Frederic and Franz in Chopn. .........................................96
Ex. 3.27: Passage from Chopins Etude No. 4, from Op. 10, measures 70-5. ..........96
Ex. 3.28: Passage quoted fully, against chaotic, timbrally dissonant fixed media. ..96
Ex. 3.29: Interrupted allusion to the end of the Etude No. 4 in Chopn. ..................97
Ex. 3.30: Arpeggio gesture at end of Chopins Etude No. 4. ...................................97
Ex. 3.31: Material from the Mazurka No. 45 in Chopn. .........................................98
Ex. 3.32: Beginning of Chopins Mazurka No. 45 in A Minor. ...............................99
Ex. 3.33: Reference to arpeggio figures in Chopins Etude, Op. 25, No. 12. in
measure 128 of Chopn. .....................................................................99
Ex. 3.34: Arpeggio figure in Chopins Etude, Op. 25, No. 12. ................................100
Ex. 3.35: Reference to measure 53s chromatic descending to passage in measure

134 of Chopn. ..................................................................................100
Ex. 3.36: Chromatic descending passage in the Etude, measures 53-5. ...................100
Ex. 3.37: Reduction of measures 297-300 of Movement I of Symphonie

Fantastique. ......................................................................................101
Ex. 3.38: Beginning of the first fast section of Mosaique, at measure 35. ...............102
Ex. 3.39: Measures 76-79 from Mosaique, winds and brass. ...................................104
Ex. 3.40: Measures 59-64 of Berliozs third movement. ..........................................104
Ex. 3.41: Passage at F in Mosaique, harp, percussion and strings.............................105
Ex. 3.42: Measures 359-65 of Un bal. ...................................................................106
Ex. 3.43: Measures 121-7 in the fourth movement of Fantastique, percussion and
strings. ...............................................................................................107
Ex. 3.44: Rehearsal H in Mosaique, harp through strings. .......................................108
Ex. 3.45: Subtractive rhythmic process shortening the repeated material at the end of
the passage. .......................................................................................108
Ex. 3.46: Rehearsal I in Mosaique, timpani through strings. ....................................109
Ex. 3.47: Measures 129-33 of the fourth movement of Fantastique, timpani through
strings. ...............................................................................................110
Ex. 3.48: Measures 7-10 of the second movement of Fantastique, strings. .............110
Ex. 3.49: Measures 29-34 of the fifth movement of Fantastique. ............................111
Ex. 3.50: Rehearsal J in Mosaique. ...........................................................................112
Ex. 3.51: Measures 195-7 of Mosaique. ...................................................................113
Ex. 3.52: End of the first movement of Fantastique. ...............................................114
Ex. 3.53: Coda of Mosaique. ....................................................................................115
CHAPTER 4
Ex. 4.1: Measures 11-12 from Haydns Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Major,
Hob.XVI:23. .....................................................................................119
Ex. 4.2: Possible clandestine quotation of this passage. ...........................................119
xi

Ex. 4.3: Melodic materials in OK-OK, whose pitches were drawn directly from
Parkers solo in Ko-Ko. Soprano sax solo, measures 35-43. ............124
Ex. 4.4: McLoskeys twelve-tone row, derived from the Parker solo. .....................125
Ex. 4.5: Repeated-note passage at rehearsal D that sequentially presents the row
in OK. ................................................................................................125
Ex. 4.6: Harmonic use of the row at rehearsal G, ordering noted. The second set of
ordering numbers refers to the inversion of the row based on its
initial pitch. .......................................................................................126
Ex. 4.7: Inversion of McLoskeys row, based on G. ................................................126
Ex. 4.8: Aleatoric passage in OK, measure 123. .......................................................127
Ex. 4.9: Final bars of OK, where the direct quotation from Ko-Ko occurs. .............128
Ex. 4.10: Transcription of the last 13 measures of Charlie Parkers solo from
Ko-Ko. ...............................................................................................129
Ex. 4.11: Opening of Mahlers Ninth Symphony, measures 3-6. .............................132
Ex. 4.12: Salomes leitmotif from the Strauss, first encountered in the opening bars of
the opera in the clarinet. ....................................................................132
Ex. 4.13: Beginning of Nimrod, from Elgars Enigma Variations, violins. .........132
Ex. 4.14: Opening of Sibeliuss Fourth Symphony, bassoons and cellos. ...............132
Ex. 4.15: Possible sources from Debussys Jeux, for Fallass 11 measures after
rehearsal 12. ......................................................................................133
Ex. 4.16: Opening of Nancarrow Meditations. ........................................................135
Ex. 4.17: Opening of Nancarrows Rhythm Study #1. ..............................................136
Ex. 4.18: Measures 17-21 of Meditations. ................................................................136
Ex. 4.19: Similar materials in Study #1, measures 5-6. ............................................136
Ex. 4.20: Measures 26-37 of Meditations. ................................................................137
Ex. 4.21: Measures 7-8 of Study #1. .........................................................................138
xii

Ex. 4.22: Measures 41-6 from Meditations. .............................................................139
Ex. 4.23: Measure 9 from Study #1. .........................................................................139
Ex. 4.24: Measures 47-8 of Meditations. . .................................................................140
Ex. 4.25: Juxtaposed allusions to measures 9 and 17-18 of Rhythm Study #1 and
rhythmic dissonance processes from measure 70-81. .......................140
Ex. 4.26: Measures 9 and 17-18 from Rhythm Study #1. ..........................................141
Ex. 4.27: Measures 100-109 from Meditations. .......................................................141
Ex. 4.28: Study #36, first page, third system. ...........................................................142
Ex. 4.29: Measures 117-21 from Meditations. .........................................................142
Ex. 4.30: 8:9 rhythmic dissonance in measures 132-4 of Meditations. ....................142
Ex. 4.31: Linear additive statement of extended thirds arpeggio in measures

148-51. ..............................................................................................143
Ex. 4.32: Source of this material in Study #36, third page, third system. .................143
Ex. 4.33: Measures 155-60 of Meditations, in which I shuffled and reflected the two
motives from the Nancarrow. ...........................................................144
Ex. 4.34: Study #36, fifth page, first system. ............................................................144
Ex. 4.35: Final bars of Nancarrow Meditations. ......................................................145
Ex. 4.36: Initial passage from Apollonian Echo, which uses a distortion and extension
of a cell from rehearsal 66 of Stravinskys Octet. ............................147
Ex. 4.37: Rehearsal 66 of the Octets finale, from which the opening gestures of Echo
are derived. .........................................................................................147
Ex. 4.38: Measures 9-16 of Echo, which draws both its scalar scaffolding and
separated tenuto notes from a reverse ordering of material from the
final passage of the Octet. .................................................................147
Ex. 4.39: Motive at rehearsal A in Echo, which references the trombones from 177-85
of the final movement of the Stravinsky. ..........................................148
Ex. 4.40: Final passage from Stravinskys Octet, measure 165-end. .......................148
xiii

Ex. 4.41: Transition between the middle and final movements of Stravinskys Octet,
which I used to generate accompaniment patterns in the section
beginning at rehearsal A. ..................................................................149
Ex. 4.42: Use of a motive from the beginning of the third movement of the Octet,
in Echo. ..............................................................................................150
Ex. 4.43: This motives location in Stravinskys Octet, in the first 6 measures of the
last movement. ..................................................................................150
Ex. 4.44: Linear rhythmic processes from measure 54-62 in Echo. .........................151
Ex. 4.45: Measures 153-5 of the last movement of the Octet, from which the
culmination of the linear rhythmic process in measures 54-62
was drawn. ........................................................................................151
Ex. 4.46: Flute part from measures 62-8 of Echo. ....................................................152
Ex. 4.47: Measures 154-6, of the Octet, brass. .........................................................152
Ex. 4.48: Measures 69-74 of Echo. ............................................................................152
Ex. 4.49: Measures 153-9 of the Octet, flute, whose retrograde I used, and measures
17-19, clarinet. ...................................................................................152
Ex. 4.50: Rehearsal E in Echo, winds and horn. .......................................................153
Ex. 4.51: Measures 79-84 of Echo, with Stravinskys theme alluded to in the viola
and oboe. ...........................................................................................153
Ex. 4.52: Beginning of Stravinskys theme in the second movement of the Octet. .154
Ex. 4.53: Measures 85-97 of Echo, with its additive process based on Stravinskys
theme, flute through violin I. ............................................................154
Ex. 4.54: Second part of Stravinskys theme, measures 5-8. ....................................155
Ex. 4.55: Measures 101-3 of Echo, presented with measures 39-41 of the first
movement of Stravinskys Octet, for comparison. ...........................156
Ex. 4.56: Measures 104-6 of Echo, and 167-9 of the Octet. . ....................................157
Ex. 4.57: Measures 107-12 of Echo. .........................................................................158
xiv

CHAPTER 6
Ex. 6.1: Example of a percussive, incisive trumpet passage from Movement I of

Necessary Steps. ................................................................................201
Ex. 6.2: Example of a trumpet passage added into the saxophone version that I
decided to keep. Movement I, rehearsal J, brass only. .....................202
Ex. 6.3: Example of chromatic approach in Necessary Steps in the flute and clarinets,
in measures 15-17. ............................................................................205
Ex. 6.4: Dominant, Dorian/Minor, and Mixed Bebop Scales. ..................................205
Ex. 6.5: Measures 39-52 of Steps, strings only. 5- and 4-cycles begin in earnest in the
third system. ......................................................................................206
Ex. 6.6: First encounter with the ide fixe, in the solo trumpet (transposed to C),
measures 52-9. ..................................................................................206
Ex. 6.7: Measures 104-13 of the first movement of Steps, brass section. ................209
Ex. 6.8: Strings and soloist at measure 119. .............................................................209
Ex. 6.9: Ide fixe, measures 137-43 (transposed to C). ............................................210
Ex. 6.10: Cadenza from the first movement of Steps. ..............................................210
Ex. 6.11: Ide fixe in the last macro-section of Initial Steps, first in the low strings
in measures 159-62, then in the solo trumpet (here transposed to C), in
measures 170-5. ................................................................................211

Ex. 6.12: End of the first movement of Steps, brass and strings. .............................212
Ex. 6.13: Crux of the arch form of Measured Steps. .............................................215
Ex. 6.14: Ide fixe in the first A section of Leaps, measures 14-18 and 24-8. ......220
Ex. 6.15: First B section, with independent rhythmic cycles in the harp and
percussion parts. ................................................................................221
xv

Ex. 6.16: Metric dissonance in the second A section of Leaps, measures 42-54,
trumpet soloist and strings. ...............................................................222
Ex. 6.17: Metric grouping dissonance in measures 55-67 of Leaps, brass and low
strings. ...............................................................................................223
Ex. 6.18: Soloists 6:4 metric grouping dissonances and reference to the ide fixe, in
measures 65-76. ................................................................................224
Ex. 6.19: Second macro B section in Leaps, q =100. ............................................226
Ex. 6.20: Drum solo in accompanied duet with trumpet soloist, measures 99-105. .227
Ex. 6.21: Final use of the ide fixe in Steps, right before the coda at the end of
Leaps, measures 118-26. ...............................................................229
Ex. 6.22: Measures 1-7 and 10-18 of Initial Steps, winds and soloist. .................232
Ex. 6.23: Measures 18-19 and 10 of Coltranes solo. ...............................................232
Ex. 6.24: Ide fixe of Necessary Steps and measures 7 and 23 from Coltranes
solo. ...................................................................................................232
Ex. 6.25: First line of cadenza and micro-quotations from measures 118 and 18 of
Coltranes solo. .................................................................................233
Ex. 6.26: Second line of cadenza, mirror of measure 10, and other micro-
quotations. .........................................................................................233
Ex. 6.27: Third and fourth lines of the cadenza. .......................................................234
Ex. 6.28: Piccolo gesture in the second movement and measure 2 of the solo. .......234
Ex. 6.29: Melodic clandestine quotation in the solo trumpet part in the beginning of
Measured Steps. ............................................................................235
Ex. 6.30: Ending of Measured Steps, solo trumpet, measure 38 through the end, and
borrowed cells. ..................................................................................236
Ex. 6.31: Beginning of Leaps and pertinent cells from Coltranes solo. ..............237
Ex. 6.32: Textural cells drawn from Giant Steps, in Initial Steps, measure 6-7. ..239
Ex. 6.33: Measure 106 of the solo and measures 61-64 of Initial Steps. ..............240
xvi

Ex. 6.34: Measure 106 of the solo and measures 64-8 of Initial Steps, strings
and winds. .........................................................................................241
Ex. 6.35: Measures 24-25 of Coltranes solo, and measures 109-13 of Initial Steps,
strings and winds. ..............................................................................242
Ex. 6.36: Measure 6 from Coltranes solo and 152-5 of Initial Steps, strings
only. ..................................................................................................243
Ex. 6.37: Measures 14-18 of Leaps, strings only, and measures 6-7 and 135-6 of the
solo. ...................................................................................................244
Ex. 6.38: Measures 44-54 of Leaps, strings only, and micro-quotation sources. .244
Ex. 6.39: Measures 55-64 of Leaps, strings only, and micro-quotation sources. .245
Ex. 6.40: Measures 65-68 of Leaps, strings only, and micro-quotation source. ...246
Ex. 6.41: Measures 69-71 of Leaps, strings only, and micro-quotation source. ...247
Ex. 6.42: Bebop fragments in measures 68-72 of Initial Steps, winds and soloist,
and their sources in Coltranes solo, measures 9-11. ........................248
Ex. 6.43: Measures 124 and 127 in Initial Steps, winds only, and pertinent
measures from Coltranes solo, 63 and 10. .......................................248
Ex. 6.44: Moments of Steps where the drum set references bebop and jazz
idioms. ...............................................................................................249
xvii

LIST OF FIGURES
CHAPTER 1
Fig. 1.1: Humphrey F. Sassoons case for thematic borrowing and structural modeling
in Musical Offering. ..........................................................................25
Fig. 1.2: Maurice Browns case for Chopin borrowing from Rossinis Ladra. .......31
CHAPTER 2
Fig. 2.1: The unsung text of the allusion to Masons There is a Fountain, in
West London. ...............................................................................38
Fig. 2.2: Burkholders interpretation of the relationships between Ivess song

and Masons .......................................................................................39
CHAPTER 3
Fig. 3.1: Losadas reduction of an insertion of a climax from La valse into an

obliterated climax of the Mahler. ......................................................75
Fig. 3.2: Losadas comparison graph of the dramatic contours of the third movement
of Sinfonia and the Scherzo from Mahlers Symphony No. 2. .........76
CHAPTER 4
Fig. 4.1: John Fallass reduction of Holloways First Symphony, from rehearsal 12,
highlighting interleaved quotations used by the composer. ..............131
Fig. 4.2: Harmonies expressed in measures 138-49 of Meditations. ........................143
Fig. 4.3: Harmonic structures in measures 161-70 of Meditations. ..........................145
CHAPTER 6
Fig. 6.1: Harmonic plan of the first minute and ten seconds of Necessary Steps, and
diagrams of pertinent harmonic structures. .......................................204
Fig. 6.2: Coltrane changes in Giant Steps. ................................................................204
Fig. 6.3: Half-step and common tone harmonic relationships in measures 51-72. ...207
Fig. 6.4: Harmonic structures in measures 84-93. ....................................................208
Fig. 6.5: Final harmonic plan of Measured Steps. ................................................214
xviii

Fig. 6.6: Diagram of the macro Golden Sections of Necessary Steps. .....................214
Fig. 6.7: Rhythmic cycles running counter to the over-meter in Measured

Steps. ...............................................................................................217
Fig. 6.8: Formal plan of Leaps. Possible formal interpretation as seven-part also
included, below composers analysis. ...............................................218
Fig. 6.9: Harmonic structures from measure 11-24 of Leaps. ...............................219
Fig. 6.10: Graph of rhythmic dissonance cycle patterns in the first B section of
Leaps. ...........................................................................................221
Fig. 6.11: Harmonic structures in the central A2 macro-section of Leaps. ...........225
Fig. 6.12: Graph of rhythmic dissonance cycles in this section and process completion
points. ................................................................................................226
Fig. 6.13: Harmonic structures in the final sections of Leaps. ..............................229
Fig. 6.14: Seventh chord substitution pattern used in Measured Steps. ..................250
xix

LIST OF TABLES
CHAPTER 5
Table 5.1: The topics posited for Romantic music by Dickensheets and Grabcz,
noted by Agawu. ...............................................................................182
Table 5.2: Mirkas twentieth-century topics. .............................................................183
Table 5.3: General continuum of possible manipulations of borrowed material. ......189
CHAPTER 6
Table 6.1: Original ratio plan for harmonic motion in Measured Steps.................213
Table 6.2: Deviations from the original ratios in the harmonic plan of Measured
Steps, italicized pairs of chords repeated and underlined chords
chromatically altered. .........................................................................251
xx

INTRODUCTION
The primary aim of this dissertation is to explore the techniques of micro-
quotation and clandestine quotation as generative compositional resources, specifically in
relation to the accompanying doctoral composition, Necessary Steps (2014). Clandestine
quotation is defined in this text as a composers use of preexisting music in a fashion that
is not necessarily readily perceivable or meant to be referential or particularly evocative,
but is nevertheless of technical importance to the compositional process. Micro-quotation
can be thought of as a sub-type of this technique, in which the borrowed materials are so
brief or generic as to significantly reduce their referential impact. While not attempting to
be specifically symbolic, a composer may use these techniques in a variety of
applications. Without explicitly operating within a genres context, they can be used as a
method for evoking a specific stylistic oeuvre. Similarly, they may be used as a way to
engage with the vernacular of an intended audience or personal aesthetic preference.
Another possible application of micro-quotation is to access a reservoir of
materials which can provide the new music with an inherent source of compositional
unity, to the extent that such unity exists in that reservoir. This can allow ideas drawn
from the same source to interact in new ways, while still maintaining an undercurrent of
organic self-similarity. The benefits afforded the composer by this built-in unifying factor
recommend its usage in a variety of contexts. A composers use of source-similar
material, meaning material quoted from a single source, but not necessarily recognizable
or easily identifiable as such, may imbue the music with certain cohesive properties. This
allows materials to be recontextualized and freely manipulated within a new framework,
1

2

while still maintaining, even if only on a subconsciously-perceivable level, an underlying
coherence that can be generated by the unity of the source music
This compositional approach is employed in Necessary Steps, and my intent is
that this technique has helped to achieve such unity. However, this compositional
procedure will only produce this result in direct proportion to the source musics internal
logic and coherence. The underlying musical principles of John Coltranes composition
Giant Steps make it an excellent source for this type of organizational transmission in
Necessary Steps. Moreover, my choice to draw material from not only a single composer
and work, but a specific recording of that work, lends the source a particularly refined
specificity that might increase the reservoirs capacity for internal coherence.
Another use of clandestine quotation is to inflect a works language with existing
musical aesthetics which may be of interest to that pieces composer, whether historical
or exocultural. This compositional device also offers composers greater subtlety in
accessing particular traditions that they choose to reference and allows for sophisticated
narrative and symbolic play, due to the varying degrees of perceptual hierarchy afforded
by it. Through the use of particular source materials, composers may subtly inform their
work with allusions to a vast spectrum of genres, cultures, and epochs. The
recontextualization of fragments or stylistic traits from vernacular music into an art music
context, to cite one possible source for such borrowing, is reflected in one of the
dominant compositional trends of today: the loose grouping of Postminimalist streams
that Kyle Gann and, more recently, Jason Stanton have referred to as Totalism.1
To examine the methods of and motivations for quotation in a musical

1
Kyle Gann proposes the term in his article A Forest from the Seeds of Minimalism: An Essay

3

composition, the general traits of particular practices must be defined and categorized.
Therefore, this dissertation also seeks to identify specific modi operandi exhibited in
works that utilize quotation, and determine specific distinguishing features that will help
consign these methods to distinct categories of perceptibility and rhetorical impact.
Writings by Peter Burkholder and Christopher Reynolds, among others, significantly
inform this discussion. Burkholders writings about the music of Charles Ives and his
efforts to codify the ways in which allusion has been practiced by composers throughout
history are particularly useful in this discussion.
Burkholders work deals with parsing particular avenues of borrowing, while
Reynolds has written about composers motivations for the practice. Any discussion of
the application, perceptibility, and aesthetic consequences of quotation must consider
both of these perspectives carefully, but taken alone may not provide a holistic view of
the musical significance of a given instance. While not mutually exclusive, the taxonomy
proposed in this essay generally groups instances of quotation into three categories:
direct, recognizable, and referential quotation; significantly manipulated, juxtaposed, or
structural quotation; and clandestine or micro-quotation. Each of these carries its own
distinct set of signifiers and functions which impact the rhetorical outcome of the
borrowing. This enables the placement of examples from the literature into at least one of
these categories, or at a point on a continuum between them.
This essay compiles prominent examples of each application of quotation as a
compositional device, with the aim of helping to identify the various degrees and
methods of manipulation utilized by prominent twentieth- and twenty-first-century
composers in their quotational practices. The overall purpose of this survey and

4

examination of musical quotation is not intended to present a unified field theory of the
practice across musical epochs and traditions, but instead to provide an overall context
for contemporary practice, and specifically in reference to the accompanying doctoral
composition. It is hoped, however, that the end result of this overview may help to shed
light on the twenty-first-century culmination of the tradition of import and allusion as
employed by modern-day practitioners of musical borrowing.
Chapter 1 is devoted to a brief survey of historical musical precedent, beginning
with the Medieval practices of trope and cantus firmus, and continuing through to the end
of the nineteenth century. Such works as Dufays Nuper rosaurm flores, Machauts Missa
le Nostre dame, Josquins Missa lhomme arm, W. A. Mozarts Piano Concerto No. 12,
Johannes Brahmss Academic Festival Overture, Frederic Chopins posthumous
Polonaise in B-flat Minor are discussed here, in addition to several others. This list is by
no means complete, and other works are touched upon as their salience warrants. The aim
of this broad survey is to provide an appropriate historical context for musical quotation
and to inform subsequent discussion of more recent examples of the practice.
The next three chapters are each devoted to particular approaches to quotation
used by concert music composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in their
works, separated according to those approaches placement in the proposed taxonomy of
perceptibility. This essay is confined to the repertoire of Western concert music for two
main reasons: the overwhelmingly broad scope of the subject matter, and my own
specific areas of knowledge and interest.
Chapter 2 examines works in which quotation has an identifiable, referential,

5

rhetorical impact, including quotation which is easily perceivable, at least to a listener
who has a familiarity with the source music. Works by Charles Ives and George
Rochberg, as well as some of my own compositions, are presented and discussed here.
Special attention is paid to works that contain quotations that may be construed as overtly
referential in a programmatic context. Supporting extra-musical materials, such as
interviews and articles, are included to inform a speculative discussion of composer
intent in the use of this particular type of quotation.
Chapter 3 deals with works which have identifiable quotations used in a
generative fashion, in which the borrowings rhetorical impact as a signifier is secondary
to its role in the organization of surface or structural elements of the music. In these
cases, the quotation is often not meant to be understood or perceived as programmatic or
referential, but instead functions as a compositional element of personal or technical
interest. These works exist in a taxonomical twilight between the ones which use
quotation as a programmatic, rhetorical device, and those in which the quotation is
intentionally and successfully obscured. A distinction is made here between modeling,
working in common or traditional forms, and collage. Works by Luciano Berio, Michael
Gordon, and Lansing McLoskey are featured in this chapter, as are some of my own
works. The varying degrees of saturation and diversity of source material are discussed,
as are the perceptually hierarchical distributions encountered in the examples.
Chapter 4 examines music which engages in clandestine quotation and micro-
quotation, using borrowed musical elements in a fashion not readily perceivable to the
listener, but which may nonetheless function as important organizing factors on both
foreground and deeper structural levels. This compositional technique is mainly

6

examined in relation to compositions by this author, as particular examples of this
practice by other composers, without full knowledge of their compositional process, are
by their very nature difficult to detect. The borrowing practices of composer Lansing
McLoskey are touched upon here, however, as their discussion is informed by an October
2013 personal interview with the composer, so they may be examined with a reasonable
degree of insight and authority. The relationship of this compositional technique to those
encountered in some of the previous examples is also discussed, and the distinction
between structural modeling, clandestine quotation, and working within standard forms is
revisited here as well.
Certain other examples of this type of borrowing, such as recent works by Robin
Holloway, which according to the composer contain quotation, seem to employ a more
subtle and covert form of it that is difficult to relate back to the source, even if the listener
is made aware of its presence. Assertions about Holloways music are supported in part
by a personal interview with the author, conducted in October 2014, as well as by the
research of other scholars. Similar claims can be made about particular works of Ives, and
certain scholars have suggested that the idea of secret quotation may even be encountered
in the works of composers from much earlier epochs.2 A brief discussion of the aesthetic
and stylistic idiosyncrasies in these composers technical usage of borrowed materials is
included here, but it is more fully fleshed out in the next chapter.
After this examination of the various compositional techniques utilizing quotation
and their resultant musical effects, chapter 5 is devoted to exploring the philosophical and
rhetorical ramifications of their methods and contexts. Referential quotation is probably

2
For example, Dillon Parmer, in his article Brahms, Song Quotation, and Secret Programs,
discusses Brahmss quotation of themes from his vocal music to make specific references in his
instrumental music.

7

the most common method, and is also the most easily identifiable. One example of this is
the ideological or sociopolitical commentary evident in a composers quotation of
particular nationalistic or patriotic music, such as the borrowings of patriotic tunes in the
music of Ives and Debussy. Referential quotation can also communicate a composers
relationship with the music of the past, or attempt to convey to the listener a particular
psychological state evoked by historically reinforced musical topics. The interplay of
multiple streams of quotation within a work and the implications of their relative
functions in the dramatic plan and hierarchy of materials is also discussed here. Kofi
Agawu and Chris Reynoldss writings on linguistic interpretations of music are
considered in interpreting these relationships. While much of the work that has been done
in this particular field is oriented towards the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the principles and lexicon can be adapted to more recent music.
The rhetorical consequences of the different categories of quotational technique
and the differing strategies employed by composers in their use of borrowed material are
addressed in this chapter as well. The outcomes of these approaches are discussed, as are
different perspectives and interpretations of how meaning is conveyed by these practices.
Direct referential quotation is addressed, as are various ways in which allusions might be
communicated musically. Examples from the literature are referenced to demonstrate the
ways in which shades of connotation are imparted and the implications of multiple
streams of referential borrowing within the same composition.
Textual association and its varying degrees of effectiveness in communicating a
reference is also discussed in this chapter. The degree of manipulation applied to
borrowed materials, while having been discussed in previous chapters, is revisited here

8

through the lens of their particular effects. The level of perceptibility engendered by a
quotations placement in the musical hierarchy of a work is also discussed, as is the
impact of different levels and types of saturation. The composers options in terms of the
various parameters of the use of quotation are addressed, such as the percentage of the
texture that is constructed of imported material, the number of different quotations
present, whether the allusions are drawn from one source or many, etc., all contributing to
particular effects. The aesthetic of ambiguity is also discussed here, as is the tipping point
at which reference is negated by saturation, eclecticism, and genericness, illustrated by
pertinent examples from the literature.
The use of quotation to access a desired aesthetic is also touched upon in this
chapter, and with it the effects of this practice not only on the work itself, but on the
composers process and identity. The validity of a Postmodernism interpretation of
quotation is discussed here, as are the issues attendant to interpreting quotation as
functioning in this fashion. The question of composer intent and the issues of honesty and
self-awareness when dealing with writings by and interviews with composers are
examined here through the lens of my own personal experience as a composer and the
writings of other composers about their own music. Also touched on are certain ethical
considerations in regards to quotation, both in terms of a composers borrowing, and also
in terms of the interpretation of such techniques on the part of the listener and analyst.
Finally, this chapter delves into the ramifications of the compositional techniques
of clandestine quotation and micro-quotation. The manifest problems in definitively
identifying these types of quotation in a work, both with and without extra-musical
composer input, are duly considered. The notion that quotation can exist as a structural

9

element, while simultaneously existing in other streams of quotational function is
discussed as well. The relationships between borrowed materials and the composers own
newly formed structures is discussed, particularly as it relates to micro-quotation, and
questions about musical ownership, technical aesthetic reciprocity, and borrowed
legitimacy are touched on and, if not settled, at least acknowledged. My own general
ideas in regard to the overarching philosophical and rhetorical consequences of and
motivations for quotation are presented here, informed by pertinent writings on the
subject and referring to previously discussed music and other examples as their salience
warrants. My opinions regarding the benefits afforded to the composer in utilizing these
techniques and their effects on my own compositional process concludes the chapter.
Chapter 6 begins with a discussion of some examples of the usage of micro- and
clandestine quotation in my music, to demonstrate the evolution of my use of these
techniques and their culmination in the accompanying doctoral composition, Necessary
Steps. This work draws on the my transcription and study of John Coltranes
improvisations on Giant Steps, David Demseys transcriptions of multiple studio takes of
the work as performed on the 1960 recording of the same name, and its harmonic patterns
and improvisational style. Various general features of Coltranes musical language and
the genre of bebop jazz in general are also employed as resources. The first section of the
chapter presents an analysis addressing the conception of the piece, compositional
devices used in its creation, and various temporal, harmonic, and formal structures of
note in the work. The second portion deals specifically with the various corridors of
musical borrowing that the concerto employs, noting their varying levels of perceptibility

10

and impact.
The final chapter presents the composition Necessary Steps. Necessary Steps is a
concerto for trumpet and orchestra which is approximately fourteen minutes in duration.
The composition is comprised of three movements, each of which uses clandestine and
micro-quotation of material from Coltranes Giant Steps in various ways. Different
elements of the source material are imported, altered, and recontextualized, from both the
solo and chord changes of the original work. While the concerto does import musical
molecules from Giant Steps, I use them in a fashion consistent with the techniques of
micro- and clandestine quotation discussed previously, with very few instances of direct
referential quotation. Rather, it is hoped that use of material from this self-consistent,
musically coherent source contributes to the overall unity of the new composition, while
also engaging in an interesting recontextualization of the borrowed music. Materials were
generally selected based on my own aesthetic preferences, although characteristic
gestures and patterns that permeate the source music were given particular consideration.
Additionally, the fusion of the inherent musical properties of the imported materials with
my own compositional language creates interesting juxtapositions and impacts the
aesthetic outcome of the concerto in a positive fashion.

CHAPTER 1
HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND CONTEXT

In embarking upon an examination of quotation as it is used in twentieth-century
and contemporary works, it would be prudent to first take a look back. One cannot
properly contextualize or hope to begin to understand the ramifications of such a
ubiquitous and diversely employed practice without at least a cursory overview of its
history and evolution. As stated in Stravinskys Poetics, A real tradition is not the relic
of a past irretrievably gone; it is the living force that animates and informs the present.3
Furthermore, some contemporary composers choose to couch their quotational techniques
in the terms and idioms of the past, whether quoting the music of those times, or utilizing
other borrowed materials in a manner consistent with historical practices.
Borrowing can be traced back, in one form or another, to some of the earliest
examples of notated music. 4 One might also confidently assert that similar practices
likely preceded this epoch, although concrete evidence is absent. The line between
quotation and organic stylistic intermingling and imitation, however, would have been
less distinct before the advent of notation, as an oral tradition of music consists of each
generation imitating and varying the compositions of the one before. Such a pattern of
modeling might easily be confused with allusory borrowing, but the two practices are
distinct. In any case, artists have always been fascinated with making the new out of the
old; There are understandable political, social, and spiritual motivations for artists to

3
Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 58.
4
For a broad and succinct list of the different types of the use of existing music operative across
historical eras, see appendix 2 of Peter Burkholders The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a
Field.
11

12

connect themselves with the established tradition, while simultaneously projecting their
own artistic voice and desire to innovate into their new compositions.
Medieval and Renaissance
One of the earliest examples of this practice in the notated repertoire is the
melismatic organum of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which consisted of entirely
new music over a bass line derived from a preexisting chant. While there was also secular
music occurring at this time, which probably would have used the same or similar
practices, the great majority of the music of the Medieval period that was written down
and preserved was sacred music. Sacred composers were bound to create music that
served to deliver the liturgy of the Catholic Church with a reasonable degree of
intelligibility of the text and adherence to the tradition, limiting their inclination to
compose innovative works that were not strongly connected to preexisting music.
Compositions that were not directly linked to the tradition and the liturgy were
considered undesirable by the Church.
The composition of entirely new music over a durationally augmented chant tune,
was an early solution to foster new musical creation. The chant was still present and
representative of the liturgical function, but could provide a framework in which new
music might be composed. This procedure is almost an inversion of what we would
typically think of as quotation today, with an overwhelming presence of previously-
composed material providing the framework for the new music, rather than the other way
around. An excellent example of this practice can be encountered in Leonins setting of
Viderunt omnes, a Gradual from the Mass Propers, composed in the mid-to-late twelfth

13

century. The original chant melody is presented in extreme rhythmic augmentation in the
tenore, while new, freely composed music is in the upper voice.
Ex. 1.1: Organum over Viderunt omnes chant, attributed to Leonin by Anon IV.
Ex. 1.2: Eleventh-century Viderunt omnes chant, which Leonin used as a cantus firmus.
This practice of incorporating chant melodies and, later, secular tunes, into new
sacred works persisted through to the Baroque era, although the actual method of
quotation changed over time. The isorhythmic motet of the late Medieval era and early
Renaissance sometimes employed quotation techniques in the form of adopting a portion
of an existing chant as the color used in the isorhythm. A clear example of this is

14

Guilliame Dufays motet Nuper rosarum flores (1436), which takes for its color the chant
Terribilis es locus iste.
Ex. 1.3: Dufays Nuper rosarum flores, first entrance of the isorhythmic tenors.
Ex. 1.4: Chant that gives Nuper its color, Terribilis est locus iste.
Another Medieval precursor to quotation is the practice of trope. The term is used
here to describe the historical compositional practice, not as it is used to describe the
fusion of musical topics. Trope can also be thought of as an inversion of what we would
today consider quotation: Source music was not imported into a new, substantially
original work, but rather limited quantities of new music were inserted into
a preexisting older work. Trope is an umbrella term for almost any addition of new music
or text into a chant. Groves defines the practice as

15

[The] name given from the 9th century onwards to a number of
closely related genres consisting essentially of additions to pre-
existing chants. Three types of addition are found: (1) that of a
musical phrase, a melisma without text (unlabeled or called trope
in the sources); (2) that of a text to a pre-existing melisma (most
frequently called prosula, prosa, verba or versus, though some-
times also trope, in the sources); (3) that of a new verse or verses,
consisting of text and music (most frequently called trope, but also
laudes, versus and in certain specific cases farsa, in the sources).5
Examples of this practice are too plentiful to bear enumeration here. And,
complicating matters further, much of this music was anonymously composed.
Representative instances of the practice can be found in versions of all of the Mass
Propers and Ordinaries, although some of these chants were more commonly troped into
than others.6 One of the earliest Gloria tropes, for example, is the Laus tua Deus, a tenth
century addition connected with a particular Gloria melody of the time, commonly
referred to as Gloria A. The Laus tua Deus trope begins in the second measure of the
second line.
Ex. 1.5: Laus tua Deus troped into Gloria A.

5
Alejandro Enrique Planchart, Trope, In Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, OUP,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/28456 (accessed October 16, 2013).
6
Ibid.

16

The Renaissance polyphonic mass used quotation of chant and popular music in
more complex ways than its Medieval predecessor. Early cantus firmus masses shared
the basic principles of melismatic organum, in which the source was rhythmically
augmented in a lower voice. In contrast, these new works further subsumed the chant or
popular tune into the texture by often-times quite complex polyphony above it, and
sometimes below it if the cantus firmus was used in the tenor voice over an independent
bass. Dufays Missa se la face ay pale (mid-fifteenth century) is a famous example of
this type of mass. The polyphonic texture and the fact that the cantus firmus exists in the
tenor line here might make it difficult to identify as being derived from the source, the
tenor line of a chanson composed by Dufay about fifteen years earlier. In an interesting
side note, contemporary composer David Lang also quoted Dufays Se la face ay pale
in his work Face So Pale (1992), for six pianos.
Ex. 1.6: Dufays Missa se la face ay pale, Kyrie.

17

Ex. 1.7: Dufays Ballade, Se la face ay pale.
Josquins Missa lhomme arm super voces musicales (fifteenth century) also
uses cantus firmus technique, although there are fragments of the secular tune in the other
voices, foreshadowing subsequent developments in polyphonic mass composition.
Ex. 1.8: Kyrie from Josquins Missa lhomme arm. Note contour of discant entrance.
Ex. 1.9: Secular popular song, lHomme arme.

18

Techniques of importation that grew out of the cantus firmus tradition are also
encountered in parody masses and paraphrase masses. Examples of these can both be
identified in Josquins output. His Missa pange lingua (ca. 1515) is a prime example of
paraphrase mass, the Kyrie of which is shown in Ex. 1.10. This type of mass utilized the
source chant or popular tune in fragmentation across all the voices and developed them
freely and was hinted at in Josquins earlier works, as mentioned above. The source
material he used in this work was the chant Pange lingua gloriosi, by St. Thomas
Aquinas, shown in Ex.1.11.7
Ex. 1.10: Josquins Missa pange lingua, Kyrie.
Ex. 1.11: St. Thomas Aquinass Pange lingua gloriosi.

7
Another slightly earlier example of paraphrase technique can also be found in Martinis Missa
domenicalis (fifteenth century).

19

Josquins Missa fortuna desperata (fifteenth century) similarly exemplifies the
quotation technique of the parody mass, drawing material from the secular Busnois
polyphonic ballade of that name.8 Instead of merely taking the melodic line of the source
material, parody masses imported entire polyphonic fragments of the source into the new
composition, re-texting them, sometimes with multiple different texts, and integrating
them into the newly composed, imitative texture. All of these practices certainly might
make it difficult to discern the original source, unless the audience were intimately
familiar with the source materials and listening critically.
Ex. 1.12: Josquins Missa fortuna desperata, Kyrie.

8
It is important to note that at this time the term parody did not carry the same connotations of
humor or irony that it does today.

Fortuna desperata 20
Antoine Busnois
(1430 - 1492)
Ex. 1.13: Antoine Busnoiss ballade, Fortuna desperata.

For - tu - na, for - tu - na de - spe - ra - - - ta, de -

For - tu - - - - na, for - tu - na de - spe - ra - ta, de -

For - tu - - - na de - spe - - - - ra - - - - ta, de -

spe - ra - ta, in - i - - - - qua e ma - - - le -

spe - ra

- ta in - i - -

spe - ra - ta, in - - - - - i - - - - - - qua, ma - le - di -
The
In
Nomine
instrumental works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
di - cta che di tal do - na e - le - - - - - - - cta
as basisa fragment
their from
a Taverner (sixteenth
century)
took
which mass based
on
qua ma - le - di - - - - - - - cta
cantus
che di tal do - na
the chant Gloria tibi Trinitas, used Taverners

theme as an alto
firmus, with freely

composed
cta, material
ma - le - in
di the- other
- voices.
cta, Many
che important
di tal English
do - composers
- - - - contributed
- na to
amongst
thisgenre, them
Tye, Tallis, Byrd, and Purcell.
Dowland,
Bull, Gibbons, There

la fa - ma, la fa - - ma ay
composers
by 58English fromthesixteenth
and

are over 150 surviving examples
e
seventeenth - le
centuries, - cta
suggesting that manylamore
fa - -
may ma
actually have been composed.9 A
ay

varied example of en masse quotation from a single source can hardly
more prolific
e - -
and
- - - le - cta la fa - ma, la fa - - - ma, ay
be inthe annals of Western music

found history.

de - ne - - - - ga - - ta, ay de - ne - ga - - - - - - - ta.

de - ne - - - - ga - - - - ta, ay de - - ne - - ga - ta.

de - - ne - ga - - - - ta, ay de - - ne - - ga - ta.

9
In Nomine, in The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online, OUP, http://www.
oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e3426 (accessed November 18, 2013).

21

Ex. 1.14: Pitches from Taverners work, basis for In Nomine genre.
Source: In Nomine, The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online, OUP, http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e3426 (accessed November 18, 2013).
There is no evidence that Taverner himself was responsible for any of these
arrangements, but many subsequent English composers set his melody as an alto cantus
firmus in their instrumental and keyboard works, with stylistically diverse original
counterpoint in the other voices. Modern English composers continue to add to the genre,
including Peter Maxwell-Davies and Roger Smalley. Additionally, over forty-two
original works were composed in the twentieth century for the Witten Broken Consort
Book (2004), a collection of modern In Nomines commissioned by Freiburgs
Ensemble Recherch and dedicated to Harry Vogt, director of the Witten Tage fr neue
Kammermusic.10
Variation and Baroque Practices
In the Baroque era, the idea of quotation and the use of preexisting music within
the context of a new work flourished in the form of the variation, and continues to do so
through modern times. Although variations existed prior to this era, such as the
instrumental diferencias of the Renaissance, the affinity that Baroque composers had
for this method of utilizing previously composed material in new compositions led to a
proliferation of this genre. The Baroque variation might be best regarded as a distinct
kind of reinterpretation, separate from the practice of borrowing within the context of a

10
James Mannheim, Review of In Nomine: The Witten Broken Consort Book, Allmusic.com,
http://www.allmusic.com/album/in-nomine-the-witten-in-nomine-broken-consort-book-mw0001006340
(accessed November 21, 2013).

22

new work. The justification for this delineation seems twofold: First, variations on a
previously existing theme might be said to be a derivation of that previously composed
music and is an extension thereof, like an arrangement or quodlibet, without necessarily
containing particular connotative reference or extra-musical significance. Second, the
referential borrowing most commonly encountered in variation form in the Baroque was
that of style, not material.11 It is thus questionable whether works of this character truly
belong in a survey of quotation. However, many Baroque variations do take advantage of
preexisting material, so they ought to at least be addressed in this survey.
The variation form can be construed as operating in two main streams: variation
of newly-composed themes or of themes from ones previous works, and variation of the
music of others, which is of greater salience to this essay. Furthermore, this latter
category can be subdivided into variation on vernacular tunes and variation on the themes
of other art music composers. An example of composers basing variations on a popular
tune is the use of the Elizabethan air Have with Yow to Walsingame by John Bull and
William Byrd (late sixteenth to early seventeenth century), both of which are included in
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.

11
Peter Burkholder, Borrowing, in Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, OUP,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/52918 (accessed June 23, 2014).

23

Ex. 1.15: John Bulls Walsingham, from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
Ex. 1.16: William Byrds Walsingham, also from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
Art music composers also borrowed tunes from one another in their variation
works. J. S. Bach used a paraphrase of music from the overture to Jean-Baptiste Lullys
Bellrophon (1679) as the theme for his Sarabande and Partita in C Major, BWV 990
(pub. 1894).
Ex. 1.17: Opening of J. S. Bachs Sarabande and Partita in C Major, BWV 990.

24

Ex. 1.18: Overture to Jean-Baptiste Lullys Bellrophon, LWV 57.
The distinction between art and vernacular musical sources is also blurred in
certain cases, such as in J. S. Bachs Musical Offering (1747). While this work ostensibly
uses a vernacular subject posed to Bach as a challenge by Frederick II, Humphrey
Sassoon has noted the themes similarity to one of Handels, perhaps leading to the
conclusion that Frederick borrowed the theme himself. Furthermore, Sassoon
postulates that Bach may have recognized it and used Handels Six Fugues or Voluntarys
for Organ or Harpsichord (ca. 1711-18) as a structural model for parts of the new work.12
While the evidence for this early instance of structural modeling in variation form is
somewhat tenuous, it is indeed fascinating, if true.

12
Humphrey F. Sassoon, JS Bach's Musical Offering and the Source of Its Theme: Royal
Peculiar, The Musical Times 144, no. 1885 (Winter 2003): 38-39.

25

Fig. 1.1: Sassoons case for thematic borrowing and structural modeling in Musical Offering.
Source: Humphrey F. Sassoon, JS Bachs Musical Offering and the Source of Its Theme:
Royal Peculiar, The Musical Times 144, no. 1885 (Winter 2003): 39.

26

Not only is this work interesting in its implications in regards to Bachs possible
structural borrowing, it is also worth noting in passing that this theme has been in turn
quoted multiple times by modern composers. The theme became a subject for a
klangfarbenmelodie reworking by Webern (1935) and also a subject of allusion for Sofia
Gubaidulina to symbolize the idea of sacrifice in her Offertorium (1980).13
Variation form also developed from typical harmonic patterns or from common
melodies, such as the La Folia tune, or Lutheran chorale tunes. Chorale ricercare
used chorale tunes in the manner of a chorale motet, subjecting the themes to fugal
treatment, while chorale partitas and fantasias freely varied them.14 The La Folia was
an especially popular choice for variation form, treated most famously by Corelli (1700),
but also by Vivaldi (1705), Frescobaldi (1615), Lully (1672), Bach (1742), Liszt (1867),
and Rachmaninoff (1932).15
Ex. 1.19: Beginning of Corellis Op. 5, No. 12, variations on La Folia.

13
Joseph Straus, Recompositions by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern, The Musical
Quarterly 72, no. 3 (1986): 301, and Sofia Gubaidulina, My Desire Is Always to Rebel, to Swim Against
the Stream!, trans. Vera Lukomsky, Perspectives of New Music 36, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 26. Gubaidulina
uses the theme in such a way that, by the end of the work, the theme itself becomes shorter and shorter, in
effect steadily being sacrificed.
14
Burkholder, Borrowing.
15
Fola, La, in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed. rev., Oxford Music Online, OUP,
http://www.oxford musiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t237/e3870 (accessed June 23, 2014).

27

Baroque variations, in addition to incorporating stylistic tropes from European
sources, also made frequent use of the chaconne (a term which later became
interchangeable with passacaglia), which Burkholder asserts was originally derived from
Mexican dance music.16 While there is no extant notational evidence that this is the case,
Alexander Silbiger notes that [literary] references by Cervantes, Lope de Vega,
Quevedo, and other writers indicate that the chacona was a dance-song associated with
servants, slaves and Amerindians.17 J. S. Bachs Passacaglia in C Minor, BWV 582 (ca.
1730), not only used the conventional chaconne pattern, but also quoted a Raison
passacaglia in part of its ostinato and emulated textures and procedures from
Buxtehudes Passacaglia in D minor.18
Ex. 1.20: Basis for J. S. Bachs Passacaglia in C Minor.
One caveat must be observed in ascribing the role of quotation to instances of
similar themes encountered in Baroque music. The Doctrine of Affect, or Affektenlehre,
was used by many composers of this era to attempt to evoke certain emotional or
psychological states. Rene Descartes set out six basic states in his 1649 Passions of the
Soul, and the ways in which composers might express these ideas musically were set out
in texts such as Johann Matthesons 1739 Der Vollkommene Capellmeister.19 The

16
17
Alexander Silbiger, Chaconne. in Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, OUP, http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/05354 (accessed December 12, 2013).
18
19
Rene Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, trans. Stephen Voss (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing, 1989) and Johann Mattheson, Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, ed. Ernest Charles Harris (Ann
Arbor, MI: UMI, 1981).

28

existence of these common ideas about the expression of certain musical gestures,
therefore, led to many composers using similar music to express specific rhetorical ideas.
This situation should be taken into account when attempting to make assertions about
musical borrowing by Baroque composers. The same could be said for the common
musical topics encountered in Classical and Romantic music.
Classical and Romantic Borrowing
The practice of variation was carried forward into the Classical period, when
composers began to practice musical borrowing with greater finesse and nuance. It
became more common, for instance, for technical allusion or compositional process
modeling to occur, as is exemplified by Mozarts Haydn quartets. In her article The
Haydn-Dedication Quartets: Allusion or Influence? Jan La Rue points out that, while
thematic similarities between the music of both composers is superficial, a convincing
case can be made that Mozart was alluding to particular idiosyncratic continuation
models and thematic variation processes that Haydn often used in his works.20
Mozart also notably included a much more direct musical epigraph in his Piano
Concerto No. 12, K. 414 (1782), in which he alluded to J. C. Bachs overture to La
calamita de cuori (1763).21 J. C. Bach was a friend of Mozarts and his recent death may
have prompted the younger composer to include this theme in the second movement of
his concerto.

20
Jan La Rue, The Haydn-Dedication Quartets: Allusion or Influence?, The Journal of
Musicology 18, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 361-73.
21
Marius Flothius, Mozarts Piano Concertos (Amsterdam: Rodolphi, 2001), 25.

29

Ex. 1.21: Beginning of the second movement of Mozarts Piano Concerto No. 12, in which the
theme from J. C. Bachs overture appears.
Ex. 1.22. J. C. Bachs overture to the second act of Le calamita de cuori.
From the late Classical into the Romantic period, attitudes towards quotation and
borrowing in music changed markedly. The general musical climate during this period
began to value originality as the mark of quality. At the same time, composers frequently
used quotation as a meaningful symbolic device with greater subtlety and refined
intertextuality. In his Motives for Allusion, Christopher Reynolds writes about audience
and critical response in the Romantic period to so-called reminiscence hunting. This
was the growing audience practice of focusing on listening for quotations in a new work,
at the expense of appreciating the piece for its artistic merits.22 This was met with public

22
Christopher Reynolds, Motives for Allusion (Cambridge: HUP, 2003), 3-4.

30

outcry over the possibility that composers might be pandering to this appetite and an
attitude that such reminiscences ought to be treated as plagiarism.
Reynolds notes that published essays from the mid-nineteenth century were
critical of the pressures this practice placed on young composers, such as Brahms, and
quotes L. A. Zellners essay in the Viennese Blatter fur Musik, Theater und Kunst, in
which he writes One hears no verdict, especially, about new compositions, more often
than this: this or that idea is stolen from here or there.23
These changing attitudes did not entirely dissuade composers from the custom of
borrowing, however. The practice of composing variations on another composers themes
continued apace, but often with a more nuanced approaches. While Chopin composed
traditional variations on a theme by Rossini in his Variations for Flute and Piano in E
Major (1824), it has also been noted that an obscure paraphrase of Rossinis music may
have been included in one of the composers other works, as well. A young Chopins use
of the aria from La gazza ladra (1817), Vieni fra questra braccia, in his Polonaise in B-
flat Minor (1826) has been noted by certain scholars, and is supported by the composers
markings in the manuscript.24

23
Ibid., 3-4.
24
Maurice Brown, Some Chopin Bypaths, The Musical Times 95, no. 1338 (August 1954): 415-
16. Chopin wrote an epigraph in the score of the polonaise, meant as a farewell gift to a boyhood friend:
Au revoir! after an aria from Gazza Ladra. Brown notes that Chopin might have chosen to quote this aria
because of the lyrics: Come to these arms, my heart leaps in my bosom, expressing the fondness he had
for his friend.

31

Fig. 1.2: Maurice Browns case for Chopin borrowing from Rossinis Ladra.
Source: Maurice Brown, Some Chopin Bypaths, The Musical Times 95, no. 1338 (August
1954): 416. Re-engraved here for legibility.
Another example of a Romantic composer who had no qualms about the practice
of allusion is Johannes Brahms. In addition to his orchestral Variations on a Theme by
Haydn (1873), which takes as its theme that composers setting of the St. Anthony
Chorale, Brahms composed several keyboard works which borrowed the themes of
others. Music by Handel, Paganini, Schumann, and folk materials all provided
inspirations for the composer. His Op. 80 Academic Festival Overture (1880) was a
tongue-in-cheek response to an honorary degree bestowed upon him by the University of
Breslau, in which he quoted well-known drinking songs that the student body present at
the premiere would have immediately recognized.25 It opens with music based on the
Radezsky March, followed by references to Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus,
Der Landesvater, Was kommt dort von der Hhe, and Gaudeamus igitur, which are
all quoted in a directly recognizable and referential fashion.

25
Academic Festival Overture, in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed. rev. Oxford Music
Online, OUP, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t237/e50 (accessed September 20,
2014).

32

Ex. 1.23: Entrance of the first student drinking song in the Academic Festival Overture.
Ex. 1.24: Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus, the song on which this passage is based.
This brief survey of the history of the practice of musical borrowing through the
Romantic period is admittedly incomplete and many interesting and prominent examples
of the custom have been omitted. This is a necessary omission, however. As Peter
Burkholder notes in the introduction to his annotated bibliography on musical borrowing,
this is such a wide field of study that it necessitates the work of more than any one
scholars lifetime to reach a comprehensive understanding of the matter, if indeed any
semblance of such completeness is even possible. However, the broad overview
presented here serves to lend context to the ensuing chapters and is intended to provide
some idea for the reader of the wide-ranging and multi-faceted nature of musical
borrowings rich tradition.

CHAPTER 2
DIRECT, RECOGNIZABLE, AND REFERENTIAL QUOTATION

Perhaps the most easily discussed form of musical allusion is direct and
referential variety, which hearkens back to another work and potentially transfers aspects
of its connotations into the new composition. This is due to the concrete connection
caused by easily recognizable features of the source material, such as genre, program, and
associated text. A composers motive or intent in the allusion is not always straight-
forward, however. While extra-musical features sometimes may aid us in our conjectures,
interesting and illuminating as they can often be, great care must be taken in making
definitive statements about intended rhetorical meaning. Burkholder notes that borrowing
for this purpose has been happening since the fifteenth century, although he draws the
distinction that earlier allusion was mainly for the purpose of referring to the text of vocal
music, whereas more complex quotations meant to evoke programmatic ideas associated
with an instrumental work or social music did not become prominent until later.26
The use of direct, referential quotation to create a rhetorical effect can be of great
utility to the composer, but, in my opinion, they should endeavor to use finesse and
subtlety in applying this technique. While using texted music to refer to that text is a
relatively oblique avenue of reference, and therefore comparably safe from the pitfall of
heavy-handed clich, importing symbolically-loaded music without care for context or
with bluntness can lead the composer down a dangerous road of hackneyed and gauche,
crudely fashioned symbolism. Examples of such clichs readily present themselves, such

26
Peter Burkholder, The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a Field, Notes (Second
Series) 50, no. 3 (March 1994): 869-70.
33

34

as the use of the harmonic minor or pentatonic scale to evoke non-Western musics, or
heavy-handed references to the Dies Irae or Holsts Mars to connote wrath or war
respectively. However, with a firm grasp of subtlety and a modicum of respect for the
musical materials and audience, this technique can become an effective and valuable
compositional tool for conveying meaning. One composer who adroitly employed this
type of referential quotation with subtlety and sophistication is Charles Ives.
Charles Ives
Ives frequently used quotation on all of the levels of perceptibility with which this
essay is concerned, and often with symbolic interplay occurring between these levels.
This chapter will restrict itself with examining his forays into the direct and referential
variety of borrowing. A clear and straightforward example of this exists in his String
Quartet No. 2 (1913). The last movement of the quartet, subtitled The Call of the
Mountains, evokes cathedral bells tolling in the distance and the associated feelings of
awe and majesty. The effect of this musical image is strengthened by the incorporation of
a quotation of Westminster Chimes, as has been pointed out by Christopher
Ballantine.27 Ballantine also interprets the way that the material is developed as a
secularization of the aural image,
through being sundered from its cathedral setting and placed in a mountain
setting. This distortion of the image and the beatification of its associations
precisely this quotation of chimingare what make Ivess point: which we might
suggest (bearing in mind the musical disagreements in the previous movement)
by saying that the unity of man with his own kind, and the surpassing of the
duality of man and nature, are to be perceived in terms of a privilegedindeed
transcendentalmoment of illumination such as that portrayed here in music.28

27
Christopher Ballantine, Charles Ives and the Meaning of Quotation in Music, The Musical
Quarterly 65, no.2 (April 1979): 171-2.
28
Ibid.

35

Ballantine also notes that Ives operates at the end of this work in a non-texted
referential framework. He calls the readers attention to the evocation of carillon by way
of the tune, and also the extra-musical associations of the genre and context of the
reference, regardless of any textual associations. While the allusion is evocative and
effective, and, while there are musicological justifications for interpreting the reference
through a framework of transcendentalism, this author might suggest that one would need
to be careful in making these kinds of assertions without a priori knowledge of the
composers intent.
Ex. 2.1: Final section of Ivess String Quartet No. 2, final movement, first violin.
Ex. 2.2: Quarter- and full-hour Westminster Chimes (also known as Cambridge or Westminster
Quarters). The original chimes at Great St. Marys, Cambridge, are in F, while Big Ben tolls the
hour on E.

36

It is also worth noting that the Westminster Chimes themselves make an allusion
to the soprano aria I Know my Redeemer Liveth, from Handels Messiah. Author John
Harrison draws attention to a 1907 article by W. W. Starmer which presents
correspondence documenting the origin of the chime tune, which was drawn from the
fifth and sixth measures of Handels aria by William Crotch, the undergraduate assistant
of the faculty member tasked with composing the chime tune, Dr. Joseph Jowett.29
Ex. 2.3: Beginning of aria I Know my Redeemer Liveth, from Handels Messiah. Note the
descending gesture from the fifth measure into the sixth, echoed again by the bass from the sixth
into the seventh.
Ballantine also points to another example of Ivess use of this non-textual
association, namely the incorporation of the motive of Beethovens Fifth Symphony into
his Concord Sonata (pub. 1919). He notes the semantic network of associations, posited
by Daniel Woodridge, as making a reference to the abolition movement, through the
clenched fist symbol, and the often-referenced association of Beethovens motive as
representing fate knocking at the door.30

29
John Harrison, Tolling Time, Music Theory Online 6, No. 4 (October 2000): 16. http://www.
mtosmt.org/issues/mto.00.6.4/mto.00.6.4.harrison.html (accessed September 12, 2014).
30
Ballantine, 172. Ballantine refers to a passage in Daniel Wooldridges Charles Ives: A Portrait
(London: Faber, 1975), 305.

37

Ex. 2.4: Beethovens motive as used by Ives in his Concord Sonata.
Ives also frequently used text-based referential allusions, although, as
aforementioned, these can be employed with a higher degree of nuance by the composer,
engendered by the extra layer of interpretability gleaned from the nature of the text, and
thus can make it more difficult for the listener or analyst to say with any certainty what
the composer was trying to convey. This is especially true with regard to the music of
Ives, whose use of allusion often not only engages in play between the artifacts of the
quotations themselves as they exist on the surface of the music, but also between their
varying levels of prominence and perceptibility. An excellent example of this nuanced
situation can be encountered in Ivess song West London (pub. 1922). Two different
Ives scholars, Peter Burkholder and Chris Ballantine, hear the same hymn quoted at the
end of the song, yet perceive two different rhetorical meanings. Ballantine hears the
wordless refrain of Masons hymn tune as an alien artifact meant to transmit a serious
image which negates the easy optimism and flip-ness of the sung text, invoking the
image of the sinners purification in blood.31

31
Ballantine, 173.

38

Fig. 2.1: The unsung text of the allusion to Masons There is a Fountain, in West London.
There is a fountain filled with blood

Drawn from Emanuels veins;
And sinners drenchd beneath its flood
Lose all their guilty stains
Ballantine points to the passage at the end of West London, noting that is drawn from
Lowell Masons setting of William Cowpers gory poem.
Ex. 2.5: End of Ivess West London.
Burkholder, on the other hand, hears the passage as intrinsically linked to the rest
of the song, interpreting the entire vocal line as a paraphrase of Masons hymn tune, but
is quick to caution that this is not a case of deeper-level structural modeling. This is due
to surface-level melodic features that he finds in common between London and the
original hymn.32 Burkholder posits that it is not an isolated allusion at all, but is a
reference to Ivess systemic paraphrase procedure in this song, drawing parallels between
melodic elements of both West London and There is a Fountain.

32
Peter Burkholder, Quotation and Emulation in Ives Use of his Models, The Musical
Quarterly 71, no. 1 (1985): 1-26.

39

Fig. 2.2: Burkholders interpretation of the relationships between Ivess song and Masons.
Source: Peter Burkholder, Quotation and Emulation in Ives Use of his Models, The
Musical Quarterly 71, no. 1 (1985): 21.
If one is to take Burkholders view, this passage is a sort of Rosetta stone
epigraph by which the listener or analyst can divine the origin of the works generative
material. If this is the case, then perhaps this song is better an example of hidden,

40

clandestine quotation, which will be discussed in a later chapter. Either interpretation of
the impact of the quotation can be argued, although a listener might need a deeper
understanding of the music to perceive it the way Burkholder suggests. What Ives himself
meant the quotation to convey is, of course, ultimately unknowable, but differing
perceptions of the result are certainly possible. Thus, it can be seen that even in the case
of what appears to be direct, referential quotation, complexities of interpretation and
shades of meaning on multiple levels may occur.
Music for the Magic Theater
George Rochberg, for many years a Modernist, serial composer, turned away
from that musical language after his family was struck by deep personal tragedy. In
searching for an alternative means of musical expression, he returned to the use of
tonality in many of his works since the 1960s, often borrowing from historical works
couched in this idiom, in addition to works of the twentieth century and exocultural
musics. For Rochberg, the Modernist vocabulary came to represent a necessary
extension of musical thought into previously avoided borderland states of consciousness,
essentially dark, unstable, psychologically covering a spectrum from neurosis to
psychosis33
In writing about his technique of borrowing musical materials from the past,
Rochberg invoked the Keats quote, all poetry is of one mind, and the idea of art
drawing on the collective subconscious mind of humanity.34 He also wrote about thinking
of time in a radial, rather than linear fashion. This egalitarian stance towards the historical

33
George Rochberg, Five Lines Four Spaces: The World of My Music (Champaign, IL: University
of Illinois Press, 2009), 143-5.
34
Ibid., 31-2.

41

tradition might account for Rochbergs borrowing from Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven
as readily as from Varse and Schoenberg, as well as from his own previous
compositions.35
Rochbergs Music for the Magic Theater (1965) contains lengthy and easily-
perceivable direct quotations of historical music, as do several of his other post-1960s
works. Contextualized within the composers previous output and that of his
contemporaries, this technique is almost jarring in its effect, and yet Rochberg claims that
it is not meant to be particularly programmatic or referential, but the rhetorical effect in
the context of the pieces seems perceivable as such.36 He does, however, write that he
associates Magic Theater with elements of Hermann Hesses Steppenwolf, drawing the
title from that novel. Presumably Rochberg is referring to themes such as ennui, eternity,
temporal flux, and the hallucinatory experience. This association is also borne out by the
inclusion of Mozart in both works, as a musical borrowing and as a character
respectively.
The most obvious allusion in this work is the importation of the Adagio from
Mozarts Divertimento No. 15, K. 287 (1777), which is presented at the beginning of
Movement II of Magic Theater with minimal changes in register and expanded
orchestration. The whole movement is included, excepting the final two measures, and
even comes to rest on the same G dominant seventh that is held with a fermata in the next
measure, though instead of the traditional improvised violin cadenza that would
otherwise appear here, Rochberg chooses this moment to elide into a solo trumpet

35
David Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music (New York: CUP,
2003), 114.
36
Ibid., 150.

42

passage that he designates to be played like Miles Davisintense, felt, singing.37
Rochberg does stipulate, however, that his established motive of three descending minor
seconds, when it occurs in the allusion, may be optionally reinforced by harmon-muted
trumpets. In this fashion he highlights his own motive when it occurs in the borrowed
music.38
In addition to Mozart and Miles Davis, Rochberg also alludes to Beethoven,
Mahler, Webern, Penderecki, Stockhausen, Schoenberg, and Varse in Magic Theater.
Music that has this level of quotational density has been referred to as collage music by
scholars such as Catherine Losada and Peter Burkholder. Burkholder defines collage
music as the juxtaposition of multiple quotations in such a way that each element
maintains its individuality and the elements are perceived as having been excerpted from
many sources and arranged together, rather than all sharing common origins.39
Additionally, Losadas 2004 dissertation on this specific type of musical borrowing
discusses in great detail the various ways in which composers such as Rochberg
juxtaposed and elided their mosaic tiles.40 Her research will be returned to in a later
chapter, pertaining to the music of Luciano Berio.
Some of the shorter quotations in the Rochberg, especially those found in the
outer movements, are more discreet and might not function as referential for the listener,
unless they are particularly astute and musically educated. The importation of the Mozart,

37
George Rochberg, Music for the Magic Theater (Bryn Mawr, PA: Presser, 1972), 71
38
Ibid., 58.
39
J. Peter Burkholder, Collage, In Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, OUP,
http://www.oxfordmusic online.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2240547 (accessed October 9, 2014).
40
Catherine Losada, A Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Collage Music Derived from
Selected Works by Berio, Zimmermann, and Rochberg (PhD diss., CUNY, 2004).

43

however, would certainly be perceived and evoke, if not the particular piece, then at least
the style of his music, or Classical period music in general.
Ex. 2.6: Mozarts Divertimento quoted in Music for the Magic Theater.
Ex. 2.7: Beginning of the Adagio from Mozarts Divertimento, K. 287.

44

In writing about composing Magic Theater, Rochberg claimed that his choice to
quote Mozart and Mahler, the two most prevalent historical imports, was governed by
practical considerations. In addition to choosing works that contained the three note
chromatic (012) trichord motive he uses at other points in the piece, Rochberg wanted
music that would hold its own against the atonal material with which he planned to
juxtapose it. For Rochberg, Mozart was sturdy enough to withstand any nontonal music
I pitted it against, and Mahler was the last great tonal voice of the line that stretched
from Mozart into the first decades of the twentieth century.41
Ex. 2.8: Allusion to measure 13 of the Adagio of Mahlers Ninth Symphony (1908) in Magic
Theater.
Ex. 2.9: Adagio from Mahlers Ninth Symphony, measures 11-13.

41
Rochberg, Five Lines, Four Spaces, 152-3.

45

Thus, while claiming not to intend direct reference to the particular works, Rochbergs
choice of materials was nevertheless influenced by the distinctiveness and historical
significance of the composers in question.
In the first movement, subtitled by the composer in which the past and present
are all mixed up, and the last, in which we realize that only the present is really real
because it is all we have, there are also numerous quotations of Modernist music from
the twentieth century. Catherine Losada notes, for instance, the presence of an allusion to
Varses Dserts (1954) at rehearsal 4 and describes the fashion in which the newly
composed music that connects it to the previous Mahler quote smoothly traverses the
pitch space between the two and anticipates the Varse.42 While there are a few
transformations of the borrowed material, there are certainly enough points of similarity
to confidently assert that the material is drawn from the Varse.
Ex. 2.10: Allusion to Dserts in Magic Theater.

42
Catherine Losada, Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Strands of Continuity in Collage
Compositions by Rochberg, Berio, and Zimmerman, Music Theory Spectrum 31, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 104.

46

Ex. 2.11: Passage from Dserts that Rochberg was quoting, at measure 242.
Also included in Magic Theater is a passage that closely mirrors Krzysztof
Pendereckis aleatoric extended string techniques, which are encountered in many of the
composers works from the 1960s, such as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960),
Polymorphia (1961), and Flourescences (1962). Rochberg uses Pendereckis distinctive
notation for these techniques, and, in a note to the conductor, says that what is desired is
an ensemble of noisechaotic, without shape or form43
Ex. 2.12: Passages from Magic Theater that utilize Pendereckis techniques (strings only).

43
Rochberg, Magic Theater, 80.

47

(Ex. 2.12, contd.)
Ex. 2.13: Examples of these techniques in Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.

48

(Ex. 2.13: contd.)
The effect of these and other Modernist allusions juxtaposed against the tonal
references is quite striking and invites their comparison by the listener. Taking into
account Rochbergs characterization of the emotional and psychological impact of the
Modernist language, in conjunction with his poetic descriptions of the movements, one
might suppose that his intended rhetorical impact was to convey nostalgia for the music
of the past in the light of the, to use his words, boiled down starkness of Modernism.
This supposition is further bolstered by the state of mind engendered by events in the
composers life around the time this work was composed. The theme of finding ways to
cope with existence in the face of ongoing suffering is also one encountered in Hesses
Steppenwolf, to which the title of Magic Theater alludes.
In Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music, David Metzer
interprets the meaning of the tonal quotations in Magic Theater as seeming initially to

49

function as musical gestures that are able to provide resolutions through cadences, but as
the allusions are often cut off before resolution can take place, they create a sense of
wistful nostalgia for a lost past that is unresolved.44 While this is one interpretation of the
effect of the allusions, Rochberg himself describes the process of creating a texture out of
these quotes in an almost meditative fashion, allowing the imagination to roam freely
without the impediment of making fresh textures and contexts, when dealing with tonal
allusions, and a boiling out of atonal materials, reducing them to the common
denominators that unite essays in that language and allowing them to be freely
juxtaposed.45
To summarize, even though Rochberg chose to write that his borrowings in Magic
Theater were not particularly referential, reasonable evidence exists to show that his
compositional decisions were influenced by semiotic features of the borrowed music that
set up a certain musical grammar. Given this underlying psychological logic, one might
easily interpret the allusions in this work as operating in a narrative or representative
fashion. What play of musical symbols is perceived by the listener is of course subjective,
and the depth and subtlety of the aesthetic experience also depends on the listeners
apprehension of the references and whether or not they agree with Rochbergs
interpretation of the emotional and psychological symbolism of the Modernist and
Classical vocabularies.
Three Dire Medical Emergencies
Easily-perceivable referential quotation is present in some of my own
compositions, as well. In my Masters thesis, Three Dire Medical Emergencies for wind

44
Metzer, 121-3.
45
Rochberg, Four Lines, Five Spaces, 146-7.

50

ensemble (2010), I employ a quotation of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovs famous orchestral
interlude Flight of the Bumblebee, from The Tale of Tsar Saltan (1900). Each of the
movements of Emergencies is programmatic of the onset and resolution of a particular
life-threating event, namely Ballpoint Tracheotomy!, Anaphylactic Shock!, and
Cardiac Arrest! In the central movement, after some lively introductory material
loosely imitating the character of Beethovens Sixth Symphony and meant to evoke a
rustic outdoor scene, the suggestion of the quotation begins to emerge in the piccolo,
though it is only chromatic passagework intended to foreshadow the actual allusion. The
real quotation is encountered in the trumpet in measure 33 and tossed back and forth to
the flutes and oboe. It ends with a slap-stick crack and subsequent triangle note against
cloudy chords in the horns and vibes, which I meant to evoke the sting and injection of
venom into the body.
Ex. 2.14: Rimsky-Korsakovs Flight of the Bumblebee, from The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Piano
arrangement by Sergei Rachmaninoff.

51

Ex. 2.15: Introduction to Anaphylactic Shock!, from Three Dire Medical Emergencies for wind
ensemble, entrance of piccolo foreshadowing.
Ex. 2.16: Full quotation of Bumblebee in Anaphylactic Shock!

52

This allusion is certainly prominent and is meant to clearly communicate the
entrance of the bee into the narrative of the music. It may in retrospect have been a little
heavy handed, however, as such a recognizable quotation, without a broader context of
referential borrowing throughout the work, might make it seem out of place. Nowhere
else in the piece do I employ direct quotation, hidden or otherwise, so the effect could
seem to some to be that of a photo clipping pasted into the middle of an oil paintinga
jarring clash of techniques. However, the generally light, tongue-in-cheek tone with
which I dealt with the deadly-serious programs might serve to mitigate any incongruity
caused by this passage through humorous context. At the climax of Ballpoint
Tracheotomy!, for example, the winds and brass are required to blow air through their
instruments, a musical pun on the medical procedure.
The use of the borrowed bumblebee is also interesting in that I do not merely
state it once outright, but repeat it and manipulate its rhythm and orchestration. In doing
this, I was attempting to bring the Rimsky-Korsakov theme more into line with the
overall lexicon of this work, which is very dependent on playing with expectations
regarding rhythmic regularity. I also put great thought into the moment of the sting,
with the bee melody landing on the slapstick clap, which is then followed by the
triangle, representing the slightly delayed start in reaction to the sensation of the sting.
Faust Fantasy
Another composition in which I used direct, referential quotation is Faust Fantasy
(2010). The borrowed material which I employed in this solo piano work is from Franz
Liszts Faust Symphony (1857). I decided to take for my inspiration Liszts leitmotifs for
Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, though I relied most heavily on the latter two, as I

53

was thinking of the performer as loosely taking on the role of Faust. In the Liszt, Fausts
leitmotifs are somber and stark, though his pensive and introspective nature is portrayed
through the use of symmetrical harmonic structures and chromaticism. The Gretchen
themes are often light, lyrical, and folk-like, though the nostalgia theme is related to
her material and shows greater depth through chromaticism and variety of intervallic
content. The Mephistopheles music, with its almost atonal degree of chromaticism,
driving rhythms, and distortions of previous themes, evokes the malignancy and
capriciousness of the demon.
The method of allusion I employed here is slightly more nuanced than in the
previously discussed work. Although the leitmotifs are still perceivable and meant to be
referential, I paraphrased and reharmonized them, keeping elements of the gestures, but
also extending and connecting them with my own continuations, in a manner Losada
might characterize as chromatic insertion and rhythmic plasticity.46 My intention in
employing these allusions was to import some of the symbolism of the motives from the
Liszt to create an inter-textual relationship, also referring back to Gethes archetypes of
Faust, Mephistopheles, and Gretchen, and their various characteristics. A foreknowledge
of the Liszt or the Gethe therefore ought not to be necessary for the narrative of the
music to be successful, as Liszts representation of the characters in his work, to my ear,
effectively conveys their attributes musically. In this way, the allusions to Liszts motives
contribute to the narrative content of Faust Fantasy.

46
Losada, A Theoretical Model, 100-1. Losada defines chromatic insertion as freely
composed, often atonal music in between collage quotations, and rhythmic plasticity as a free
manipulation of the rhythmic profile of borrowings to facilitate transitions. The examples she cites of this
latter technique exhibit a wide range of manipulations, from simple meter change to quite free degrees of
malleable elasticity. Her terminology will again be employed later in this essay.

54

Ex 2.17: Beginning of Faust Fantasy.
Ex. 2.18: Motive from Faust, Faust Symphony, in the bassoons immediately before rehearsal D.
Ex. 2.19: Some Mephistopheles music in Faust Fantasy. The chromatic runs also figure heavily
into the Mephistopheles movement from the Liszt.

55

Ex. 2.20: Music from Mephistopheles in Faust Symphony, reduction.
Ex. 2.21: References to the lyrical Gretchen/nostalgia themes in Faust Fantasy.
Ex. 2.22: Passage in Faust Symphony to which I was alluding, woodwind reduction.
Shant
Another, more recent work of mine that uses referential quotation is the string
quartet Shant (2014). This work uses techniques of clandestine and micro-quotation,
which are discussed in a later chapter, but it also uses direct referential allusion to the

56

Irish nautical work songs from which the quartets generative materials are drawn. This
allowed for a rich musical interplay between the perceptibility of various elements of the
different tunes, and created a built-in stylistic unity, also discussed in a later chapter.
Traditional tunes such as The Old Horse, Were All Bound to Go, Boys of the
Ballinamore, Ballad of the Blind Sailors, Across the Western Ocean, and Bidin
Fheilim are all incorporated into this work, with greater and lesser degrees of
perceivability and intended referential impact.47
The use of The Old Horse in the beginning of Shant is recognizable, but is
presented in juxtaposition against newly composed music. It is subjected to rhythmic
manipulation and integrated into the overall texture, differentiating this usage from a
mere setting or orchestration of the theme. The chorus gesture is alluded to in the viola
part, again with a freely manipulated rhythmic profile, to mask the borrowing slightly.
Ex. 2.23: Passage referring to The Old Horse in the beginning of Shant.

47
In composing this work, I used for reference James Healys transcriptions of these traditional
tunes. James N. Healy, Irish Ballads and Songs of the Sea (Cork, UK: Mercier Press, 1967).

57

Ex. 2.24: The Old Horse.
The Boys of the Ballinamore is mainly used in Shant as a textural molecule,
whose material is the culmination of a linear additive process that permeates the first
section after the introduction, an example of the more occluded types of borrowings
discussed in later chapters. The quoted music is presented at the completion of this
process in its totality, however, and is clearly audible in the cello part at measure 53.
Ex. 2.25: The Boys of the Ballinamore in Shant, clearly presented in cello part in measure 53.
Ex. 2.26: The Boys of the Ballinamore.
The Ballad of the Blind Sailors is fairly clearly presented in the next section of
Shant, after a newly composed extension appended to the previous allusion. Here,
however, the quotation is fragmented and motives from the borrowed shanty are
combined into a texture which references them at two distinct and simultaneous tempi.

58

Ex. 2.27: Motives from The Ballad of the Blind Sailors, referenced in Shant at two simultaneous
speeds.
Ex. 2.28: The Ballad of the Blind Sailors.
Not all of the shanties are used in such recognizable ways, however. Across the
Western Ocean is mostly quoted in fragments, interweaved with newly composed
material. In its most exposed entrance it is presented in the viola in measure 108, though
the mode is altered and the tune is quickly fragmented and combined with other motives.

59

Ex. 2.29: Across the Western Ocean, fleetingly alluded to in measure 108 of Shant.
Ex. 2.30: Across the Western Ocean.
Bidin Fheilim, which can be translated as Flems Little Boat, is quoted
almost exactly at the first tempo change in the piece, occurring after an initial climax at
approximately the largest Golden Section division. This instance of allusion is quite clear
and is closer to a setting or variation than a generative importation, though some
manipulation of the tunes rhythmic profile is involved and I have taken some liberties
with the harmonic treatment.
Ex. 2.31: Bidin Fheilim in Shant.

60

(Ex. 2.31, contd)
.
Ex. 2.32: Bidin Fheilim.
The allusion to Were All Bound to Go is similarly readily apparent, though I
have again subjected the theme to rhythmic profile manipulation and inserted my own
counterpoint, also composing a significant extension that functions as a transition to the
next section. This borrowing is also echoed in the coda, where it is slightly warped and is
presented in an orchestrationally non-traditional context.
Ex. 2.33: Were All Bound to Go, reproduced almost verbatim in Shant, from the pick-up to
measure 150.

61

(Ex. 2.33, contd)
Ex. 2.34: Were All Bound to Go.
Ex. 2.35: Were All Bound to Go, referenced again briefly in Shants coda.

62

In incorporating the more direct references to this folk music, my intent was to
evoke its style and genre. Any interplay of inter-textually generated symbolic narrative
relying on the shanties linguistic content that is perceived by the listener is either purely
coincidental, or subconsciously generated on my part. Additionally, the originally-
composed materials in Shant either mimic or intentionally subvert the musical lexicon of
the source materials to create a sense of tension and release based on degree of fidelity to
the original materials.
Direct, easily-perceivable and referential quotation, as has been seen, can be used
in a variety of ways to convey meaning through reference to previously composed music.
It can be used to allude to specific aural phenomena like cathedral bells, or to refer to
textual meanings contained in previous music, as shown by the Ives examples at the
beginning of the chapter. The compositional technique can also be used as a way to refer
to the temporal states of past and present in a meditative and nostalgic fashion, as
Rochberg does in his Magic Theater. This type of allusion can furthermore be used to
import meanings that have become attached to certain melodies, as in Three Medical
Emergencies, or to character archetypes represented by motives in another composers
music, as in Faust Fantasy. Borrowing several tunes from a certain musical tradition or
genre can also effectively evoke that genre through common characteristic gestures and
patterns, as I did in Shant. And while many composers use this type of readily
perceivable, referential quotation to privately engage with other music or music of the
past, it is unavoidable that such references evoke particular narrative interpretations for
the listener in direct relation to their apprehension of the source material.

CHAPTER 3
MANIPULATED, JUXTAPOSED, AND STRUCTURAL QUOTATION
When quotation is used by composers in a fashion that may not be readily
apparent, as inspiration or as a structural framework, or where the borrowed materials are
so manipulated or densely packed alongside other disparate allusions that the referential
power of the quotation might evade the listener, the impact of the compositional
technique can be quite different than in the previously discussed examples. While the
tradition of structural modeling as a pedagogical tool for training composers has strong
historical precedent, mature twentieth-century composers have employed previously
composed music as a framework with a subtlety and rich interplay of musical meaning
that raises the practice beyond mere imitation.48 Chris Reynolds makes the point that,
while formal modeling can allude, it does so with less specificity of meaning than is
possible with texted motivic allusions.49 However, the choices a composer makes in
regards to which works they choose to emulate in this fashion is often a meaningful
reference that conveys certain particulars about their aesthetics and approach to the newly
composed work. Reynolds says of Brahmss Piano Concerto No. 1, that
Brahmss decision to compose his First Piano Concerto on a Beethovenian model

was a musical reference full of meaning, even if few others would recognize the
source of the musical structure his decision to reach back fifty years for
elements of his musical inspiration communicates a great deal about his aesthetic
ideals and dedication to following Beethoven.50

48
This can also be encountered in the music of certain nineteenth-century composers as well. In
his Motives for Allusion Chris Reynolds cites the example of structural modeling in the case of Brahmss
Piano Sonata, Op. 1, which bears many formal similarities to the Waldstein, but the work in no sense
comes off as imitation or mere exercise. Likewise, the similarities between Brahmss Piano Concerto No. 1
and Beethovens Piano Concerto No. 3 indicate a mature and nuanced structural modeling.
49
Reynolds, 26.
50
Ibid.
63

64

Likewise, music that uses previously composed material in such density and variety that
the allusions become difficult to identify or to ascertain meaning from might have
similarly diminished referential weight in terms of the specific importations. A useful
analogy for this might be the effect of a murmuring crowd as opposed to the impression
of multiple individual voices.
The degree of manipulation which a composer chooses to apply to borrowed
musical materials can also impact the referential effect of a quotation, sometimes leading
the listener to question whether it is actually a quotation at all. Many times these
situations can only be argued as instances of quotation by way of extensive score study
and point-by-point comparison with the purported source material. In this case, the
referential role of the allusion cannot help but be subsumed by the newly composed
work, and its symbolic impact becomes secondary to its inspirational and generative role
in the compositional process. Examples of this type of allusion can also exist side-by-side
with clear, easily perceivable references that can overwhelm any perception of the more
drastically manipulated allusions.
Additionally, sometimes composers choose to employ borrowings in a fashion
that is not intended by them to be interpreted as referential to particular symbolism or
connotative weight engendered by the source music. Such composers as Michael Gordon,
Lansing McLoskey, Robin Holloway, and myself, in certain works, have all at times
approached extant music merely as a source of materials, with any referential meaning
taking on an ancillary role to the borrowed musics status as raw material. In these cases
the original compositions function as reservoirs from which inspiration and musical
materials may be drawn, and any narrative which the listener perceives to be informed by

65

the references is coincidental and secondary to the borrowed materials role in the
composers process. The only thing that separates this compositional technique from the
type of clandestine quotation discussed in the next chapter is the level of perceivability
for the listener, as no semiotic importation need be intended by the composer.
Conversely, the aesthetic of juxtaposition and deliberate interpolative play
between allusions is also addressed and illustrated in this chapter, as this mixture of
disparate sources can blur the lines between the borrowed materials, thus obscuring
evidence for assertions about the impetus for and perceptual results of these instances.
This may undermine any referential impact, as the borrowings may exist in a state of
perceptual flux between the referential and non-referential. Composers may also play
with the listeners perceptions in regards to the provenance of materials, leading them to
question which music is allusion and which is the composers own. Such play was
engaged in as a compositional technique to some degree in the previously-discussed
Shant, where I intentionally composed new music that both interlocked with and imitated
the character of the borrowed materials. This kind of ambiguity is often created through
manipulation techniques and modulations between allusions that fluidly connect them
in the fabric of the music, like those discussed by Catherine Losada.51 While these shades
of perceptibility existed to varying extents in the examples contained in the previous
chapter, less clear-cut cases are discussed here.

51
Losada, A Theoretical Model, 36-7. As aforementioned, Losada discusses composers
using rhythmic plasticity, chromatic (or at least newly composed) insertions, and overlap, as well as degree
of chromatic saturation to connect allusions in collage music, but these modulations could just as easily
interpolate quotations with any other musical passages, or indeed any disparate, extremely contrasting
materials in a work. Rhythmic plasticity refers to a very free and variable manipulation of rhythmic profile,
chromatic insertions consist of newly composed music which is used to connect borrowings in collage
music, and overlap is when elements of borrowings bleed into one another, sometimes with shared pitches
or harmonies, sometimes with conflicting materials.

66

Sinfonia
This type of musical borrowing and allusion in twentieth-century music is clearly
illustrated by Luciano Berios Sinfonia (1969), a monolith of the compositional practice
in action. At times humorous, bordering on neurotic, this work weaves together not only
numerous allusions to the music of the past, but also includes spoken text drawn from a
variety of sources, as well as spoken meta-commentary on the narrative progression of
the work itself. The context in which this essay examines it, however, is not in terms of
its referential, surface level allusions, but in its status as an example of deeper level
structural modeling.
Many scholars have written about this work and Berios use of the Scherzo from
Mahlers Second Symphony (1894) as a scaffold for the third movement, an often cited
instance of structural modeling.52 Catherine Losada notes in her 2004 dissertation on
analyzing collage music that Berio denied that Sinfonia ought to be considered a
collage work on the grounds that the presence of the Mahler created a structural unity
against which everything else was an integrated part and that the different musical
characters are integrated into the flowing harmonic structure of Mahlers scherzo;
actually they are signaling and commenting upon the events and transformations.
Therefore, the references do not constitute a collage, but, rather, illustrate a harmonic
process.53 The fact that the texture of the work is made up of a patchwork of allusions to
disparate sources, however, is clearly demonstrable and conforms to Burkholders

52
Catherine Losada, Michael Hicks, David Metzer, John Flinn, David Cope, Zofia Lissa, Peter
Altmann, David Osmond-Smith, et al.
53
Losada, A Theoretical Model, 57. She is referencing commentary on the work by Berio,
published in Glenn Watkinss Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century (NY: Schirmer, 1998), 649.
Berio also claims not to have ever really used quotation in his works in a 1980 interview with Rossana
Dalmonte. Luciano Berio, Luciano Berio: Two Interviews, ed. and trans. David Osmond-Smith (New York:
Marion Boyars Publishers, 1985), 110.

67

definition of collage music presented in the previous chapter. That Berio does not agree is
immaterial, and his objections were probably meant to distance himself from the
technique in the visual arts, where collage works by Braque and Picasso often included
elements that were considered refuse, such as bits of newspaper and ripped up cloth.
Rochberg voiced similar concerns about associating these types of compositions with
visual collage, asking Why does a collage or assemblage need to be created from junk?
Why not the opposite?54
Whether or not one chooses to apply the term collage to this work, the structural
modeling in the third movement is a fascinating musical phenomenon. However, it must
be stated that, as Reynolds noted in relation to the instance in Brahms, the direct
referential impact for the listener is somewhat muted. Even if listeners were intimately
familiar with the Mahler and could identify the passages where the Scherzo is clearly
present in the surface level of the texture, it is doubtful that they would be able to balance
the temporal stream of the Scherzo in their heads and compare the structures of the works
in real time. As with the Brahms Piano Concerto, however, the fact that Berio chose this
work as a model does tell us certain things about his aesthetic and his attitude towards the
music to which he was referring.55 The relationship is doubtless more complex in the
Berio, tinged as it is with Postmodern aesthetic principles and incorporating the greater
pluralism of musical styles available to him, but the question nevertheless arises: Why
this movement, this work, this composer?

54
Rochberg, The Aesthetics of Survival: A Composers View of Twentieth-century Music (Ann
Arbor: UMP, 2004), 133.
55
Berio did state in Two Interviews that he initially considered using movements from
Beethovens Op. 131 Quartet as the structural model for the third movement of Sinfonia. One can only
imagine what a different outcome would have arisen if he had chosen that work instead of the Brahms! He
also notes that the choice to use the Brahms was further informed by the Leonard Bernsteins affinity for
that composer, to whom Sinfonia is dedicated.

68

Michael Hicks points out that Mahler himself was a great allusionist, drawing
attention to the fact that the composer would often use folk material, social music, and
other oblique references to create a nostalgic panorama, the center of which is the
composers own intensely personal experience.56 He also hints that the inclusion of the
Beckett text might also be telling, as it alludes to Shakespeare, scripture, and James
Joyce, whose Ulysses in turn alludes to Homer. In the Beckett, the artist becomes a
prisoner of his art, he can do nothing but quote.57 In correspondence, Mahler
summarized the program of the Scherzo of his Second Symphony:
When you awaken from the wistful dream of movement 2, to return into the
turmoil of life again, it may easily happen to you that the ceaseless flow of life
strikes you with horrorlike the swaying of dancers in a brightly lit ballroom into
which you happen to gaze from the outer darkness and from such a distance that
its music remains inaudible life appears senseless to you and like a dreadful
nightmare from which you may start up with a cry of disgust.58
This sort of whirlwind, this ceaseless flow of life, might as easily refer to the
movement from the Berio as to Mahlers Scherzo. The Scherzo is also in fact a partial
reworking of one of Mahlers previous compositions, Des Antonius von Padua
Fischpredigt, (1893) from his Humoresken Wunderhorn songs. A fairly strong
assertion could be made, then, that the choice of the Mahler for a scaffold, which could
be likened to a colossal cantus firmus, makes a meaningful statement about the very idea
of appropriation and allusion, musical and otherwise.
This discussion does not extensively catalogue the borrowings in Sinfonia, as this
task has already been accomplished by other authors, other than to highlight a few points

56
Michael Hicks, Text, Music, and Meaning in the Third Movement of Berios Sinfonia,
Perspectives of New Music 20, no. 1 (Autumn 1981-Summer 1982): 208.
57
Ibid., 209.
58
Ibid., 210.

69

at which the Mahler Scherzo clearly emerges out of the texture, for the sake of
demonstration. The first such instance is at the beginning of the movement, where the
grace-note motives from the clarinets at the outset of the Scherzo are introduced in the
flutes, and then the clarinets and the bassoons play their material from Mahlers measure
10 verbatim in Berios measure 7.
Ex. 3.1: Beginning of third movement of Sinfonia, winds only.
Ex. 3.2: Beginning of Mahlers Scherzo, measures 5-13.

70

Another example occurs directly before and into rehearsal H in the Berio. Note that the
entirety of the music from the Mahler is present, scored for the original instruments.
Ex. 3.3: Passage directly before rehearsal H in the third movement of Sinfonia.

71

Ex. 3.4: Beginning of the first return of the refrain in the Mahler, measure 149.
A further example of Berios use of the Mahler Scherzo in a clear and
unadulterated fashion is at rehearsal BB. The whole orchestra retains its material
verbatim, although there are some minor elaborations added, which can be accounted for
by the expanded orchestration of Sinfonia. Berio reinterprets Mahlers chromatic line up
to the high note in the winds and strings as an undefined glissando, which has the same
general effect.

72

Ex. 3.5: Passage at rehearsal BB in the Berio.

73

Ex. 3.6: Analogous passage in the Mahler, from half way through the fourth refrain, measure 260.

74

(Ex. 3.6, contd)
While not necessarily readily apparent to every listener, the dramatic or narrative
arc of the third movement of Sinfonia closely follows the line of Mahlers Scherzo.

75

Catherine Losada notes that exact temporal parallels occur between the Berio and the
Mahler, in terms of their dramatic highpoints, goal-directed motion, and the overall
narrative shape.59 At times, the climactic or directional material comes from the Mahler.
At others, the climax is obliterated and replaced with an allusion to a similar passage
from another composers music. Figure 3.1 reproduces Losadas comparison of goal
directed motion at an obliterated climax in Sinfonia, where the original passage from
the Mahler is replaced by music from Ravels La valse (1920).60
Fig. 3.1: Losadas reduction of an insertion of climax of La valse into an obliterated climax of the
Mahler.
Source: Catherine Losada, A Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Collage Music Derived from
Selected Works by Berio, Zimmermann, and Rochberg (PhD diss., CUNY, 2004), 172.
Losada also traced the dramatic contour of both works and created a comparison
graph of this aspect of Sinfonias third movement and the Scherzo from Mahlers Second
Symphony, which follows both of the works through their related arcs. Unsurprisingly,
they follow closely similar trajectories, as shown in her graph reproduced in figure 3.2.

59
Losada, A Theoretical Model , 58.
60
Ibid., 172.

76

Fig. 3.2: Losadas comparison graph of the dramatic contours of the third movement of Sinfonia
and the Scherzo from Mahlers Symphony No. 2. The solid line represents goal-directed motion
that conforms to the Mahler, the dotted one refers to divergent goal-directed motion in the Berio.
Source: C. Catherine Losada, A Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Collage Music Derived
from Selected Works by Berio, Zimmermann, and Rochberg (PhD diss., CUNY, 2004), 173.
The nature of this emergence and re-submersion of the material from the Mahler
is similar to the effect of refrain or ritornello, which is interesting, as the original work
itself is cast in a form that also has this feature. The coherence generated by the use of the
Mahler as a scaffold, in contrast with the widely disparate fabric of quotations through
which it flows, lends In ruhig fliessender Bewegung an aesthetic unity that may
otherwise have been lacking in such a diverse texture. If not for this connecting element,
the sheer density of quotations in this movement might contribute to an overwhelming
effect of oversaturation, negating their narrative value and rendering the texture into
static for the listener. Similarly, the effect of replacing music from the Mahler with music
that serves the same function in another work, such as the example of the use of the
climax from Ravels La valse, which Losada also discusses, lends the otherwise chaotic
music an internal logic.

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In speaking about Sinfonia in his 1980 interview with Rossana Dalmonte, Berio
characterized the presence of the Brahms as a skeleton that often reemerges, fully
fleshed out, then disappears, then comes back again But its never alone: its
accompanied throughout by the history of music that it itself recalls for me, with all its
many levels and references.61 Berio makes another analogy in the liner notes to the
Columbia recording of the work: If I were asked to explain the presence of Mahlers
Scherzo in Sinfonia, the image that would naturally spring to mind would be that of a
river running through a constantly-changing landscape, disappearing from time to time
underground, only to emerge later totally transformed.62
Losada notes that this metaphor of a river might itself be an allusion on Berios
part to the fact that the Wunderhorn song that the Mahler Scherzo is based on has for its
text the story of St. Anthony, lacking a congregation, delivering a sermon to the fishes.63
This relationship was also not lost on David Osmond-Smith, who notes that this reference
semantically induces the quotations of La mer (1905) present in the Berio, as well as the
reference to the drowning scene in Bergs Wozzeck (1922).64 To these observations about
the aquatic nature of the references in Sinfonias central movement, this author would add
that the tempo indication of the movement of the Mahler Scherzo, which Berio
appropriates as his title, is In ruhig fliessender Bewegung, which translates as in a
softly flowing motion.

61
David Cope, Quotation, In New Directions in Music, 7th ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland
Press, 2000), 204.
62
Luciano Berio, Liner notes to Sinfonia, New York Philharmonic, conducted by Luciano Berio,
1969. Columbia MS 7268, CD.
63
Losada, A Theoretical Model, 31.
64
David Osmond-Smith, Playing on Words: A Guide to Luciano Berios Sinfonia (London: Royal
Musical Association, 1985), 7, 42.

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Rewriting Beethovens Seventh Symphony
Michael Gordons Rewriting Beethovens Seventh Symphony (2004) is an example
of the type of work that uses previously composed music as a reservoir of materials. The
over-arching idea of the piece is that most of the materials are drawn from the Beethoven
and the allusions are meant by the Gordon to come across as self-contained, purely
musical elements. The borrowed materials here are not directly juxtaposed against newly
composed music in a drastically different language, nor do they seem to comment on or
be commented on by new materials or each other. In a program note for the piece,
retrieved from the composers website, Gordon writes:
What if someone, while writing a piece of music for orchestra, just happened to
stumble over the same material that Beethoven used? What if someone
unknowingly used this material in the course of writing his or her new work? In
Rewriting Beethovens Seventh Symphony, I retained one essential musical idea
from each movement of the original work.65
This is an example where, while there is a perceptible link to the previous
composition, the role of the borrowed material is more generative than it is symbolically
referential. For instance, while anyone familiar with the Beethoven would probably
recognize the motives in this work, they do not really function in a narrative or referential
fashion. If we take the composer at his word, his use of the borrowed material in this
composition reflects an attitude of attempting to divorce the imports from the original
composition and work with them as purely musical materials. Some writers have referred
to this type of music as found sound, after the found object movement in the visual arts
and which is sometimes also applied to certain types of musique concrte. The distinction

65
Michael Gordon, Program note to Rewriting Beethovens Seventh Symphony, MichaelGordon
Music.com, http://michaelgordonmusic.com/music (accessed October 20, 2014).

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from collage music is that found sound works are said to be entirely [constructed] from
borrowed pitch material without evoking a crumbling or disintegrating landscape.66
Rewriting is made up of almost entirely imported themes and motives, but it
functions aesthetically in an entirely different fashion from the previously discussed
collage pieces. While Gordon does compose new, rock-influenced or Post-minimalist
based music as buffers between the sections, the borrowed elements are not directly
juxtaposed against imports from other sources, or against new music in a strikingly
different language. This results in the absence of the starkly contrasting juxtapositions
encountered in the Rochberg, or the chaos and chromatic saturation of the Berio. Whether
this is a desirable aesthetic feature, and whether or not the work may lack in rhetorical
depth what the previously-discussed pieces may be said to have, are largely philosophical
and subjective distinctions. What can be readily determined, however, is that Gordons
work benefits from a unity generated by the borrowing of materials from a reservoir that
has a high degree of relative self-similarity. That the borrowed music is not ever
manipulated to the point of being unrecognizable, or recontextualized by different
musical materials, might be said to inhibit the works ability to convey as great a range of
drama through contrast. Again, this is a subjective matter.
Rewriting begins with the violent, percussive chords of the first movement of
Beethovens Seventh. These borrowed materials are immediately developed, as Gordon
interpolates long, slow glissandi between them. It is also worth noting that he prolongs
this simple and, in the original work, relatively short passage of music for such a long

66
Marc Chan uses this term, specifically in relation to the Gordon piece, and also Gomberts Mille
Regretz, Cages Thirteen Harmonies, and Marshalls Kingdom Come. Marc Chan, Rewriting Beethovens
7th, Theater of Found Sounds, entry posted November 3, 2009, http://foundsound.blogspot.com/2009/11/
rewriting-beethovens-7th.html (accessed November 1, 2014).

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time in this piece. That Gordon chooses this one admittedly striking and dramatic gesture
to build four and a half minutes of music is interesting, and might be indicative of an
attitude on his part towards an emphasis on the drama of this element in the Beethoven.
The chords slowly dissolve into continuous, slow glissandi, and eventually only the brass
and percussion articulate the gestures.
Ex. 3.7: Beginning of Rewriting Beethovens Seventh Symphony, strings only.
The next section, which references the second movement of the Beethoven, takes
the somber, flowing melody and harmonic progression from the funeral march and
deploys it in a sharply articulated dense polyphonic texture. The effect is that of the
gestures and harmonies from the source material weaving in and out of a complex and
thorny texture. Gordons use of imitative polyphony and rhythmic canonical devices
eventually reduce the recognizability of the borrowed materials to almost nothing,
dissipating into a sound-mass texture, which is itself eventually occluded by interleaved
music in a Post-minimalist idiom. However, there is never a point at which the
manipulation is so great that there is any doubt as to the origins of the borrowed
materials.

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Ex. 3.8: Measures 117-126 of Rewriting, strings only.
Ex. 3.9: End of the second section of Rewriting, with its rhythmic Post-minimalist texture.
Gordons use of the material from the third movement of the Beethoven is
different from previous borrowings in the work, relying on subsidiary gestures that are
not as readily apparent as the previous thematic allusions. The borrowed material, fast
repeated staccato notes in triple time, is after all somewhat prosaic and relatively

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nondescript. The prolonged orchestrationally additive process focusing on this feature is
accompanied by slowly ascending glissandi in an extensively divided string section,
referring back to this textures prominence in the first section of Rewriting. This string
texture may or may not refer to the Beethoven, but as it merely consists of glissandi
between the pitches of an F major scale, which is the key of Beethovens movement, it is
difficult to make a definitive case for this feature as borrowing.
Ex. 3.10. Beginning of the third section of Rewriting, winds only.
Ex. 3.11. String glissandi between the pitches of the F major scale encountered in this section.
The final section of Gordons work alludes to the first theme of Beethovens
fourth movement, but, much like in the second section, it is treated in free polyphony

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with densely packed imitative entrances. His technique here stratifies the theme into two
parts. One is constructed out of Beethovens spinning sixteenth notes, shown in Ex. 3.13,
which serve a textural function. The other utilizes the dotted, sixth-leaping repeated-note
figure, also shown in Ex.3.13, which Gordon rhythmically augments, creating moments
of melodic focus through agogic accent.
Ex. 3.12: Beginning of the fourth section of Rewriting, strings only.

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Ex. 3.13: First theme of the fourth movement of Beethovens Seventh Symphony, with its two
main motivic cells highlighted.
This dissolves into another sound-mass texture, but the theme is reasserted in the
low strings in octaves in its verbatim form from the Beethoven in measure 1257.
Ex. 3.14: Gordons reassertion of the theme, at measure 1257, at the entrance of the thunder sheet.
Gordons usage of the thunder sheet here also mirrors the way the timpani is used
in the Beethoven, which at times uses off-set rhythmic dissonance to emphasize the weak
beat of the 2/4 meter. As Gordon has recast the music in 4/4 here, his use of this
instrument on beats two and four seems appropriate.

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Ex. 3.15: Example of off-set timpani at the opening of Beethovens fourth movement.
The canonic imitation at this point is unified within instrumental sections as well,
clarifying the texture and making the borrowed theme much more perceptible. Individual
trumpets begin to add more canonic entrances and rhythmic percussion begins to accrue,
as does the brass sections emphasis on the last two sixteenth-note subdivisions of beats
one and three, mirroring the ubiquitous rhythmic pattern from Beethovens movement.
This texture leads into a loud and raucous climax at the end of the piece.
Quartettrope
Lansing McLoskeys Quartettrope (2008) is an interesting example of what could
be called structural quotation, for lack of a better term, or perhaps, as the composer
indicates with the title, ought to be described as another, more archaic and historically
influenced technique of the use of preexisting music. The piece takes Weberns Quartet,
Op. 22 (1930) as a canvas, including both movements of the original work in their

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entirety, and interpolating new music both in between and interleaved with them. The
composers program note for the work indicates that his newly composed music is
An integral, organic insertionlike the medieval tropes inserted seamlessly into

preexisting chant melodies. There is no clear beginning to the piece, as the first
movement grows out of the ending of the first movement of the Webern, literally
dovetailing from the Webern into the McLoskey. Likewise, there is no real ending
to the second movement; rather, the music transitions subtly and seamlessly into
the second movement of the Webern.67
In this authors 2013 interview with the composer, McLoskey discussed his
compositional techniques in this work. McLoskey commented on the multiple corridors
of musical allusion operating in his piece and how these techniques related to and
interacted with the Webern Quartet. He noted that, as the entire musical fabric of the
Webern is present, he questions whether his technique here ought to even be considered
quotation, per se, as a performance of the whole of the Quartet provides a backdrop for
the new material. McLoskey also discussed his use of Weberns twelve-tone row in his
independent music in the first movement, in which he follows the same pattern of serial
permutations that the earlier composer used.68 Remarkably, during the part of the first
movement where the Webern and the McLoskey are interleaved, the latter composer
chose to consciously subvert the dissonant and atonally angular language of the original
work by integrating consonant sets. While the Webern relies heavily on (014) sets, and
tritone, minor second/ninth, and major seventh relationships inherent to the series used in
the piece, McLoskey stated that
Because the Webern is twelve-tone and so pointillistic, the set that makes the
most sense to use to dramatically alter its character is [025], which is like the
anti-twelve-tone set. Its so consonant. I created all these [025] moments, which
plays with the listeners expectations. Where are these pretty sounds coming

67
Lansing McLoskey, Program Note, in Quartettrope (Miami: OdhecatonZ, 2008).
68
Lansing McLoskey, interview with the author, Miami, October, 2013.

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from in Webern?, you know? Then my movement takes off, and the quotation
at that point, as opposed to the importation of Weberns work, is my utilization of
his row.69
McLoskey also clarified after the interview that he considers the sets [025] and [027]
linked aurally, which makes perfect sense as both sets have similar intervallic content,
relying as they do on the interval of the major second and either the perfect fourth or
fifth, which are invertibly equivalent.70 He interjects both of these sets into the texture of
the Quartet, mitigating the dissonance of the Webern and playing with the informed
listeners expectations.
Ex. 3.16: McLoskey using [027] and [025] sets to alter the harmonic character of the Webern in
measures 20 and 21. The lighter notes are Weberns, the darker ones McLoskeys.
Although the character of the music varies greatly from the Webern once
McLoskeys material completely takes over, becoming rhythmic and almost jazzy in
nature, the new music makes use of the row and row forms from the first movement of
the Webern, though in a very free and intuitive way, and alongside non-twelve-tone

69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.

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materials. This relationship provides continuity and contributes to a sense that the
Webern and McLoskey movements somehow belong together. The juxtaposition of the
twelve-tone material and the quintal/quartal harmony generated by the (027) set also
mirrors the character of the McLoskey-infused Webern from the earlier interleaved
music.
Ex. 3.17: McLoskey using the first row form from the Webern melodically in the upper voices, in
the independent portion of the first movement of Quartettrope.
Not only is Weberns row present in the independent section of McLoskeys first
movement, but he also uses the same pattern of permutations that Webern did throughout
his newly composed trope. McLoskey states that
As my first movement emerges out of the Webern, I use the same row as Webern
in the same permutation order. So if he used a pattern of P0, I6, RI2, I used P0, I6,
RI2. You can trace it in my piece; it follows the exact same row order as the
Webern, but without sounding like Webern at all. I used the Webern row linearly,
but then I was harmonizing as I wanted to, providing counter-melodies intuitively,
and quoting small little snippets of the Webern, employing them in the piano
freely and intuitively. Theres this thread of quotation, this use of the row,
completely recontextualized and transformed.71

71
Ibid.

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McLoskey also discussed his proclivity for revisiting forms and techniques
encountered in early music, another area that interests him as a scholar and performer.
The type of freely intuitive borrowing and textural integration encountered in
Quartettrope is similar in nature to that found in parody masses of the thirteenth through
fifteenth centuries, which McLoskey is also interested in, and to which he likened his
compositional approach in other works, such as Catherines Wheel (2007).72 That he used
the row melodically, but also in a relatively free fashion is at once comparable to and
contrasting with the way it is used in the Webern, where row forms are not deployed
melodically, but are simultaneously juxtaposed with different permutations to highlight
invariance properties.
Conversely, the second movement of Quartettrope contains foreshadowing
quotations, not of the row, but of short motives present in the second movement of the
Webern. In discussing the rhetorical impact of this technique, McLoskey noted that this
anticipatory allusion to materials heard later in the Webern, when taken in the context of
the temporal sequence of the work as a whole, might make it seem to the listener that the
subsequent movement of Weberns Quartet is developing or even alluding back to
McLoskeys newly-composed music that preceded it. This perceptual play is an
interesting reversal of the usual role of borrowed material, making it almost seem as if the
Webern is actually quoting the McLoskey. One such motivic allusion identified by
McLoskey in his music is the grace-note-staccato-followed-by-sustained-note gesture
which begins his movement and is then encountered later in the second movement of the
Webern, after McLoskeys insertions cease.

72
Ibid.

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Ex. 3.18: Beginning of the second movement of Quartettrope.
Ex. 3.19: Quoted motive as encountered in the second movement of the Webern, measures 86-91.
These allusions, therefore, can hardly be seen to function primarily as referential
or symbolic gestures, but instead serve to integrate McLoskeys trope, which consists
at times of an entirely different musical language, into the fabric of the existing quartet.
As his first movement emerges from the Webern the sets [027] and [025], which he has
been inserting throughout, provide one element of continuity, while the use of the row
also functions as connective tissue to the original piece. McLoskeys second movement

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has forward looking allusions that function to connect it fluidly to the second movement
of Weberns Quartet, but here the allusions rely on motive rather than the row. McLoskey
stated that referential or symbolic allusion is the type that interests him the least, and that
most often when he uses this compositional technique in a work, his intent is not for it to
be understood in this fashion.73 Thus one can interpret his borrowings in this case to serve
a very practical musical purpose, as a compositional technique employed to connect his
music to the fabric of the Webern Quartet.
Chopn
In the electroacoustic work Chopn (2012), I used freely altered but still directly
referential quotation of Frederic Chopins music in the piano part, against heavily
manipulated and almost unrecognizable distortions of recordings of his music in the fixed
media. I produced the electronic sounds by recording the commissioning pianist, Daniel
Manoiu, performing passages of various Chopin works as they occurred to him randomly,
which arbitrarily generated the reservoir from which I drew my quotations in this work in
an almost aleatoric fashion. I then distorted the recordings into synthetic textures using a
variety of software audio effects and the program SPEAR, which resynthesizes digital
audio by recreating its partials with sine tones of varying amplitude and allows for their
free manipulation. My programmatic reason for doing this was to evoke the ghost of
Chopin, drifting about the concert hall and commenting on the quotations of his music,
which are often presented in such a way that they themselves seem to ethereally fade in
and out of focus.
While the borrowings in the piano part are often fairly recognizable, they are
interspersed and interleaved with newly composed music, which is in keeping with the

73
Ibid.

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gestural and fragmentary nature of the textures in the piece. Additionally, I developed the
borrowed music through free manipulation of rhythmic profile, registral shifts, harmonic
changes, and other similar alterations. The material in the fixed media further
interconnects the allusions by way of its related nature, both gesturally and harmonically.
My aesthetic goal in doing this was to modify the musical materials to the point
where the listener would perceive fleeting fragments of the allusions, but the music could
in no way be perceived as just Chopins. There were two main reasons for this. Firstly, I
thought that this sort of drifting in and out of the musical world of Chopin was attractive,
could be perceived to mirror the process encountered in the fixed media, and as a purely
practical consideration, could serve to solidify the connection between the live and
electronic sounds. This is something that concerns me greatly whenever I work in the
electroacoustic medium, as I feel that a disconnect between the two is a common
shortcoming of many works in this genre, and something which I attempt to be vigilant
against in my own electroacoustic music.
Secondly, there may have been certain psychological reasons on my part for
occluding my quotations. In this earlier work, as well as in Faust Fantasy, I was still
coming to terms with the artistic and ethical ramifications of using significant amounts of
borrowed materials in a new work. A part of me was still dealing with a nagging sense of
appropriation being akin to theft, or that there was at least the danger of being perceived
as borrowing legitimacy from the earlier music. This may have been a reason that I was
trying to obscure my allusions to a certain degree, or at least make sure that my
compositional fingerprints were just as prominent on the materials as Chopins. This is an
issue which will be discussed again in more detail in chapter 5, but suffice to say here

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that I have since resolved this philosophical issue to my own satisfaction, at least to the
extent that I continue to freely borrow from other music when it serves my purposes.
An example of my free rhythmic profile manipulation and of a sort of chromatic
disintegration process is encountered in the first borrowing in Chopn, which is an
allusion to the B Minor Prelude No. 6 from his Op. 28 set (pub. 1839).
Ex. 3.20: Allusion to the B Minor Prelude No. 6 in measure 10 of Chopn.
Ex. 3.21: Chopins Prelude No. 6, from Op. 28, for comparison.
While the rhythmic values in the passage are altered, the reference is clear and
demonstrable, but the use of chromatic disintegration at the end of the borrowing, as well
as registral manipulation and rhythmic interruption, serve to distort the material and
differentiate it from the original music. Similarly, when alluding to the famously concise
A Major Prelude from the same set, I obscured the borrowed material slightly, inserting
newly composed music and registrally displacing or elaborating Chopins. The fixed

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media part here eventually becomes much more active and loud, also functioning to
interfere with the listeners ability to clearly perceive the allusion.
Ex. 3.22: Allusion to the Op. 28 Prelude No. 7 in Chopn.
Ex. 3.23: Beginning of Chopins Prelude No. 7, from Op. 28.
The allusion I make to Prelude No. 4 is more fragmentary and elaborative, with
significant registral manipulation, repetition, and interruptions of the musics rhythmic
flow. Over the course of the work up until this point, I had gradually been increasing the
degree of manipulation that I applied to borrowed materials, so as such this quotations
place in the chronology of the work dictated this greater distortion. While the repeated

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chords and lyrical melody of the piece are present in the new music, I extrapolate the
figuration in measures 11 and 12 of the prelude into a quasi-cadenza in Chopn.
Ex. 3.24: Reference to Chopins Op. 28 Prelude No. 4 and interleaved quasi-cadenza.
Ex. 3.25: Measures 6-12 of Chopins Prelude No. 4.
The following section of Chopn relies on a rhythmic, heavily distorted fixed
media texture, which is derived from a digitally mangled and gated recording of a
passage from Chopins Etude No. 4, from his Op. 10 set (1830). The sections subtitle,
Frederic and Franz, refers to the dedicatee of this set of etudes, and also expresses my
impression of this piece as particularly Lisztian in nature. The texture is dominated by an
interplay between fragments from both the distorted and original music in antiphony,
culminating in a critical mass of tension, after which the fixed media dissolves into chaos
and the pianist rips through the entire passage as fast as possible.

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Ex. 3.26: Beginning of Frederic and Franz in Chopn.
Ex. 3.27: Passage from Chopins Etude No. 4, from Op. 10, measures 70-5.
Ex. 3.28: Passage quoted fully, against chaotic, timbrally dissonant fixed media.

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The arpeggio from the end of the etude is interrupted and the fixed media
provides a sprawling drone derived from the harmonic goal of the con fuoco passage.
Then the final bars of the etude are presented in measures 91-4 in the piano part, but I
transpose the final chord to provide logical harmonic continuity into the next section of
borrowed material.
Ex. 3.29: Interrupted allusion to the end of the Etude No. 4 in Chopn.
Ex. 3.30: Arpeggio gesture at end of Chopins Etude No. 4.
The timbral dissonance of the fixed media in this section is meant to be
programmatic of both Liszts comparatively fiery, mercurial character, and of the friction
between the composers in their later lives. It is interesting to note, in passing, that certain
scholars question whether Chopin s Fourth Etude is itself an allusion to the Rondo of

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Hummels Second Piano Concerto (1816), to which it does bear a passing musical
resemblance.74
The following section alludes to Chopins Mazurka No. 45 in A Minor, from
Three Mazurkas, Op 67 (1830-48, posth.), and it employs both more timbral consonance
and fidelity to the original material, providing a degree of release after the tension of the
previous section. I employed some rhythmic distortion and also changed the key of the
excerpt, but otherwise the music is fairly unadulterated. However, I also purposely
subverted the dancing character of the music by interrupting its rhythmic flow.
Ex. 3.31: Material from the Mazurka No. 45 in Chopn.

74
Simon Finlow, Twenty-Seven tudes and Their Antecedents, in The Cambridge Companion
to Chopin, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: CUP, 1992), 54.

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Ex. 3.32: Beginning of Chopins Mazurka No. 45 in A Minor.
The final section of Chopn borrows material from the composers Etude in C
Minor, Op. 25, No. 12 almost verbatim, although the fixed media again equals or
dominates the piano part, at times relegating the Etude to background noise. I made use
of two main ideas from the original work: those of the arpeggiated chords; and the
chromatic descending figuration over a tonic pedal. The borrowed music in the piano part
is gradually obliterated by the pulsing roar of the fixed media, and the work ends with a
placid coda of newly composed material.
Ex. 3.33: Reference to arpeggio figures in Chopins Etude, Op. 25, No. 12. in measure 128 of
Chopn.

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Ex. 3.34: Arpeggio figure in Chopins Etude, Op. 25, No. 12.
Ex. 3.35: Reference to measure 53s chromatic descending to passage in measure 134 of Chopn.
Ex. 3.36: Chromatic descending passage in the Etude, measures 53-5.
Mosaique
Mosaiques (2013) quotational reservoir was influenced by the call for scores for
which the work was composed. This call stipulated that the new composition ought to
have some connection to Berliozs Symphony Fantastique (1830). While I initially toyed
with the idea of freely composing a work that bore some relationship to the program of
the Berlioz, as I spent time reacquainting myself with the piece I realized that I wanted to
use the music in some fashion as well. The first thing that struck me was a short, almost

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inconsequential passage in the first movement, at measure 297, where a fleeting and
transitional string texture repeats for four bars. I remember thinking that this was such a
strikingly propulsive and unusually repetitive moment in the context of the grammar of
Romantic music, and also that in a Minimalist or Post-minimalist lexicon, one could
compose an entire section based on this little idea.
Ex. 3.37: Reduction of measures 297-300 of Movement I of Symphonie Fantastique.
I ended up using this material in the first fast passage of Mosaique almost
verbatim, slowly building to the full texture from the low strings, adding my own
material, and also working in the anacrusis wind gestures as well. The resulting music
begins at rehearsal B in the piece.

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Ex. 3.38: Beginning of the first fast section of Mosaique, at measure 35.
I decided that I would go through the score and find passages like this that would
provide material that would be interesting enough that it could bear fashioning into
extended minimalistic textures, but also prosaic enough that it would not sound as though
I were merely cycling through themes from Symphony Fantastique. I also chose material

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that I could freely manipulate and add to without it being distracting from any new
elements I wanted to employ. For example, after briefly considering the chromatic divisi
string passagework textures in the last movement, I decided against using them, as they
were too recognizable as belonging to the Berlioz. I similarly dismissed the Dies Irae,
guillotine, and ide fixe as being unsuitable for borrowing, as they were also somewhat
obvious. I eventually came up with about twenty short passages to work with, and ten of
those made it into the finished piece.
In addition to the aforementioned passage, I ultimately chose to also employ
measures 59-62 from the first movement as my own introduction, but to strip them down
to their basic harmonies and dilate them into about a minute and a half of slowly evolving
music. After the previously discussed fast passage, I used measures 60-63 from the third
movement of the Berlioz, maintaining the rhythmic drive but elongating the harmonic
progression in extreme augmentation over the course of an entire section. I only took the
material from the winds, transposing the passage up a minor third and distributing it
across the string section. I also used the rhythm from measure 64 in the violins and
employed it throughout the section, particularly in the brass.

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Ex. 3.39: Measures 76-79 from Mosaique, winds and brass.
Ex. 3.40: Measures 59-64 of Berliozs third movement.

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Another example of my allusion to the Berlioz is a passage that borrows from
measures 361-4 from the second movement, although I transformed the material greatly. I
slowed the tempo, changed the meter and orchestration, and changed the harmonic focus
to C minor/A-flat major. I then subjected the material to additive rhythmic processes, also
varying the harmony as I repeated it to suit the directionality I wished to achieve.
Ex. 3.41: Passage at F in Mosaique, harp, percussion and strings.

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Ex. 3.42: Measures 359-65 of Un bal.
While the strings and winds participate in a repetitive and, eventually, additive
linear rhythmic process in this passage, the harp and glockenspiel immediately drift into
their own temporal streams. The brass also eventually enter in two displacement planes,
the first two beats off from the over-meter, the second a beat after that. The result is that

107

in measure 147 a complex cumulative pattern summation point of the processes occurs, at
which juncture the music takes up the next allusion, which is an approximate quadruple
dilation of a transposition of measure 123 from the fourth movement of the Berlioz. I
interpreted the timpani gesture freely and distributed attacks of the tutti chord across
several rhythmic planes, but I kept the strings and other percussion intact, although
transposed. Then the music moves very slowly through the harmonic pattern of the next
few measures in the Berlioz, while engaging in a subtractive linear rhythmic process that
slowly negates the time dilation I had initially imposed on the source material.
Ex. 3.43: Measures 121-7 in the fourth movement of Fantastique, percussion and strings.

108

Ex. 3.44: Rehearsal H in Mosaique, harp through strings. The tied over tremolos are B-flats.
Ex. 3.45: Subtractive rhythmic process shortening the repeated material at the end of the passage.

109

The next allusion to the Berlioz in Mosaique could be thought of as a twin to the
previous one, as it is drawn from just ten measures later in the same movement, at
measure 132. In total I dilated just a few moments of the Berlioz into an entire section of
Mosaique, in hopes of organically linking the two allusions. This next passage is actually
constructed out of two borrowings. I used harmonic material and the bass line from
measure 132, transposed down a minor third, but then interleaved allusions to the cello
and bass gestures at the beginning of the second movement of the Berlioz, first
encountered in measures 3 and 4, but used throughout the movements introduction.
Although this borrowing is of melodic material, I felt it was generic enough as all it
amounts to is a pair of arpeggiated chords, which are also somewhat subsumed by the
texture. The specificity of the allusion to the Berlioz is clear, however, in the
orchestrational technique, and the sequence of a minor triad followed by a diminished
one a minor third away.
Ex. 3.46: Rehearsal I in Mosaique, timpani through strings. The theme from the opening of the
second movement occurs in the third and sixth measures of this excerpt.

110

Ex. 3.47: Measures 129-33 of the fourth movement of Fantastique, timpani through strings.
Ex. 3.48: Measures 7-10 of the second movement of Fantastique, strings, showing the second,
diminished triad arpeggio.
The penultimate section of Mosaique borrows material from the joyous and lively
passage from the final movement at rehearsal D, a roar of joy at her [Harriets] arrival
[at Berliozs funeral].75 I employed a slow process of accrual in using the material from
only measure 31 of the movement, although I initially reorchestrated the parts. For
instance, even though the first part that I deployed comes from the winds in this passage

75
Hector Berlioz, Program Note to Symphony Fantastique, Evergreen State College Music
Document Archive, http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/music/berlioz/berlioz.pdf (accessed October 15,
2014).

111

of the Berlioz, both the winds and violins play it initially. As more orchestrational layers
are added, the material begins to be assigned to the correct instruments, and the section
comes to a crescendo.
Ex. 3.49: Measures 29-34 of the fifth movement of Fantastique.

112

Ex. 3.50: Rehearsal J in Mosaique, at the beginning of the accrual process where certain features
of the texture are absent or rescored.

113

Ex. 3.51: Measures 195-7 of Mosaique, at the culmination of the accrual process.

114

After this climax, there is a brief reference to the material at rehearsal I of Mosaique,
which resolves this time, and a grand pause preceding the coda. The coda is based on
material drawn from the ending of the first movement of Fantastique, the
Religiosamente passage. Using the same basic harmonic pattern, I activated the texture
slightly through the use of repeated notes and added some upper tertian extensions to
some of the chords.
Ex. 3.52: End of the first movement of Fantastique.

115

Ex. 3.53: Coda of Mosaique.

116

(Ex. 3.53, contd)

117

As can be seen from even a cursory investigation of these examples, the
compositional technique of quotation does not always operate on a clearly referential
level, both in terms of the composers intent and in the way in which it is often perceived
by the listener. In the case of Berios structural modeling, an entire movement of
previously composed music acts as a complex scaffold that alludes to the very concept of
allusion itself in nuanced and multifaceted ways, while also deploying surface-level
borrowings in an intricate tapestry of interrelated meanings.
The same is true of McLoskeys borrowing of an entire work in Quartettrope, to
the point of raising the question as to whether such a complete inclusion of previously
composed music even qualifies as quotation, or ought to be considered something else
entirely. This work also utilizes imports in a practical sense from a compositional
standpoint, as they serve to integrate the newly composed music into the fabric of the old.
Additionally, Quartettrope engages in perceptual play in regard to the referential
orientation of the allusions, creating ambiguity in this respect as to which musical
structures are alluding, and which are being alluded to.
The simultaneous application of quotation in the fixed media and live
performance part of an electroacoustic work, as exemplified by Chopn, provides
interesting opportunities for the composer. These include nuanced dialogues and
juxtapositions, programmatic digital manipulation, and interplay between allusions in the
live and electronic facets of the work. New considerations arise when not only borrowing
notes and rhythms from a source, but utilizing actual digital recordings of the original
music in the context of a new work, albeit ones manipulated to a great degree. This

118

results in an opportunity for the composer to engage in a multi-leveled interplay of
allusions which has rich semantic possibilities.
Works that borrow from sources in a way that is primarily concerned with using
the imports as raw materials, with little or no intent towards referential function, such as
Gordons Rewriting and my Mosaique, treat the original works as reservoirs of material,
with the possibility of a resulting unity in the new work generated by the coherent logic
and relative homogeneity of the common source. As has been seen, the genetic imprint of
these materials can find its way to the surface of the new work, coloring and leaving an
indelible residue of their presence.
The compositional methods discussed in this chapter have been nuanced,
borderline examples of musical borrowing, which blur the lines between the techniques
of using direct, evocative quotation in a referential fashion, and that of using borrowing
in ways where the reference may be present, but is really secondary to other purposes for
the practice. The next chapter deals with musical quotation that is not meant to be clearly
perceived as such at all by the listener, and can be characterized as hidden, private, and
clandestine.

CHAPTER 4
CLANDESTINE QUOTATION AND MICRO-QUOTATION
Discussing hidden quotation is a difficult undertaking, as its very nature can
prevent its definite identification. At a certain point, if a borrowing is sufficiently
obscured or is so generic as to lack defining distinguishing characteristics, its function as
a referential signifier can disappear completely. For example, if a composer were to
borrow a simple, generic cadence pattern from a Haydn piano sonata and manipulate it
significantly, could that be said to carry any perceivable symbolic referential weight? A
possible employment of clandestine quotation from such a source is presented in example
4.2, in which the square note-heads represent pitches drawn from the Haydn, in the same
order within voices, although some have been octave-displaced.
Ex. 4.1: Measures 11-12 from Haydns Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Major, Hob.XVI:23.
Ex. 4.2: Possible clandestine quotation of this passage. Black and white square note-heads
represent quoted material.
There is very little potential in this situation for a listener to even realize borrowing is
taking place, as the generic nature of the material and its occluded, rhythmically
119

120
manipulated presentation make its recognition extremely improbable. Even if the listener
is aware of what is taking place and reasonably familiar with the Classical canon, it
seems very unlikely that anyone would be able to determine the source. However, this is
not to say that such borrowings do not have an impact on the resultant music. A pattern
of such compositional practices across the entirety of a work cannot help but have a
profound impact upon the music, especially if the reservoir of materials used shares a
common musical language or a logically coherent self-similarity.
In situations where the borrowed materials are not homogeneous in this way, the
aesthetic can be akin to musical chaos, or that of the diversity of materials blending into
oversaturated static for the listener, as may be the effect for some in works such as
Berios Sinfonia. In cases where a systematic pattern of hidden quotation of coherently
interrelated material is employed, there can also be a genetic imprint on the resulting
music that is derived from the features of the borrowed materials. This means, for
example, that a work that quotes Alban Berg in this fashion will have a quite different
musical outcome than one that quotes Steve Reich. Even if the quotation is not apparent
to the listener, the basic musical features of the imported material will inherently have an
effect on the new composition to a greater or lesser extent, depending on how covertly
they are deployed and the degree to which they are manipulated.
If the instance is a private or personal borrowing on the part of composers who
are either unwilling or unable to inform the listener of their intentions through other
means, and they have obscured the allusion to the point that it is questionable as to
whether or not one is actually present, the issue might be broached of whether or not
attempting to ferret out such allusions violates a composers privacy. For instance, if a

121
musical quotation is meant to have a personal significance between the composer and
another individual, such as a performer, commissioner, or other party, is it ethically
correct to attempt to unravel or decode such a personal communication? The answer to
this question may lie in the fact that if an artwork is performed or published, it ceases to
have this quality of private correspondence and is publicly interpretable. Many scholars,
for instance, have posited explanations for the Sphinxes in Schumanns Carnaval,
which are not borrowings, but are almost certainly cryptic extra-musical allusions. In
editing the work, Clara Schumann minimized their significance by adding the direction
that they ought not to be played. This might indicate that she thought of them as a private
matter, but that has not stopped many authors from their speculations, or pianists from
including the music in performances and recordings.76
On the other hand, some composers enjoy challenging the audience and
performers to guess at their hidden allusions, or simply do not care if these hidden and
private borrowings are discovered. In a 2013 interview with this author, composer
Lansing McLoskey described his attitude towards a performers discovery of an obscured
quotation in his work Star Chamber:
at the climax of the piece, I have a one bar quotation of one of the climactic
moments from the Berg Violin Concerto (1935). I dont mention it, it has nothing
to do with the topic [of my piece] I dont care if anyone recognizes it, and its
folded right into my language, so it doesnt seem completely out of place or
anything. Out of all the violinists that have played the piece, most of them dont
even catch it, but there was one occasion when a violinist said I know that!,
because he had played the concerto. Thats the climax of the Berg Violin
Concerto! And I said, You win!77

76
Rachmaninoff, for example, freely interpreted the sphinxes as murky, low rumbling tremolos in
his 1929 RCA recording. The effect is quite ominous.
77
McLoskey, interview.

122
As can be seen here, although McLoskey considered the allusion a private,
personal matter, his attitude towards the discovery of the hidden quotation in his work
was one of bemusement. This type of situation is probably the more common, as opposed
to that of a composer taking umbrage in the face of the discovery of their hidden
borrowings, and the fact that, in my experience, most composers generally share this
attitude towards aspects of their works that are not readily perceivable might lend a
certain implied permission to analysts in terms of interpreting these hidden features. In
my 2014 interview with Robin Holloway, he expressed a similar attitude towards the
perceptions of his quotations, although his use of the compositional practice is a little
more overt.78
OK-OK
Although there are most likely many examples of the technique of hidden or
clandestine quotation in music across the entirety of history, the only times we can
definitively assert its presence are when there is musicological evidence, either in the
composers words or writings, that the allusion is present, or as in cases like Ivess West
London discussed in chapter 2, in which the composer provides some sort of musical
key to their cypher. Lansing McLoskeys saxophone quartet OK-OK (2004) falls into
both of these categories, as the composer discussed his compositional techniques in this
work with this author in a 2013 interview, and he also includes a brief passage of direct
musical quotation at the end of the quartet, which provides a clue to the source of the
borrowing. McLoskey described the impetus for composing this work:
OK-OK (2006) was a commission for sax quartet, and I can remember my exact
thinking. I was really into Charlie Parker, but was first introduced to his music not
through recordings of Charlie Parker himself, but rather by way of Supersax.

78
Robin Holloway, interview with the author, Miami Beach, October 5, 2014.

123
Supersax was a big band that transcribed Charlie Parker solos, and then assigned
them, sometimes in unison, sometimes in parallel 4ths, or something similar, to
the sax section. Its completely awesome! And I thought that Id take a Charlie
Parker song, but, instead of just supersaxing it, I decided that I would totally
recontextualize, deconstruct, and reconstruct the music.79
This piece is of particular interest to this essay, as it turns out that there are many
fascinating parallels and contrasts between it and the accompanying doctoral
composition, Necessary Steps. Not only do both of these works draw materials from the
solos of jazz improvisations, but there are interesting similarities and differences in terms
of how McLoskey chose to use the borrowed materials in comparison with approaches
used in Steps.
OK-OK uses multiple corridors of clandestine quotation, as well as an example of
direct referential quotation which acts as a key to the origins of the more hidden varieties.
McLoskey says that he used Charlie Parkers solo from Ko-Ko to generate all of the
materials in the work, asserting that none of the music was really newly, freely composed
by him. One striking difference between my approach and McLoskeys is that while I
chose to sometimes alter or expand the rhythms of the borrowed materials in Necessary
Steps, he chose to completely strip all of the rhythmic features from the Parker solo and
use the pitches as if they were a series, albeit in a very free fashion.
The melodic material is at times directly generated by the sequence of pitches in
the Parker solo, and at other times uses multiple sequences of pitches from the solo
against one another, in counterpoint, or in juxtaposition. McLoskey did point out certain
gestures in his piece that he used to subtly suggest the jazzy nature of the material to
which he was alluding, but, for the most part, he tried to avoid composing music that

79

124
sounded like slowed down jazz.80 He also discussed his compositional technique of
using segments of the series he derived from Parkers solo to create melodic material,
stating that
the heart of the piece is this soprano sax solo [at rehearsal A], and whatever pitch
I was on, 35 or so, I started writing a solo, in large chunks. So this passage might
be comprised of pitches 35-36-37-38, then 39-40-41-42-43, then 44-45-46-47, and
then I would go back and use pitch 48-49-50 in the other parts accompanying the
solo.81
Ex. 4.3: Melodic materials in OK-OK, whose pitches were drawn directly from Parkers solo in
Ko-Ko. Soprano sax solo, measures 35-43.

80
Ibid.
81
Ibid.

125
McLoskey also used the pitch materials from Parkers solo to generate the
harmonic structures in OK. He created a twelve-tone row out of the order that each
chromatic pitch appears in the Parker solo, then constructed chords out of this row for use
in his homophonic and harmonically oriented sections. He noted that he avoided any of
the typical serial permutations of the row, such as transposition, retrograde, or retrograde
inversion, but kept using this twelve note series mostly verbatim throughout the work. He
does, however, make limited use of the inversion of the row at certain points, in a loose
and free fashion.
Ex. 4.4: McLoskeys twelve-tone row, derived from the Parker solo.
Ex. 4.5: Repeated-note passage at rehearsal D that sequentially presents the row in OK. The score
is transposed.

126
(Ex. 4.5, contd)
The homophonic texture at measure 125 also uses the row, as well as its inversion
based on G. McLoskey skips over the tenth note of the row in the last chord here, but
uses it immediately in the next measure along with the twelfth, as the faster, melodically-
oriented music based on the solos series resumes.
Ex. 4.6: Harmonic use of the row at rehearsal G, ordering noted. The second set of ordering
numbers refers to the inversion of the row based on its initial pitch. Again, recall that the score is
transposed.
Ex. 4.7: Inversion of McLoskeys row, based on G.
Additionally, McLoskey used the prime form of this row as the subject for an
aleatoric section, where each performer is given it in total as the basis for their

127
improvisation. Although they are free to perform the pitches in any rhythm or register, it
is significant that the ordered row is given as a starting point. That McLoskey indicates
that the saxophonists are to play this part like improvised jazz solos is also worth
mentioning, as this can be construed as a stylistic allusion to the source material,
comparable to similar indications in Necessary Steps.
Ex. 4.8: Aleatoric passage in OK, measure 123, transposed score.
Finally, at the end of the quartet, the final thirteen bars of Ko-Ko are presented
unadulterated in octaves, providing a clue to the listener as to the provenance of the
borrowed materials in this work. This is a similar practice to the epigraph of the Ives song
discussed in chapter 2, which probably, if Burkholders assertions were sound, ought to
be considered an example of clandestine quotation as well. McLoskeys use of a direct,
unmasked allusion here at the end of the quartet functions to suggest to the listener that a
deeper level, occluded borrowing technique is being employed, perhaps prompting the
listener to explore the work more deeply.

128
Ex. 4.9: Final bars of OK, where the direct quotation from Ko-Ko occurs.

129
Ex. 4.10: Transcription of the last 13 measures of Charlie Parkers solo from Ko-Ko.
Robin Holloway
In his 2007 article, Into the New Century: Recent Holloway and the Poetics of
Quotation, John Fallas discusses several works by this composer. While many of Robin
Holloways later works overtly draw on previously composed music for inspiration and
materials, Fallas points here to the fact that in some of his recent pieces the borrowings
are more hidden and also more numerous than suggested by the composers previous
writings discussing his use of this compositional technique. Fallas states that Holloways
music quotes more, and more covertly, than many of his own published statements
might lead one to believe, and that it is often hard to say where he stops or where
others begin.82 In the light of such assertions, Holloways music deserves discussion in
this chapter in relation to his more hidden, subsumed musical borrowings.
That this composer uses preexisting music as a core generative compositional
technique is no secret, and his recent output is rife with instances of easily perceivable,
referential quotation, as well as nuanced and subtle juxtapositions of borrowings from
multiple sources and manipulations of these allusions by varying degrees. His use of
allusions in his Second Concerto for Orchestra (1978) also demonstrates a

82
John Fallas, Into the New Century: Recent Holloway and the Poetics of Quotation, Tempo 61,
no. 242 (October 2007): 2.

130
compositionally practical application of quotation, using recognizable music to delineate
complex processes that might not otherwise be apparent to the typical listener. In my
2013 interview with Holloway, he discussed his reasons for doing this:
I wanted to get that amount of complexity [that exists in the Carter Concerto for
Orchestra], but I wanted it to be clearly signaled at all points, to a first time, and
any time, audience So what is done to [the material], the metamorphoses to
which it is subjected, these modernistic things, are not done to a bit of abstract
intervallic material, theyre done to O Sole Mio, or Love Me Tender, or
whatever, and everyones going to get that.83
Holloway uses borrowings in the full range of the perceptual gamut. However, his use of
extant music in a manner which may escape the casual listener is of particular interest in
the discussion of works that utilizes clandestine quotation.
John Fallas points to Robin Holloways First Symphony (2000) and the second
movement of his Fourth Concerto for Orchestra (2007) as examples of densely
interwoven textures created from short snippets of various other historical works. In his
2009 article, he notes that not only is the Symphony rife with allusions, but they are so
integrated into Holloways music that the borrowings emerge from and fade back into
extended passages in which one is hardly aware there are quotations at all, so that it
comes as a shock to look closely [at the music] and see just how densely populated it is
with these other voices, no longer heard as others.84 He particularly notes this density
of borrowings at rehearsal 12 of the Symphony, which he asserts includes allusions to
two works each of Strauss and Debussy, as well as prominent works of Sibelius, Elgar,
Mahler, Scriabin, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky.85

83
Holloway, interview.
84
Fallas, 3-4.
85
Ibid.

131
Fig. 4.1: John Fallass reduction of Holloways First Symphony, from rehearsal 12, highlighting
interleaved quotations used by the composer.
Source: John Fallas, Into the New Century: Recent Holloway and the Poetics of Quotation,
Tempo 61, no. 242 (October, 2007): 4.

132
Ex. 4.11: Opening of Mahlers Ninth Symphony, measures 3-6.
Ex. 4.12: Salomes leitmotif from the Strauss, first encountered in the opening bars of the opera in
the clarinet.
Ex. 4.13: Beginning of Nimrod, from Elgars Enigma Variations, violins.
Ex. 4.14: Opening of Sibeliuss Fourth Symphony, bassoons and cellos.

133
What Fallas hears as a reference to Debussys Jeux (1913) at 11 measures after
rehearsal 12 must be very oblique indeed, if this is in fact intended by Holloway, as these
pitches and rhythms do not occur together at all in the Debussy. The generic interval
pattern of the chromatic scale is common enough in the work, but this precise rhythm is
absent. However, there are several possible passages that this motive in the Holloway
might be obscurely alluding to, such as the piccolo four measures after rehearsal 33, four
measures after rehearsal 34, or the bassoon one measure after rehearsal 40. This latter has
much to recommend it comparatively, as the passage in the Holloway is also scored for
bassoon.
Ex. 4.15: Possible sources from Debussys Jeux, for Fallass 11 measures after rehearsal 12.
or,
or, more likely,
Holloways use of these particular late Romantic and early Modern period works
evokes, to this author, the idea of early twentieth-century European decadence and
romanticism colliding with the violence of primitivism representing the oncoming war.
This interpretation is informed by the composers own words about the work in his
program note relating to his attempt at a musical summation of the twentieth century, in
which he states that materials of its own making [are] gradually welded into a lingua
franca, to end after two black World Wars separated by a scarlet scherzo, then an ice-blue

134
Cold War.86 In our 2014 interview he also discussed a similar sort of musical
symbolisms presence in the juxtapositions of Rosenkavalier, La valse, and the Rite in
Berios Sinfonia. It makes sense, therefore, that if the composer perceives such symbols
as interacting in this way in the music of another, he might be employing them with
similar intentions here.
Nancarrow Meditations
Nancarrow Meditations (2013) is a solo piano work that imports material from
that composers Rhythm Study #1 (pub. 1952) and Study #36 for Player Piano (Canon
17/18/19/20) (ca. 1965-77).87 This work was one of the first in which I used what I have
come to call the technique of micro-quotation, where the materials borrowed were so
monadic, generic, and nondescript that it is difficult for the listener to apprehend that
quotation is happening at all. Nevertheless, the use of the Nancarrow works as reservoirs
of material generated musical ideas that may have not have naturally occurred to me in
the process of composing a new piece in my normal idiom, and brought certain atomic
features into the composition that I may not have otherwise employed. The result was a
certain tint or sheen to the musical surface of Meditations that was at once attractive to
me aesthetically and, after the fact, fascinating in its alien nature. Here was a work that I
had undoubtedly composed myself in my customary style, with all its attendant
techniques, selection, and continuation preferences, and yet there was something foreign
and other about it, whose effect on my musical language in the piece seemed almost

86
Robin Holloway, Program Note to Symphony, Op. 88, RobinHolloway.info, http://www.
robinholloway.info/compositions/088symphony.html (accessed December 14, 2014)
87
Nancarrow did not assiduously date nor document the completion of many of his works, so,
aside from such pieces as the Rhythm Study #1, which was published in Henry Cowells New Music
Quarterly in 1952, the best we have are approximations or date ranges for many of his works. The ones
given here are from Kyle Ganns Conlon Nancarrow: Annotated Works List, KyleGann.com,
http://www.kylegann.com/cnworks.html (accessed November 14, 2014).

135
alchemical. That the borrowings were totally clandestine in nature was clearly proven to
me when, after the premier and another demonstrative performance at a social meeting
with several composers, colleagues incredulously inquired how much of the page was
Nancarrow, and how much my own music. I replied that it was all Nancarrow, which,
again, was met with skepticism.
My compositional process in this work was very free and meditative in nature, as
the title suggests. I decided to draw from Nancarrows rhythm studies, and intentionally
chose both an early and a late work to provide as wide a representation of the composers
developmental arc as possible. I simply began at the beginning, so to speak, looking
initially at the first page of the Rhythm Study #1, which Kyle Gann calls an arch-form
study over ostinatos at a tempo ratio of 4:788 The D-flat quintal trichord and E major
chord a minor third away from its root that opens this work is used to open my own, and
I even decided to use a similar rhythmic dissonance grouping process to Nancarrows in
his initial passage, although I chose different proportions for mine and discarded the
septuplet-against-eight rhythmic feature, which resulted in a musical outcome with
relatively much simpler ratio relationships.
Ex. 4.16: Opening of Nancarrow Meditations.

88
Ibid. What Gann means is that it is a 4/4-against-7/8 pattern within the same temporal unit,
which might be more accurately described as in a ratio of 7:8, or seven eighths against four quarters.

136
Ex. 4.17 Opening of Nancarrows Rhythm Study #1.
While this is a direct and relatively unmanipulated allusion to the original music,
the materials are quite generic. That I chose to allow the chords to sustain, as opposed to
their secco presentation in the original composition, also serves to obscure the source.
The deviation from the canonic proportions of the Nancarrow also help to achieve this, as
these processes are a prominent feature of this his music. After this process runs its
course fifteen measures later, there is a short transitional passage that draws loosely from
Study #1, in that the melodic fragments used to approach the chords bear certain
similarities to melodic materials in the 4/16 pattern in measures 5 and 6 of that piece.
Ex. 4.18: Measures 17-21 of Meditations.
Ex. 4.19: Similar materials in Study #1, measures 5-6. Note the C-sharp, D, E, and E, C, E-flat
89
patterns in the upper 4/16 measures.

89
This work has multiple simultaneous metric patterns, which are independently mensurated and
are unnumbered. For convenience, measure numbers refer to the 4/4-against-7/8 pattern, and have been
added to the manuscript by this author.

137
The next part of Meditations consists of a perpetual motion texture, drawing its
basic materials from the 5/16 grouping in measure 7 of Study #1. The first beamed unit,
from measure 26-8, draws from the first of these measures, with the left hand transposed
up an octave. The second unit draws from the second 5/16 grouping in measure 7, with
the upper and lower voices switched. The third unit is connected through the E,
parenthesized in Ex. 4.20, m. 30, which elides the previous pattern into the new one. This
new pattern contains all of the pitches, in order, from the third 5/16 grouping in measure
7 of the Nancarrow, but changes their registers. The beamed unit that begins in measure
32 is a reordered return to the material of the second unit in measure 28, with registral
changes, and this unit elides into the next through the G parenthesized in 4.20, into the
beamed unit in measure 34, which is a more literal return to this same material. This
elides through the parenthesized E just prior to measure 35 back into a literal return to the
material from the third beamed unit encountered in measure 30, which this time does not
elide into the next beamed unit. This unit consists of a registral inversion of the second
beamed unit from measure 28.

138
(Ex. 4.20, contd)
Ex. 4.21: Measures 7-8 of Study #1.
Thus, through the techniques of cellular repetition and registral manipulation, I
expanded these three short measures from Nancarrows Study #1 into an extended section
of music in Meditations, using the materials in such a way that the nature of the allusion
was not readily apparent. The selection of these particular materials resulted in a
hybridization of Nancarrows and my own aesthetic selection preferences, as my choices
to work with these specific materials exists as a subset of his choices, and the borrowing
in my work was further subsumed by my decisions in the deployment of the materials in
rhythmic processes and the use of pitch set elision.
The beamed unit beginning in measure 36 is fragmented into a short rhythmic
dissonance process, whose completion resolves down by half-step into the next

139
borrowing, which takes the six note pattern found in two 9/32 groupings in measure 9 of
the Nancarrow. This is repeated several times under repeating scalar passages
extrapolated from the previous material, then treated to 2:3 augmentation as the scalar
four-pattern is gradually interrupted by five patterns, causing offset displacement
rhythmic dissonance.90
Ex. 4.22: Measures 41-6 from Meditations.
Ex. 4.23: Measure 9 from Study #1.
In measure 48 the five-sixteenth-note pattern takes over completely in descending
scalar runs again, while the pattern in the left hand changes mode, returns to its original
tempo, and is shortened from six to five eighth notes.

90
The terms displacement and grouping dissonance that I use to discuss particular types of
rhythmic irregularity come from the writings of Harald Krebs, et al, particularly his excellent Fantasy
Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann (New York: OUP, 1999).

140
This is followed by free development of the material and similar rhythmic
dissonance processes. Another clandestine allusion to the Nancarrow is located at
measure 70 in Meditations. I took a seven note pattern from measure 9 of Study # 1, and
a six note pattern from measure 17-18, and juxtaposed them simultaneously, in a
grouping dissonance of 6:7. Rather than allow the process to run to completion, I
interrupted the fourth iteration of the 7-cycle after the third note, realigning the pattern at
the beginning of the fifth 6-cycle. I allowed the pattern to run one cycle longer this time,
then, in the fifth iteration of the 7-cycle after the second note where the 6-cycle lines up
with it, I introduced a sixteenth note displacement dissonance, shifting the 6-cycle
forward, and the result is a running sixteenth-note passage. I allowed the 7-cycle to come
into line with the prevailing meter at measure 80, then began gradually changing notes to
harmonically develop the material.
Ex. 4.25: Juxtaposed allusions to measures 9 and 17-18 of Rhythm Study #1 and rhythmic
dissonance processes from measure 70-81.

141
(Ex. 4.25, contd)
Ex. 4.26: Measures 9 and 17-18 from Rhythm Study #1.
After a transposed return to the material of Meditations introduction, I used a
new allusion at measure 105, which refers to the third system of Study #36. I initially
deploy it in a 10-cycle against the 8-cycle of the 4/4 meters eighth note, but shifted it
into a 15-cycle as I juxtaposed it against a major third transposition of itself in a 16-cycle
consistent with the main meter, creating a 15:16 grouping dissonance. Study #36 is not
metered, but the borrowed material can be found in the fourth system of the first page.

142
Ex. 4.28: Study #36, first page, third system.
I then fragmented these cells between both hands in off-set sixteenth notes,
beginning a linear additive process with the first four notes of their combined interleaved
pitch order, starting in measure 117, that comes to completion in measure 123, at which
point I started gradually changing notes in the pattern, creating a sequence of harmonies
through half-step voice leading and common tones.
After I felt I had developed the material sufficiently, I subjected it to a linear
subtractive process that leads into a scalar passage using the notes of the new harmonies,
with 4+5- and 4+4-cycles, creating a 9:8 grouping dissonance pattern between the hands.
Ex. 4.30: 8:9 rhythmic dissonance in measures 132-4 of Meditations.

143
This is followed by a re-use of the sixteenth-note texture, whose pitches I
systematically and gradually altered, culminating in a linear additive statement of
extended tertian arpeggios, drawn from the third page of Study #36, in the third system.
Ex. 4.31: Linear additive statement of extended thirds arpeggio in measures 148-51.
Ex. 4.32: Source of this material in Study #36, third page, third system.
Fig. 4.2: Harmonies expressed in measures 138-49 of Meditations. Note common-tone and
half-step voice-leading between pitch collections

144
The next passage, whose beginning can be seen at the end of example 4.31, in
measure 154, is another borrowing from the Nancarrow. This material comes from Study
#36, from page five, first system. I took the motives from the top two staves, transposed
them, and appended them in running sixteenth notes. I then shuffled the notes, integrating
the two motives into one gesture, then separated them back out into two. At this point I
transformed the gesture, reflecting the arpeggio through its last note and transposing the
chromatic descent down into the left hand. I then shuffled those gestures, and once they
were integrated into running sixteenth notes, I began varying the harmony by gradually
changing notes as the pattern repeats, using half-step and common tone voice-leading.
Ex. 4.33: Measures 155-60 of Meditations, in which I shuffled and reflected the two motives from
the Nancarrow.
Ex. 4.34: Study #36, fifth page, first system.

145
Fig. 4.3: Harmonic structures in measures 161-70 of Meditations. Note voice-leading between
pitch collections
This is followed by a linear subtractive process, which eventually removes
material from both ends of the pattern, down to three repeating sixteenth notes. These
continue in the left hand through the end, where a motive based on the extended tertian
arpeggio from the previous allusion undergoes rhythmic expansion and contraction over
the top of it, culminating in a run up to the top note, concluding the piece.
Ex. 4.35: Final bars of Nancarrow Meditations.
Apollonian Echo
Apollonian Echo (2014) is scored for flute, oboe, horn, and string quintet. In
deciding what materials to use as the basis for my clandestine quotations in this work, I
was influenced, not by the particular instrumentation, which might have suggested the
Balakirev, minus the piano, but by the number of musicians involved in the ensemble. I

146
considered borrowing from several mixed octets in the Classical, Romantic, and Modern
repertoires, such as the Spohr, Schubert, or Hindemith Octets, Varses Octandre,
Xenakiss Anaktoria, or even from a combination of these sources, but eventually
decided to use Stravinskys Octet for winds and brass (1923, rev. 1952). The reason for
this decision was two-fold: first, I decided to only use one source because of the built-in
unity of materials that I had discovered such borrowing could provide; and second, I was
composing this work during the season of the Rite of Springs centenary, so the
composers music was very much in the air. The title is a reference to Louis Andreissen
and Elmer Schonbergers book The Apollonian Clockwork, which discusses Stravinskys
Neo-Classical period, of which the Octet is an early example.
I started composition of this work with two main ideas in mind. I wanted to use
motives, small cells, and harmonic ideas from the Stravinsky at varying levels of
perceptibility throughout the piece, beginning generally from the end of the Octet and
working towards the beginning. I also decided to allude stylistically to the piece, not by
imitating Stravinskys Neo-Classical style, but by trying to think about what in my own
musical language could be considered Apollonian, and focusing on these aspects in this
work. As I stated in my program note for Echo, I wanted to attempt, as it were, to create
an Apollonian clockwork of my own, in my musical language.
That being said, I did directly borrow motives from Stravinskys Octet in this
piece, extracting the materials in reverse order from the order that they appear in that
work. The initial melodic motive in Echo is an elaboration of the motivic cell in the
clarinet in measure 92 of the finale of the Octet, shown in examples 4.37.

147
Ex. 4.36: Initial passage from Apollonian Echo, which uses a distortion and extension of a cell
from rehearsal 66 of Stravinskys Octet.
Ex. 4.37: Rehearsal 66 of the Octets finale, from which the opening gestures of Echo are derived.
The opening sections slow, descending scalar scaffolding is drawn from the final
movement of Octet as well, being loosely based on a rhythmically dilated retrograde of
the ascending scale in the final bars of this movement.
Ex. 4.38: Measures 9-16 of Echo, which draws both its scalar scaffolding and separated tenuto
notes from a reverse ordering of material from the final passage of the Octet.

148
This is also the source of the separated tenuto notes in the oboe and horn in
measures 9-16. The melodic gesture that begins at rehearsal A of Echo is a further
allusion to the final passage in the Octet, and its counterpart is located in the trombones,
in measures 177-85.
Ex. 4.39: Motive at rehearsal A in Echo, which references the trombones from 177-85 of the final
movement of the Stravinsky.
Ex. 4.40: Final passage from Stravinskys Octet, measure 165-end.

149
(Ex. 4.40, contd)
The accompaniment pattern at rehearsal A in the cello and bass is also borrowed
from the Stravinsky. I took the bassoon accompaniment from the attacca transition
between the middle and final movements and freely used various isolated cells from it in
repetition, in a technique consistent with micro-quotation.
Ex. 4.41: Transition between the middle and final movements of Stravinskys Octet, which I used
to generate accompaniment patterns in the section beginning at rehearsal A.
The passage in Echo beginning at measure 30 borrows from measures 160-7 of
the last movement of the Octet, which I re-orchestrated and elaborated. This material
then evolves into the next borrowed motive, which, although short and slightly altered, is
fairly easily perceivable. It is drawn from the bassoon solo in the beginning of the last
movement of Octet, from the anacrusis to measure 4 through measure 6. The idea is
initially presented in two displacement dissonance layers, each a quarter note off-set from
the other, in the flute and oboe in measures 38-39. After some fragmentation of the
motive in measures 41-2, I aligned the two layers, but kept them off-set from the

150
prevailing meter by an eighth note, then presented them in rhythmic consonance in
measures 45-6.
Ex. 4.42: Use of a motive from the beginning of the third movement of the Octet, in Echo.
Ex. 4:43: This motives location in Stravinskys Octet, in the first 6 measures of the last
movement.
After a brief return to the previous material, I then used another borrowing from
the Stravinsky. However, this is not immediately apparent, as it is arrived at through a
linear additive process, presented in the violin, which begins in measure 54. The pattern
begins with the first three eighth notes worth of the allusion, adding an eighth on each
repetition. Then, after it has reached a length of eight eighth notes in measure 58, the
process is reversed, subtracting an eighth note from the front end of the pattern this time
in a subtractive linear process. Once it returns to three eight notes in length, it repeats
twice, then winds down to nothing, ending on the down beat of measure 62. The flute
fragments roughly follow the line of the violin here.

151
Ex. 4.44: Linear rhythmic processes from measure 54-62 in Echo.
This four beat motive used in this additive process is drawn directly from the flute
part in measure 154-5 of the final movement of Stravinskys Octet, transposed a major
third, but otherwise unadulterated. However, due to the allusions gradual presentation
and subsequent fragmentation, its nature is highly occluded.
Ex. 4.45: Measures 153-5 of the last movement of the Octet, from which the culmination of the
linear rhythmic process in measures 54-62 was drawn.
The next short section of Echo is mostly freely composed, comprised of multiple
simultaneous rhythmic layers which undergo independent additive and subtractive
processes, but the high flute descant is a borrowing from Stravinsky, drawn from the

152
trumpet part in the same measures as the previous borrowing. The first iteration is
transposed and the second is at pitch, but in a higher octave and flutter-tongued.
Ex. 4.46: Flute part from measures 62-8 of Echo.
Ex. 4.47: Measures 154-6, of the Octet, brass.
The fragmentary and antiphonal scalar materials that propel the music into the
slow central section of Echo are also reflections of a passage from Stravinskys Octet,
although their generic nature diminishes their perceivable referential weight. In keeping
with my idea of moving backwards through the Octet, this passage is actually a literal
retrograde of both the pitches and rhythms of the flute line in measures 153-9, with a
slight distortion of the clarinet line from measure 18 woven into its conclusion.
Ex. 4.48: Measures 69-74 of Echo.
Ex. 4.49: Measures 153-9 of the Octet, flute, whose retrograde I used, and measures 17-19,
clarinet.

153
The slow central section of Apollonian Echo treats borrowed materials from the
Octet with a much greater degree of rhythmic profile manipulation. I also moved on to
the second movement of the Octet in search of materials, reflecting my plan to travel
generally backwards through it. This section of Echo uses pitches from the theme and
variations movement in a very loose way, as much of the sections material that is not
directly quoting motives from the Octet resulted from my visually scanning through the
movement and selecting pitches based on whichever one my eye fell upon next on the
page. The first concrete allusion to the Stravinsky is a reference to the first melodic
portion of his theme in this variation movement, which is presented in Echo in a
rhythmically manipulated fashion at rehearsal E in the flute and horn, then more literally
by the oboe and viola in measures 79 and 80.
Ex. 4.50: Rehearsal E in Echo, winds and horn.
Ex. 4.51: Measures 79-84 of Echo, with Stravinskys theme alluded to in the viola and oboe.

154
Ex. 4.52: Beginning of Stravinskys theme in the second movement of the Octet.
I then used the second melodic portion of Stravinskys theme as the subject of a
loose block additive process in measures 86 through 97 of Echo. By loose I mean that I
gradually added the pitches of the motive, but treated the rhythm freely, shifting the
resulting line around to suit my compositional preferences. It begins with just the third
and the ninth, which is also expressed as a minor second in certain voices, then pitches
accumulate on the front end of the gesture, culminating in the entire sequence of five
pitches in measure 97, at which point Echo ceases referencing borrowed material in favor
of newly-composed homophony leading into the cadential material of measure 102,
which is itself a borrowing.
Ex. 4.53: Measures 85-97 of Echo, with its additive process based on Stravinskys theme, flute
through violin I.

155
(Ex. 4.53, contd)
Ex. 4.54: Second part of Stravinskys theme, measures 5-8.
Measure 102 of Echo jumps ahead somewhat in terms of my reverse score-order
quotation plan, but this portends the advent of the first movements materials, on which
the next section of Echo focuses. This allusion borrows from one of the few clear tonal
cadences in Stravinskys Octet, which occurs in measure 39-41, a chromatically
approached half cadence that would not seem out of place in the late Romantic idiom.

156
Ex. 4.55: Measures 101-3 of Echo, presented with measures 39-41 of the first movement of
Stravinskys Octet, for comparison.
While this is a prosaic gesture when contextualized within my harmonic lexicon, it is
such a striking moment in the Stravinsky that it figuratively cried out to be highlighted in
terms of the materials I chose to borrow from his work, and is thus relatively
unadulterated in its presentation.
The next section of Echo is a slightly dilated reference to a later passage in the
first movement of the Octet, taking the four note pattern in measures 167-9 and
presenting it in rhythmic alteration, then pivoting on the final note and presenting it in
retrograde.

157
Ex. 4.56: Measures 104-6 of Echo, and 167-9 of the Octet.
The final fast section of Echo contains many fragmentary references to motives in
the first movement of the Octet, as well as a couple of allusions to material from the last
as it references its own earlier sections, but the focus is on the former. The passage starts
with a slightly altered borrowing from the last movement, specifically the second
trumpets gesture in measure 83, with its initial pitch lowered by a half-step and the
whole motive transposed a minor third. This is immediately followed by the use of the
motive in the flutes and other voices in measures 44-6 of the first movement, a similar
gesture to the previous allusion. I then draw another motive from measures 47-8, where
this four-note figure is extended into an asymmetrical 5/8 measure and is followed by
two staccato notes an octave apart. As this idea is extended and repeated in fragmentation

158
by the first violin, the viola plays a pizzicato passage very loosely based on the contour
of the first trombones part from measures 48-53 of the Octet.
Measure 113 of Echo references the flute part in measures 42-3 of the Octet,
whose material I already borrowed in measures 104-6. I then took the first trumpets
motives from measures 44-5 of the Stravinsky, in 1:2 rhythmic diminution, using them in
the first violin part. After this I employed measures 50-51 of the flute part from the Octet
in the flute part of Echo, in measure 114, with its first two notes reversed, and append
measure 33s flute material onto the end of it. This is accompanied in the violin by an
allusion to the Octets measure 44 first bassoon part, followed immediately by a reference
to the clarinet part from measure 45-6 of the third movement. Returning to the first
movement for materials, I then based my accompaniment pattern on a combination of the
previously used material from measure 83, altered fragmentations of the bassoon parts
from measure 69-70, and octatonic scalar material that references the theme from the
second movement of the Octet.

159
Starting in measure 118 of Echo, there is a linear additive process in the first
violin based on the first bassoon part in measure 36 of the first movement of the Octet,
adding a sixteenth note on each repetition. Here I rounded up to the nearest eighth-note
rhythmic value by adding rests or rhythmic value to the back end of the pattern to prevent
any iteration beginning on a weak sixteenth note, simplifying the resultant rhythms. At
the culmination of the process, the flute takes up this motive and the second bassoon part
from measure 36 of the Octet is presented simultaneously in the second violin. The
accompaniment patterns that underlie this process are built on previously encountered
cells, more octatonic scales, and a very loose reference to the first trumpet part in
measures 140-2 of the Octet.

160
The gesture in the violins that begins in measure 121 of Echo and continues into
measure 122, where they are joined by the winds, is drawn from the flute and clarinet
motives in measure 35 of Octet. I then used measures 33-2 of the same voices, but in
retrograde, maintaining and extending the juxtaposed 3-cycle rhythmic grouping
dissonance that Stravinsky used in measure 32, also in retrograde form. The material
from measure 32 remains the motivic focus for the rest of this section.
This material becomes the dominant motive in the texture through the end of the
section, although the horn, cello, and viola begin to sporadically play fragments of

161
measures 69-70 and 36, which have previously been employed in this section. The
material of Stravinskys 3-cycle grouping dissonance begins to be employed at various
rhythmic displacement dissonance planes here as well, heightening the drama and tension
and propelling the music into a climax.
The rest of the piece consists mainly of newly composed coda material with some
subtle melodic and harmonic reflections of previously discussed borrowings. I think that
this piece is extremely successful on its own terms as an independent work, whether the
listener is aware of the presence of the Stravinsky or not, and is imbued both with a
strong inherent unity brought about by the self-similarity of the borrowed materials and
an interesting aesthetic divergence from my customary compositional idiom. This is
acheived not only by the inherent characteristics of the borrowed materials, but also by
the ways that their characteristics influenced the newly composed music with which they
were juxtaposed. For instance, the octatonic bass line in measures 117-21 is not a musical

162
feature that I would ordinarily choose to use in the composition of a work in my present
harmonic/melodic language. But, due to both the harmonic nature of the materials this
passage is accompanying and the octatonic basis of the theme of the second movement of
Stravinskys Octet, it was a compositional choice that made sense in the context of Echo.
As was discussed in the introduction to this chapter, the practices of clandestine
and micro-quotation are difficult to discuss in terms of citing concrete examples and their
impacts in specific works, as they are often difficult to definitively identify. Even in the
context of discussing my own works, given that a span of time has passed between
composition and analysis, the veil of memory creates an ambiguity in identifying this or
that motive or cells provenance. As the way in which I sometimes use this technique is
intuitive and meditative, and given that I often do not keep a record of every
compositional decision that I make, analyzing works in which I used this technique can
sometimes amount to motive hunting through what I know to be the quotations
source. This is especially true in works like Apollonian Echo, Nancarrow Meditations,
and Necessary Steps, where I allowed myself the compositional freedom to not only
liberally borrow from a reservoir of materials, but to also then freely manipulate those
materials in such a manner that their origins are all but totally occluded. One particular
issue in regards to Echo was that, just as Stravinsky logically developed his motives, I
too developed the ideas that I had borrowed from him in my piece, creating great
ambiguity in some situations as to whether certain musical cells were my developments
of these materials, or allusions to or distortions of Stravinskys developments.
This situation leads to an interesting philosophical question regarding these
practices: At what point does this compositional technique cease to really be quotation?

163
If the borrowing is so manipulated, so hidden, or simply too generic to be perceived as
relating to the source in any meaningful way for the listener, where is the line between
the borrowings and the composers craft in the resulting work? Does this type of
borrowing carry any rhetorical weight or narrative significance in the new music? These
questions, as well as many other issues raised by the varying practices of musical
quotation, will be addressed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 5
POTENTIAL USES OF QUOTATION AS A COMPOSITIONAL TOOL
AND ITS RHETORICAL RAMIFICATIONS
In speculating on the meaning of the quotation as a compositional technique, two
perspectives must be examined. Firstly, the source of the quotation and the connotations
of the work and tradition from which it is drawn; and, secondly, the manner of its usage,
degree of manipulation, and place in the musical hierarchy of the new work. Only with a
thorough understanding of these parameters can the listener or analyst attempt to form an
idea of the composers purpose in borrowing elements from other works, and what
meaning or ideas can be conveyed to the listener through these appropriations. As
Christopher Ballantine muses in his article on quotation in the music of Ives,
Sometimes the new piece will appropriate features of styles to which it is

related only distantly or not at all. It is these stylistic leaps, the unheralded
appearance of atavistic or exogenous traits as part of a new art work, that
dramatically attract attention to themselves and raise questions that call for
a systematic answer. The simplest and most basic of these questions is:
What does the incorporation of these foreign elements mean?91
What Ballantine refers to here is that the advent of borrowed material within a
new work can be a striking rhetorical statement on the part of the composer. Such an
event calls out to the listener, immediately demanding an explanation or interpretation on
their part. In Ivess case, Ballantine describes his quotations as existing anywhere on a
continuum from totally stripped of meaning and used purely as musical resources, to
explicitly and directly referential, being utilized for their semantic connotations. While
this begs the question as to whether it is even possible to strip meaning from preexisting

91
Ballantine, 167.
164

165

music if its presence is perceivable, there are certainly varying possible degrees of
referential impact that depend on the way in which the borrowed music is employed. This
perceptual continuum seems evident and has been clearly demonstrated by the array of
examples in the preceding chapters. Furthermore, Ballantine asserts that, when
referential, Ivess quotations carry differing shades of meaning and connotations. He
posits that in Fourth of July, for example, Ivess quotations represent not an objective
reproduction of an aural experience, but the communication of an attitude towards the
original occasiona way not only of hearing but also responding, feeling, relating,
thinking92
On the other hand, certain of Ivess works incorporate direct associative
quotation, driven by vocal music stripped of its text, which Ballantine likens to Bachs
use of Lutheran chorale tunes to import the symbolic weight of their liturgical
connotations. Ivess General William Booth Enters into Heaven may be taken as one
example of this, with its references to hymn tunes, but his output is rife with such
borrowings. As previously mentioned in chapter 2, Ballantine also points to the quotation
of There is a Fountain at the end of Ivess song West London, which he claims has the
effect of subtly and ironically over-throwing [the poets] easy optimism, since it
connotes, by association back to the absent text, the idea of a purification by blood.93
Another avenue of referential quotation employed by Ives is a sort of musical
philosophizing. The work Central Park in the Dark, for example, refers on one level to
the sounds one might hear at night in this location. On another level, as Ballantine points
out, by thus seizing, distorting, truncating the quotations, by implanting them in its own

92
Ibid., 168.
93
Ibid., 173.

166

fabric, the composition uses the associations connoted by those quotations, but implies an
attitude towards them, and that it uses those images as important building blocks,
among others, in the construction of its philosophy.94 Ballantines distinction of this
type of attitude towards quotation is an interesting one, as from a certain perspective all
musical quotation can be interpreted as philosophizing or musically meditating on the
borrowed materials.
An example of such musical philosophizing is also encountered in Ivess
Washingtons Birthday, which, while ostensibly referring to a barn dance, actually bears
little resemblance to the sonic environment encountered at one. As Ballantine puts it,
No barn dance sounds literally as Ives has depicted it here: this is

confusion enhanced and redoubleda musically composed confusion.
Were Ivess purpose merely to depict a barn dance, he could have done it
more simply and with less art. What is added to the simple, literal picture,
then, is art: an enhancement. And this enhancement does not operate
simply at the programmatic level, but rather is a musical characteristic
(Level A) which unites with the programmatic intention (Level B) to yield
a musico-philosophical significance (Level C). The enhanced barn dance
signifies human community offering warmth and a little refuge.95
Referential quotation may be viewed as explicitly and directly implicative, or may
more subtly juxtapose different particular references in a complex interaction of exterior
ideas and nuanced semiotic entanglements. Some of Charles Ivess and Robin
Holloways music could be said to contain these complex referential interactions,
although the high degree of manipulation applied to the source material and multitude of
references within single works sometimes makes objectively discerning clear features of
this interplay difficult. The same could be said of numerous other works that employ
oblique, manipulated, though still discretely identifiable quotation. For example, in the

94
Ballantine, 181.
95
Ibid., 184-5.

167

previously discussed instance of Berios Sinfonia, while it is apparent that the work is
about the idea of allusion, it requires of the listener a deeply nuanced knowledge of broad
swathes of music history and literature for a full understanding of the entirety of the
narrative of the piece. Recall, for example, that for the aquatic theme of the third
movement to be fully appreciated by the listener, they must be familiar with not only the
original Mahler and its allusion to his earlier song, but also Debussys La mer, and Bergs
Wozzeck.
As an example of a similarly multifaceted semantic interplay, Glenn Watkins
interprets Ivess Flanders Field (1917) as a combination of an aesthetic challenge to
Debussys music and a simultaneous affirmation of fraternity with the French. at a time
when they were Americas allies in war. He states that this work
Sets the openly maudlin text of John McCrae in the company of ingenious
combinations of the Marseillaise, America, and Columbia, Gem of the
Ocean. McCraes text was known to many a school child at the time, and the
tunes chosen by Ives were known to them as well. Memory, nostalgia, and fantasy
potentially flood the listener, and composite citation encourages intertextual
interpretation without freezing the message. Ivess surface symbolism, though not
difficult to read, is less obvious in its reference to Debussy, who had also placed
God Save the Queen (America) in octaves in the bass of his Hommage S.
Pickwick Esq., P.P.M.P.C. and had also used Marseillaise in the soprano of his
Feux dartifice, both Preludes from Book II published only a few years before.
Notice of the relationship brings to mind Ivess boldly stated opinion that
Debussy might have been a better composer had his spiritual premise been
stronger and his form, perfume, and manner less obviously in control.
Ivess manipulation of identical source materials in the same registers therefore
invites comparison, and his avoidance of Romantic sentimentality or
Impressionistic mists (Ives was capable of both) carries the ring of aesthetic
challenge.96
As in the previously discussed example, this is also a case in which there is an
easily interpretable surface narrative interaction engendered by the use of vernacular
allusions that would be perceivable to an audience unfamiliar with the Debussy works.

96
Glenn Watkins, Pyramids at the Louvre (Cambridge: CUP, 1994), 400.

168

There is likewise in this case also a deeper, more subtle semiotic network available to an
audience that is familiar with his music. This illustrates the point that the degree of
communicated meaning in cases of juxtaposition, at least on the conscious level, is
directly tied to both the listeners comprehension of the musical context and knowledge
of source material. The interplay between these streams of meaning is often not as easily
identifiable as in the above cases, however, and more oblique situations demand that
an interpretation of such symbolic relationships, while perhaps logical and sound to an
individual listener, be qualified as inherently subjective.
Fallas notes that there is a certain amount of play, not only between the symbols
at work in the music, but also between intended and perceived meaning in regards to
what a composer means by quotation, which requires a shared syntax for comprehension.
He also notes that, particularly in Robin Holloways music, even if one is aware that
quotation is happening in the piece, part of the aesthetic experience rests on the
ambiguity as to whether what one is hearing is quotation, and also at certain moments on
an ambiguity as to what is being quoted.97 This is also a factor in some of Ivess music,
particularly in terms of perceived meaning in works where quotation is pervasive and
eclectic. His Second Symphony, for example, is so rife with quotation from various
sources that the aesthetic of ambiguity previously discussed in the Berio and Holloway is
also encountered.98 This situation of the listener having to interpret the interaction and
interplay of so many references, over and above having to identify them, brings about a

97
Fallas, 4.
98
Ballantine, 179. He identifies quotations from Brahmss Second Symphony, Wagners Tristan
and Isolde and Die Walkrie, Bach, Bruckner, Dvorak, Beethoven, America the Beautiful, Turkey in the
Straw, Columbia, Camptown Races, Reveille, and When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, amongst
many other quotations in this Ives work.

169

state where the experience is so subjective and disorienting to the average listener that the
referential meanings of the quotations might fade into secondary importance.
This perceptual fusion of many individual references into a new entity is an
interesting phenomenon, and the tipping point at which it occurs for any individual
listener will be different, depending on their recognition and the density of allusions. This
sense of ambiguity that exists in some works between the discernment of individual
referential materials as distinct from the texture in which they exist is a fascinating
aesthetic experience in its own right, as Fallas noted, and can communicate a particular
psychological state to the audience. In this manner, musical collage differs greatly from
the practice in the visual arts. Music is a temporal art form, so a collage of the musical
variety has built into it a limited window of consideration and possible apprehension on
the part of the listener, whereas in visual collage the audience potentially has a much
longer interval in which to perceive the component materials and discern their
relationships.
Quotation may also be expressive of a composers particular aesthetic
preferences. While the musical landscape of today allows composers access to the totality
of possible sounds and sonic combinations, midtwentieth-century composers were often
discouraged from using a tertian language by a combination of factors, including the
ideas that this language is old-fashioned, not appropriate for serious art music, and that
too much aesthetic ground had been covered between historically tonal music and the
present for it to be a legitimate and honest lexicon in which to work. As Adorno notes,
there is a viewpoint that exists that perhaps dissonant, atonal, rebarbative Modernist

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music is the only type that honestly holds a mirror up to modern society. In his
Philosophy of Modern Music, he asserts that
the general public, totally cut off from the production of new music, is alienated
by the outward characteristics of such music. The deepest currents in this
[Modernist] music proceed, however, from exactly those sociological and
anthropological foundations peculiar to that public. The dissonances which
horrify them testify to their own conditions; for that reason alone do they find
them unbearable.99
Therefore, through the philosophy and aesthetic of Postmodernism, composers
whose aesthetic preferences lean in the direction of a traditional tertian vocabulary, if not
necessarily traditional syntax, form, or process, have open to them the techniques of
quotation and collage. These techniques can lay claim to the materials of the past as
readily as to those of the present, perhaps allowing composers to bypass the perceived
mid-century necessity of grasping such a stark mirror.
However, the point of view that this is merely a rationalization for music that
works in an outmoded aesthetic, and the idea that this type of music represents the
dangers of Postmodernism and pandering to an audience with no taste for complex or
dissonant music, must be frankly addressed. John Adams vividly recounts his experience
with this attitude at the premier of Grand Pianola Music (1982), which was programmed
on a concert dominated by Modernist works. Adams recalls that the audience response
included a
substantial and (to me) shocking number of boos In the context of this
otherwise rather sober repertoire Grand Pianola Music must doubtless
have seemed like a smirking truant with a dirty face, in need of a severe
spanking. To this day, it has remained a weapon of choice among
detractors who wish to hold up my work as exemplary of the evils of

99
Theodor Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V.
Blomster (New York: Continuum, 2003), 9.

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Postmodernism oreven more drasticthe pernicious influences of
American consumerism on high art.100
To my mind, the primary difference between composers who use Postmodernism
as an excuse pander to a particular audience that has no taste for complex musical ideas,
and those who are using quotation for more original, nuanced artistic purposes, seems to
be an issue of syntax and contextualization. While a composer who is simply imitating
the Classical or Romantic style will tend, in addition to appropriating materials from this
music, not to transcend the idioms of these historical musical epochs, a composer who
appropriates and then significantly recontextualizes these materials in new ways is
sincerely operating within the Postmodern aesthetic and ought not to be immediately
accused of pandering or deliberately diminishing the artistic level of their work. If
composers bring at least as much to the new work as the materials which they are
borrowing, then the questions of pandering, plagiarism, and borrowing legitimacy from
canonized works are rendered less applicable.
Approaching historical musical vocabularies through Postmodern commentary
and collage not only allows composers to access their various aesthetics, but also allows
them to recontextualize the quotations, or, conversely, allow the quotations to
recontextualize the new musical materials, through the way in which they are presented.
It may sometimes be difficult to ascertain whether this particular practice is being
employed genuinely in a work, as it is closely tied to composer intent and requires an
insight into the reasons a composer chose to employ certain quotational techniques or
materials. This is of course a subjective area of inquiry, as not only are composers often
silent on this topic, but the issues of honesty, self-awareness, and even memory come into

100
John Adams, Program Note for Grand Pianola Music, Earbox.com. www.earbox.com/
other-ensemble-works/grand-pianola-music (accessed November 14, 2013).

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play when composers do make remarks. The process of composition is usually a long and
often an intuitive one, and even if composers are forthcoming with explanations, they do
not always remember with precision the exact choices they made in creating a work.
Others, like Igor Stravinsky for example, made certain assertions about their past works
for branding, political, or aesthetic reasons.
The matter of a composers choice of source material when borrowing can range
from the mundane and personal to the profound and political. As discussed earlier,
Reynolds asserted that certain things can be inferred about a composers attitudes towards
and relationship with the canon from which they borrow, citing Brahmss relationship
with Beethoven as indicated by the former composers modeling of the latters works.
Watkins also notes that choice of borrowed materials can be construed as a political
statement, pointing to the instance of Alfred Schnittkes prolific use of this practice,
borrowing extensively as he did from the Western European tradition, but avoiding
materials that were distinctly Russian.101 Contextualized by the Soviet political climate of
the 1970s and 80s, such a decision to quote from this repertoire carried significant socio-
political overtones, perhaps also placing the composer in danger of social, if not grave
personal repercussions.
Conversely, Watkins also draws attention to more prosaic motivations in regards
to Terry Rileys Salome Dances for Peace.102 This work ecumenically borrows from
numerous diverse sources and traditions. However, as Riley wrote in the liner notes for
the LP, this was not meant to be programmatic of any particular multi-cultural or

101
Watkins, 410
.
102
Ibid., 413.

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cosmopolitan narrative. He simply claims that this is because [he has] listened to a lot of
music from all over the world for the past 30 years.103
My own choices of sources for borrowing generally lean in a more practical
direction. I tend to borrow from music that 1) I find attractive, interesting, and of good
quality, and 2) that I think will successfully produce aesthetically pleasing results,
although I am certainly cognizant of the referential interplay and impact that these
borrowings suggest and use them to support whatever programmatic or narrative goals I
am trying to achieve. Thus, while my various borrowings from Coltrane, Liszt, Berlioz,
Crumb, Stravinsky, Nancarrow, Scriabin, Messiaen, Debussy, and Irish nautical work
music have all been partially driven by my interest in and admiration for those composers
and repertoires, the primary consideration in accessing them was motivated by the fact
that I was trying to compose a nuanced and interesting new work. Ultimately, even if I
am interested in a particular musical tradition or composer, or enjoy listening to a
particular piece of music, if I feel that needs of the new work that I am composing are not
served by a borrowing from that source, I will not use it. Interest in a composer or piece
may spark the inspiration for a new work, but, for me, quotation is never something done
for its own sake and is always employed in the service of my goals in the new work I am
composing.
Another reason that motivates some composers to engage in the practice of
quotation is that of homage. This variety of allusion has less to do with aesthetic or
dramatically rhetorical considerations than it does with an expression of respect, or at
least interest, in the music of a composers antecedents or contemporaries. Musical
homage is also different in that the quotation can be encountered at any structural level of

103
Ibid., 414.

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a composition, and may exist in any of the perceptual levels discussed in this essay. The
intent may not be to communicate a certain idea or psychological state to the listener
through reference to a previous work (although this could certainly occur in an ancillary
fashion), but rather to allow one composer to express admiration or respect for another.
The listener might not even notice that quotation is happening if the homage is
used in a clandestine fashion, although I would hazard that works of this nature are in the
minority, as the motivations for homage are often distinctly salutary and obscuring it
might seem to defeat its purpose. Some examples of this type of allusion include Luciano
Berios homage to Brahms, and consequently Bernstein, in Sinfonia, Bergs quotation of
Bach in his Violin Concerto, and Adamss pervasive quotation of Beethoven in Absolute
Jest. The quotation in McLoskeys Star Chamber discussed briefly at the beginning of
chapter 4 can also be seen as operating in this fashion, although it is less overt. Joan
Towers work Petroushskates may also be perceived as an act of homage to Stravinsky.
So may her Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman be construed as an homage to Copland,
albeit with a less directly adulatory connotation and more of an interrogative one, best
described as an example of contrastive allusion, discussed later in this chapter. The
work may be viewed as a juxtaposition of the concepts of proletariat empowerment and
Feminism by contextualizing her own compositional ideas within those of Coplands, the
semantic connections prompting the listener to contemplate a certain philosophical
viewpoint.
Thus we see that the idea of an ironic borrowing, or, in other cases a parodic kind
of sarcastic allusion are also possible. This differs from homage in that the context of the
new work intentionally changes the manner of the borrowed music. One is reminded

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immediately, although with different specific overtones, of Shostakovichs satiric,
parodic quotation of Lehars Da geh ich zu Maxim, as well as other Austro-Germanic
music in his Seventh Symphony. In the socio-political context surrounding the
composition, these allusions can only be construed as symbolizing the Nazi incursion.
This would have been in line with the general gist of Soviet cultural and social
consciousness after the World War II, though one is also forced to consider
Shostakovichs complex relationship with the cultural authorities of his society in
interpreting this work. While one does occasionally have to look beyond the music itself
in categorizing instances of quotation as homage or parody, certain musicological clues
exist that can lead to these conclusions. A composers connections with the tradition that
they emerged from, as well as any writings or interviews pertinent to the works in
question, can aid in contextualizing a borrowing, vis--vis a composers relationship to
the past or to their contemporaries.
Extra-referential Reasons to Borrow
The ramifications and benefits of using quotation as a structurally unifying device
for its own sake, as opposed to using it as a rhetorical, referential, or laudatory
compositional device, are numerous and these techniques can be approached in several
ways. This is not by any means a new practice; the basic concept extends back to the use
of plainchants for isorhythmic colour and the practice of cantus firmus in Renaissance
masses. Nor does this technique preclude any of the other quotational techniques
discussed thus far, and it may be used in combination with them to create subtly nuanced
semantic networks of interrelated references. While a quotation can certainly be
perceived as operating in multiple streams simultaneously, the discussion here is more

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focused on structural functions of borrowing and the formal implications inherent to
pervasive quotation, rather than to its referential or aesthetic implications.
Quotation need not necessarily consist of surface elements, either. As was noted
previously, Berios Sinfonia, for example, not only incorporates quotation from many
sources on a surface, referential level, but imports its structural framework from previous
music. Likewise the formal modeling of Beethovens Waldstein by Brahms in his First
Piano Sonata is another example of the use of an existing works macro-structure in the
creation of a new one.104 To a lesser extent McLoskeys Quartettrope can also be
considered an example of this, although the inclusion of the entirety of the previous work
marks it as a singular example of this practice and complicates its categorization.
Conversely, if a works large structures may be used as a framework to create a
new work, its atomic materials may also be used in this fashion. Michael Gordons
Rewriting, discussed in the third chapter, is a fascinating example of this practice,
although the appropriate metaphor for his borrowings in this work might be molecular,
rather than atomic. The idea that the basic motivic materials of a work might be borrowed
and freely introduced into a new framework, with independent and newly-created macro-
structures in this way is reminiscent of parody mass techniques of the Renaissance, as
was noted by composer Lansing McLoskey in our interview. Parenthetically, he also
brought up the fact that, in sixteenth-century works of this type, there is evidence that not
only were composers borrowing according to this practice with great frequency, but were

104
Reynolds, 24-5.

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actually doing so competitively, displaying their compositional prowess by taking the
materials of anothers piece and reworking them into a presumably better final product.105
While the diversity of musical materials available to modern composers for this
type of borrowing is much greater, similar practices are used by composers in certain
other works that have been discussed in previous chapters, such as McLoskeys OK-OK,
which literally reduces an entire extant work to its series of pitches and reconstructs
them, and my own Nancarrow Meditations, which uses short fragments from that
composers works in drastically different musical applications. Likewise, the clandestine
quotation of Apollonian Echo and Necessary Steps, which borrow patterns of pitches as
short as three or four notes, then reconstructs these atoms into much larger musical
textures, bears a certain resemblance to these historical practices of quotation. The
difference in these latter works is that there is a certain amount of occlusion that is a
result of the brevity, genericness, and variety of the borrowed materials, and the high
degree of manipulation applied to them. Nevertheless, if there is a logical musical
connection between the materials in such a reservoir, it is quite likely that their features
will have a specific impact on a work that significantly draws from it.
As mentioned several times in this essay, materials drawn from a particular
source, so long as the source is musically self-consistent and homogeneous, may by their
very nature lend a built-in unity to the new work. Correspondingly, a dramatically
original or dissimilar musical language, juxtaposed against a systematic use of structural
quotation, can create stark contrasts and allow the listener to perceive the new

105
McLoskey, interview. This is also suggested by Howard Mayer Brown, Emulation,
Competition, and Homage: Imitation and Theories of Imitation in the Renaissance, JAMS 35, no. 1
(Spring 1982): 10. Brown notes that, while this is plausible for a variety of reasons, there is not any specific
historical documentation of composer intent in these cases to say with certainly that de facto competition
between composers is evidenced by these borrowings.

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compositional materials within a familiar context or framework. Furthermore, while
various methods of manipulation, distortion, reinterpretation, and transformation may
provide contrast and interest, as long as the source or sources of the quoted materials
provide a coherent compositional context or reportorially consistent continuum, an
intrinsic unity will be extant to some degree in the new work, independent of the
composers new disposition of these materials.
In addition to providing this unity, such patterns of borrowing will invariably
leave a genetic imprint on the resulting music that may not have been there if the micro-
quotations had not been employed. The intervallic and rhythmic features of even the
most concise musical elements, when they are employed consistently and systematically,
cannot help but leave their mark on the new work, even if they are pitted against or
partially subsumed by substantial amounts of new material. The resulting music that uses
these compositional practices will have features that might not have otherwise been
independently employed by the borrowing composer, unless the borrowings are in a very
similar musical lexicon to his or her own. In effect, this combines the musical grammar
of the borrowing composer with the vocabulary of the preexisting music, creating a
hybridization of both composers selection preferences, contextualized within the
compositional preferences and techniques of the composer of the new work.
Linguistic Models and Embedded Topics
This linguistic metaphor is a particularly germane one, as many scholars such as
Kofi Agawu and Chris Reynolds, among others, have compared semiotic function in
music to that of language, or at least used the lexicon of linguistics to describe similar
processes in musical semiotics. The ways in which music conveys meaning in this

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fashion ought to be briefly addressed here, as the use of quotation often implies that an
attempt is being made on the part of the composer to convey the meaning associated with
the borrowed music, or to convey a contrasting, ironic, or interrogative stance towards
those meanings.
Chris Reynolds discusses the distinction between these modes of expression, and
in his examination of Romantic borrowings he draws upon the theories of philosopher
and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin, who describes two types of double-voiced discourse:
unidirectional and varidirectional. Reynolds refers to the musical equivalent of Bakhtins
unidirectional discourse, in which the two voices share common aims: a speaker adopts
the words of someone else with the same or similar point of view, as assimilative
allusions. Bakhtins varidirectional discourse occurs in situations where the two voices
differ in meaning: a speaker adopts anothers words, using them in a way that conflicts
with their original sense. Reynolds refers to this type of discourse as contrastive when
applied to musical allusion. This second category refers to the use of music in a parodic
or ironic borrowing, or any transmission of someone elses words where there is a shift
in accent.106
In providing a musical example of this varidirectional double-voiced discourse,
Reynolds points to Kenneth Hulls assertions about the ironic allusion to the finale of
Beethovens Fifth Symphony in Brahmss Fourth, which he interprets as meant to create
a tragic, rather than triumphal conclusion, and Raymond Knapps assertions that Brahms
was employing the allusion as a double-edged sword, with which he could either secure
his generic orientation or, by reversing direction, challenge that orientation by

106
Reynolds, 16-17.

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introducing contrasting elements.107 Less complex examples of such contrastive allusion
previously discussed in this chapter are those of Shostakovich musically mocking
Lehars insipid Austrian theme and Towers use of the context of Coplands Fanfare to
emphasize her own program in her new work.
These recontextualizing contrastive allusions are certainly less common by dint of
their relative complexity, but I personally find these far more interesting in their layers of
meaning and technical compositional practices. However, there are certainly nuanced
examples of assimilative borrowings as well. One of the more interesting that Reynolds
points to is Wagners use of the motive from the beginning of Liszts Faust at certain key
narrative points in Die Walkre, such as when Hunding recognizes Siegmund as his
enemy, but bound by custom, must offer hospitality rather than vengeance; when
Sieglinde dreams of the apocalypse and of wishing that her father would return from the
woods and realize the significance of Siegmunds love for her; and when Wotan admits
to Brunhilde that he longed to defend Siegmund, but could not do so. All of these points
share the common theme of longing and regret, a key narrative feature of Faust.
Reynolds notes that Wagner had alluded to his thoughts on Faust in private
correspondence with Mathilde Wesendonck, stating that, to him, Faust signified the idea
of missed opportunity.108 Each of these scenes in Die Walkre contains elements of
regret, or missed opportunity, and the reference to Liszts Faust is present to a degree in
each, its prominence according to the intensity of that emotions expression.
Additionally, parallels exist between Wotans inability to recognize Siegmunds love for
Sieglinde and Fausts inability to learn from Gretchens. This is a nuanced example of

107
Ibid.
108
Ibid., 60.

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assimilative borrowing, but it is also very much in line with the way Wagner treated his
musical signifiers in general, borrowed or not. Reynolds also notes that this type of
allusion serves to exemplify that type of motive which Carl Dahlhaus recognized as
malleable or indistinct (the meaning of a motive can be indefinite, or can branch out to
cover a field of related meanings); they defy simple labeling and Wagner did not
accompany them with texts that encouraged unambiguous interpretation.109
While musical meaning is conveyed differently than linguistic meaning, there are
many parallels between the two systems. Kofi Agawu, for instance, makes ten assertions
about the relationships between music, language, and human society.110 Among these, he
notes that the distinction between differing direct communicative and poetic modes of
language is largely absent in music, and therefore its specificity of meaning has never
needed to be clearly defined. This leads to his assertion that, by its very nature musics
discursive [emphasis mine] communicative capacity is inferior to that of language.111
Through this feature of musics non-specific discursive framework, a great variety of
semiotic meanings can be conveyed by the same gesture, depending on both context
within a work and the capacity of the listener to place various musical utterances within
the context of the extant repertoire and their cultural experience.
Another layer of connotative specificity is added when music consists not only of
a commonly-alluded-to musical topic, which is Agawus term for commonly used
musical references that have concrete meanings for a given audience. When the music
makes a specific reference to a single work, which may or may not contain nested topics

109
Ibid., 61.
110
V. Kofi Agawu, Music as Discourse (New York: OUP, 2009), 20-29.
111
Ibid., 22.

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that were contextualized in a certain way in that work, more distinct shades of meaning
are possible.
In Music as Discourse, Agawu expands the idea of a universe of topics,
originally proposed in his 1991 Playing with Signs, which drew on the research of
Leonard Ratner and others. The list of topics he proposes here, updated for the topics
encountered in Romantic music, similarly draws upon symbolism proposed by Raymond
Monelle, Janice Dickensheets, and Mrta Grabcz, the latter of whom not only developed
topics pertinent to Romantic music in general, but even personalized topics relating to the
outputs of particular composers.112 Danuta Mirkas work on twentieth-century topics is
also included, which specifically relates to Bartk and Stravinsky, but could also pertain
to other composers of this era.113
Table 5.1: The topics posited for Romantic music by Dickensheets and Grabcz, noted by Agawu.
Dickensheetss topics, from Carl Maria von Weber, Chopin, Schubert, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Smetana,
Grieg, Herz, Saint-Saens, Liszt, Verdi, Brahms, Mahler, and Tchaikovsky.
1. archaizing styles 9. demonic style 17. pastoral style
2. aria style 10. fairy music 18. singing style
3. bardic style 11. folk style 19. Spanish style
4. bolero 12. gypsy music 20. style hongrois
5. Biedermeier style 13. heroic style 21. stile appassionato
6. Chinoiserie 14. Indianist style 22. tempest style
7. chivalric style 15. Italian style 23. virtuosic style
8. declamatory/recitative 16. lied style, incl. lullaby, 24. waltz (landler)
Style Kriegslied, Winterlied
Grabczs topics, from Liszts output.

1. appassionato, agitato 10. recitativo 15. the pathetic, which
2. march 11. lamenting, elegiac is the exalted form of the bel
3. heroic 12. citations Canto
4. scherzo 13. grandioso, 16, the pantheistic, an
5. pastoral triumphando (going back to amplified variant or the
6. religioso the heroic theme) pastoral or religious type
7. folkloric 14. the lugubrious type
8. bel canto, singing deriving at the same time as the
9. bel canto, declamatory appassionato/lamentoso

112
Agawu, Music as Discourse, 46-7. Grabcz proposes lists of topics found in Liszt and Mahler.
113
Ibid., 48.

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(Table 5.1, contd)
Grabczs topics, from Mahlers output.

1. nature theme 7. funeral march 13. bell motif
2. fanfare 8. arioso 14. Totentanze
3. horn call 9. aria 15. lament
4. bird call 10. minuet 16. Landler
5. chorale 11. recitative 17. march
6. pastorale 12. scherzo 18. folk song
Source: V. Kofi Agawu, Music as Discourse (New York: OUP, 2009), 46-7
Table 5.2: Mirkas twentieth-century topics.
(A) = Eighteenth century dances (B) = National musics (C) = Other
(A)1. menuet (B)11. Jewish music (C)21.Gregorian Chant

2. gavotte 12. Czech music 22. chorale
3. bouree 13. Polish music 23. Russian Orth. church
4. Sarabande 14. Hungarian music 24. learned style
5. gigue 15. Gypsy music 25. chaconne
6. pavane 16. Russian music 26. recitative
7. passepied 17. Spanish music 27. singing style
8. tarantella 18. Latin music 28. barcarole
9. tango 19. East Asian music 29. Afro-Am. Spirituals
10. waltz 20. North American 30. jazz
country-western music 31. caf music
32. circus music
33. barrel organ
34. lullaby
35. childrens song
36. fanfare
37. military march
38. funeral march
39. pastoral
40. elegy
41. machine music
Source: V. Kofi Agawu, Music as Discourse (New York: OUP, 2009), 48.
When topics also occur as borrowings, or are imbedded in a larger texture of
recontextualized music, the semantic network of interrelated meanings can be manifold.
Wagners borrowing from Faust, which could be described as referring to Grabczs
lamenting, elegiac topic, or my importation of Mephistopheles music in Faust Fantasy,
referring to passages that contain Grabczs lugubrious or agitato topic or Dickensheets
demonic topic, are examples of this rich interplay. In these situations, not only is there
symbolic weight transferred from the Liszt and the topic, but also the way in which Liszt

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chose to employ and contextualize that topic in his work. In other words, both instances
have implications in terms of their references to programmatic ideas from the Liszt, but
they also carry the more generic connotations of these topics, in addition to an added
layer of meaning generated by the specific way in which Liszt contextualized these topics
in Faust.
Similarly, what might be proposed as the topic of dissonant atonality, a
prevalent idea in Weberns Quartet, when mitigated by the use of quintal harmony and
juxtaposed against allusions to the topic of jazz by McLoskey in Quartettrope, sets up the
potential for a rich topical play in the course of its recontextualization. The references to
an even more specific topic under the umbrella of jazz, that of bebop, when imported into
the lexicon of Necessary Steps which also includes references to the topics of the heroic
style and what could be described as the contemporary topic of minimalism created
many opportunities for play between these topics in this work. This type of fusion or
interaction between layers of symbolism or multiple signifiers is referred to as trope by
authors such as Robert Hatten, who broadly defines this synthesis as interactions or
fusions of disparate, at times even incompatible, stylistic types (including gestures and
topics) that are superimposed or juxtaposed in a single functional location, where they
propose creative meanings that emerge from their contextual interaction.114 He also
discusses the emergent meanings that such situations can create and the nuanced
rhetorical effects that they can produce.
What topics tell us about the way musical symbols can convey meaning to the
listener, however, is of even greater concern to this essay. If a specific topic, which

114
Robert S. Hatten, Performance and Analysis-Or Synthesis: Theorizing Gesture, Topics, and
Tropes in Chopins F-Minor Ballade, Indiana Theory Review 28, no. 1/2 (Spring/Fall 2010): 51.

185

amounts to a loose collection of harmonic, rhythmic, and technical compositional
features, can become loaded with symbolic weight in terms of its repeated usage in
similar contexts throughout a repertoire, ought not a very specific set of these features
contextualized within the narrative of canonized work, under repeated hearings become
imbued with an even greater specificity of meaning? The importation of borrowed
materials, if used in a perceivable fashion, therefore operates in similar ways,
accumulating not a social sediment, as Agawu describes the process of the ascription
of meaning to topics, but an even more direct musical and narrative set of meanings
generated by the source materials contexts.115
Ethical Considerations and Aesthetic Authority
There are also various ethical considerations to be addressed pertinent to
borrowing musical materials from an extant composition or repertoire, some of which are
so great as to possibly create legal ramifications for the quoting composer. If an allusion
is significant enough to be readily recognizable as coming from another work, and the
source was recently composed, there are copyright implications to contend with and
something that society feels the need to impose laws against is certainly worth
approaching with moral caution. The only reason that much of the canon of Western
music is freely available for borrowing in new works is that those who would stand to
gain from forbidding such allusions by insisting on lengthier copyright protection are
really in no position to voice their opinions on the matter. In approaching more recent
music as borrowable material, the ideas of hidden quotation and micro-quotation might
also serve the practical purpose for the composer of allowing them to interface with these
works without opening themselves up to legal recourse.

115
Agawu, Music as Discourse, 42.

186

But, legalities aside, is taking the materials of another artist and re-forging them
in ones own work an ethically correct thing to do? Regardless of the fact that a pattern of
this type of borrowing has existed since the inception of notated music, what gives an
artist the right to do this? This is a question I have thought deeply about and returned to
many times as I have used this compositional technique over the years. What I have
decided justifies this practice, however, is a combination of factors that really boils down
to a sense of respect for the music that one is borrowing from.
I think that if one respects a musical tradition and engages with it on equal terms,
that is enough to justify interfacing with it. And as a twenty-first century American who
was not steeped in the European art music tradition from an early age, I feel just as
comfortable accessing any number of traditions besides that one for inspiration and
borrowed materials. In addition to having studied various musical traditions thoughtfully,
this is also because I have found in these repertoires music that moves me and to which I
feel connected. I believe that if a composer cares about the music in question and comes
to an internal affirmation of its worth, that gives one the right to meet it on an equal
footing and interface with it.
Another aspect of this question of aesthetic authority is how much the quoting
composer brings to the new work in terms of craft, creativity, and materials. This is
something that I have always been conscious of in my works that import other music. It
is my opinion that it is absolutely paramount that composers bring as much of their
technique and artistry as possible to bear in trying to create something greater or equal to
the sum of their borrowings, or at least that is interestingly new or different enough to
justify the importations. If the quotations bring more artistic value to the new work than

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the composer that employs them brings through creativity and craft in using the imports
and any new musical ideas or structures present, something is missing and the work
might not be successful on its own terms, independent of the listeners apprehension of
the allusions. Again it is useful to recall Robin Holloways previously-mentioned
thoughts on the matter regarding artistic reciprocity. If I care about a particular piece or
repertoire enough to want to use elements of it in my own music, that implies that I find
that music valuable. And, as I respect and appreciate the value of the music I am
borrowing from, I naturally feel compelled to keep up my side of the bargain, using my
abilities and talents as a composer to deploy these borrowed materials in new and
interesting ways that contribute as much to the quality of the work as the quoted
materials.
If a composer does not do this, then perhaps any worth found in the new work
might be construed as being derived from those materials themselves and not the
composers usage of them. In this situation, a composer might be seen as borrowing any
legitimacy the work has from the quotations in it. This is a criticism of some Postmodern
collage works where perhaps a composer did not adequately pay for the borrowings, in
which the piece does not stand up without the listeners perceiving the allusions, a
phenomenon that Lansing McLoskey discussed in our interview:
Of course the piece has to be successful on its own terms. I guess thats why I feel
sometimes Postmodernist quotation is less successful, because it relies so much
on the listener getting the joke. Oh, look, theres a quotation of Debussy, and
heres Elvis Presley, and heres some speed-metal, too. Its that sort of
Postmodernism [that] can come off as contrived I think Postmodernism is
sometimes used as an excuse for lack of quality, lack of imagination. If a
composer quotes Beethoven, then, all of a sudden, maybe they are borrowing the
legitimacy of Beethoven. It can be a form of borrowed legitimacy.116

116

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When a work uses direct, referential quotation, or even lightly manipulated
quotation, the listener presumably understands that a borrowing is taking place. However,
in the cases of clandestine and micro-quotation, perhaps the listener will not recognize
that this is even happening. That raises the question for a composer who uses these
techniques as to whether or not to acknowledge the source of the borrowings. On the one
hand, if the borrowed materials are so subsumed by the new work, or are so generic that
they do not evoke the source music for the listener, are these borrowings even worth
acknowledging? If the listener does not perceive them, are not these imports a private
matter between the composer and the previously-composed music? Or is the composer
obliged to cite his sources, giving the quoted music its due and sharing the credit for
the new composition with these materials, even if they are significantly paraphrased or
manipulated in the new work? I do not claim to have definitive answers to these
questions, nor do the numerous writings on these practices referenced in this essay. My
inclination has always been to indicate that an allusion is taking place, in either program
notes, or the title, or through a musical epigraph such as was employed in the Ives and
McLoskey works discussed in previous chapters.
This comes from a double-edged motivation which is altruistic and respectful of
the music of other composers on the one hand, but is also of a source-citing mentality on
the other, perhaps meaning to stave off any accusation of musical plagiarism by openly
admitting to the provenance of materials borrowed in certain works. This choice is also
motivated to an extent by a self-interested Kantian categorical imperative: If another
composer were to use these techniques to draw from my music, I would not begrudge that
composer any allusions, but would at least prefer that I were credited in some fashion.

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Hence the titles of Nancarrow Meditations, Faust Fantasy, Necessary Steps, and
Apollonian Echo, the first of which is eponymous, and the latter three providing at least a
possible clue to their borrowings sources for listeners familiar with the outputs of the
composers in question.
By their very nature, the ideas of clandestine and micro-quotation raise a
particular set of ambiguities in terms of artistic ascription. When a composer appropriates
any previously-composed material, especially in a pervasive fashion, how much of the
resulting music is attributable to that composer? Can a note-by-note statistical analysis,
showing how many pitches are borrowings and how many are the composers own, for
instance, determine that, say, eighty-five percent of a work belongs to the quoting
composer? I think it is almost certainly more nuanced than that. The manner of the
borrowed materials deployment and juxtaposition must also be factored into such an
equation. The greater the degree to which materials are manipulated, in general, the more
ownership the alluding composer can take of those materials. This can exist anywhere on
a continuum from slight alteration, transposition, and reorchestration, through rhythmic
profile manipulation, intervallic alteration, and stark juxtapositions, to atomization,
occlusion through saturation, and total melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic obliteration.
Table. 5.3: General continuum of possible manipulations of borrowed material. Note that any of
these methods can be exaggerated or restrained, increasing or decreasing its effect on the
perceivability of the borrowing.

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Thus, perhaps borrowings such as some of Ivess, which freely bend the contours
of the borrowed melodies, or McLoskeys total melodic atomization of Charlie Parkers
sax solo in OK-OK, might be said to confer more ownership of the resulting music on the
quoting composer than Wagner can take of Liszts Faust, or Rochberg can take of
Mozarts. The reason for this is that the former composers manipulations of the
borrowed materials serve to preclude the perception of these materials as specifically
belonging to a previous work. As mentioned earlier, there are certain things a composer
can do to imported music to leave their compositional fingerprints on borrowed
materials, paradoxically increasing their claim to ownership of that music.
However, it is important to note that attaining ownership of borrowed materials is
often not the point of quotation, especially in the case of the referential variety, which
depends on allusional perception of distinct external music and its accordant symbolic
weight to function within the narrative of a new work. More often than not, in these
situations borrowings are couched in the context of a majority of newly composed music
and function symbolically, such as in Rochbergs Magic Theater. In this context,
Rochberg is not really taking compositional ownership of the music of Mozart, Mahler,
Davis, Schoenberg, Varse, or Penderecki, but is invoking those musics as symbols and
juxtaposing them in the context of his own newly composed textures.
Also, the more covertly quotation is employed, the more ownership a composer
can take for the resultant music. This is not merely through a lack of perception on the
part of the listener that the materials in the new work are anything but a composers own,
although an unscrupulous composer could certainly take advantage of this. If the work
uses quotation in such a way that it is not perceivable as such, not only has the borrowing

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composer almost certainly brought significant amounts of craft and creativity to bear on
the deployment of the materials, but the work will stand or fail on its own merits,
independent of any legitimacy afforded by the quoted music.
In the case of micro-quotation of borrowed materials, this ascriptive question
begins to approach a point of negation. If a composer plucks a four note motive from
here, an ornament from there, and a scale followed by a leap in contrary motion from a
prosaic accompaniment figure from 200 measures later in the same work, is this really
even properly interpretable as quotation? And if these brief motives are interconnected
with ideas from diverse works or places within a single work, or newly composed
linkages, such as is encountered in Holloways First Symphony, as well as my
Apollonian Echo and Nancarrow Meditations, their weight as external signifiers
drastically diminishes and they cease to belong to or refer to the original works as
coherently as in other more perceivable instances of borrowing. In these situations, while
extended study of the music and knowledge of the canon might allow an interested party
to point to this or that passage in the new work and suggest a motives origins, due to the
generic and atomic nature of the borrowings features a case could be made that it was
citing any number of previously composed works, and thus its weight as a distinct
signifier is rendered ambiguous or diminished to nothing.
In works of this nature, there is also an aesthetic of ambiguity, a concept
previously discussed in this chapter, which John Fallas cites as one of the primary
avenues of semiotic play in Holloways music. He notes that this composers particular
use of borrowed materials creates a situation in that something apparently certain and
knowablethe derivation of material from well-known sourceshas led to something

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hallucinatorily uncertain: ghosts in daylight.117 Likewise, in Shant and Apollonian Echo,
I attempt to foster such ambiguity as a compositional parameter, not only atomizing the
materials, but further blurring the line between allusion and newly-composed music by
imitating certain aspects of the borrowed music in the new material. Music that contains
this sort of twilight between the native and the other, between the old and new, provides
the composer with enticing opportunities to create rich and nuanced tapestries of
meaning.
Why Use Quotation?
Finally, this chapter raises one last question: Why? Why use quotation at all? If
one is presumably a competent composer, capable of creating interesting and well-crafted
works in whatever personal idiom one chooses to employ, what is it about the idea of
using materials from previously created works that has been unwaveringly attractive not
only to composers, but to practitioners of all the arts, throughout history? Lansing
McLoskey mused on his reasons for using the practice in our interview:
There are several different reasons There are examples of quotation in my

music where its an integral part of the piece, which may be a result of the
commissioning ensemble, organization, or if the music is having to do with a
particular text, or if its some sort of other theme. It can also be more of a
compositional challenge that I give myself. Or it can be [personally] symbolic,
where I dont care at all whether the listener is aware of it, and I dont even put it
in the program note ... Let me say this though, in most cases, when I use
quotation, or borrowing, Im recontextualizing. This is not a blanket statement,
but the kind of quotation Im less interested in is direct quotationwhere it
symbolizes something and its totally recognizable and overt. I do do that
sometimes, but thats the exception. Usually Im more interested in a
recontextualization, where the original source material may not be recognizable.
What the purpose is for doing that, though, is a really good question, and I dont
really have a ready answer for that, because it varies from piece to piece.118

117
Fallas, 5
118

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McLoskey agrees that the very idea that artists throughout history have frequently
felt compelled to borrow from or allude to previously-created works, with varying
techniques and levels of perceivability, is in itself a fascinating phenomenon. The
motivations that lead a composer to not only be inspired by the music of another, but to
feel compelled to appropriate musical features from that work in a new composition is
certainly an intriguing psycho-philosophical question, but ultimately one that is beyond
the scope of this essay.
Composer Robin Holloway also noted another reason for the use of quotation in
our 2014 interview. Much like the manner in which some of Lansing McLoskeys
quotations in Quartettrope serve the practical purpose of integrating his new music into
that of Weberns, Holloway discussed the practical application of using familiar musical
allusions to tag certain musical features and processes. Rather than perform complex
musical processes on arbitrary or indiscernible atonal materials, Holloway used
recognizable quotations to delineate form and process in his Second Concerto for
Orchestra. His reason for this was to allow a listener that was unable to follow otherwise
complex, Modernist procedures to at least have something to hold on to, still permitting
them to follow the narrative of the piece. As he said,
in this case, these were tags to help the listener follow complex processes. I
thought, the Carter [Concerto for Orchestra] is a great masterpiece, but no ones
going to be able to follow that [kind of music], without a hundred listenings,
which no ones ever going to get in their life. (Im talking about general
audiences, here) But if it [the aesthetic experience] works for them, it would be
by hanging on to these color-coded tags. Then you can follow that color
through the maze, and then that one, as they intertwine, do this or that, they
metamorphose, but its always very clear, and that will take you through the
jungle, or the maze, or the traffic jamall metaphors for the complex terrain
covered by a journey in time [This works] because theres always a little bit of
O Sole Mio, a bit of Chopin, which have been planted at a very definite place.
This is the hair to follow follow that animal through, see what happens. He

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might be life-size, he might suddenly be thirty feet high, but its still that same
animal. They might eventually start inter-crossing, but you can still get there,
because theyre distinct, their traits have been so distinctly delineated at first. In
other words: quotation as a help for the listener, not because its a quotation, but
because its a very strong bit of identity.119
In her 2011 book, Why Do We Quote?: The Cultural History of Quotation, Ruth
Finnegan discussed the broad motivations for this practice as a cultural phenomenon, not
only in the arts, but in the social context of our day-to-day lives. She comes to the
conclusion that the idea of quotation as a human sociological function is too diverse and
variegated to even be properly defined, and that
there is no uniform way that quoting and quotation are demarcated, practised and
conceptualised. It is true that the other theme to emerge [from a discussion of
quotation] is that the use of others words and voices is unmistakeably a highly
significantand sensitivedimension of human communication. Perhaps it is for
that very reason that quoting in the end turns out so elusive and that to offer some
bounded answer to the question what is quotation? at last proves impossible.120
She comes to much the same conclusion as McLoskey in terms of the human
motivations for quotation, however, stating that our sociological reasons for this practice
are extremely nuanced and multi-faceted. To her, the utterance of anothers words
transcends the bounds of signification and articulation, and she states that it is
unrealistic to stay with that thin model of language which sees it as at root referential
and cognitive, with quoting, together with poetic or allusive diction, separated off as
some special non-standard modification that needs justification.121
Certainly, there are numerous implicit reasons for incorporating the words or
ideas of others in ones daily speech, such as short-hand, humor, to lend authority, or to

119
120
Ruth Finnegan, Why Do We Quote?: The Culture and History of Quotation (Cambridge: Open
Book Publishers, 2011) http://www.openbook publishers.com /reader/75 (accessed November 10, 2013),
9.1, paragraph 5. British English spellings retained in this quote.
121
Ibid., 9.3, paragraph 2.

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imply the subtle and multiplicitous connotations carried by the quotations source. But
what of quotation in the arts generally, and music, specifically? As Reynolds begins at
the outset of the final chapter of Motives for Allusion: For allusions to become more
widely acknowledged, a theoretical background against which a motivic resemblance can
be understood to have an aesthetic significance must exist both in the culture of the
period and of our own time.122 Of course, he is referring to an attempt to interpret
borrowings in Romantic music, but the basic concept applies to the current discussion.
The idea of manipulating an ideas context is central to the practice of quotation, and this
high-level cognitive play might hold the key to artists perennial obsession with this
practice. As Reynolds also states, the importance of the link between allusion and play
is fundamental in any era, and that not the least of the game-like qualities of allusion is
the element of challenge it poses to its creator and perceivers alike.123
Perhaps this last sentiment summarizes my motivations for engaging in this
practice most succinctly. The challenges inherent in weaving complex symbolic
meanings out of borrowings, and the levels of recontextualization that are afforded the
composer in playing with symbols comprised of extant music is a stimulating
compositional enterprise. Whether these materials are on the surface in referential
allusions that can be juxtaposed to create complex rhetorical interactions, or are
perceptually occluded in various levels of clandestine usage, the importation of borrowed
materials presents the composer with another musical echelon in which to operate. The
benefits of engaging in musical borrowing in composing a new work seem, to this author,
to be numerous. Coupled with the facts that these practices allow composers to interface

122
Reynolds, 162.
123
Ibid., 163.

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on a profound and personal level with music that they know and care deeply about, as
well as afford them the opportunity to infuse their customary musical language with
subtle overtones of another compositional technique, era, or exocultural tradition, these
factors seem to significantly recommend its usage.

CHAPTER 6
REMARKS ON AND ANALYSIS OF NECESSARY STEPS
I. Conception, Composition, and Analysis
In approaching the composition of Necessary Steps, I knew that I wanted to use
micro-quotation and clandestine quotation in a generative capacity. My decision to do
this was heavily influenced by the results of my previous experiments with this
technique, particularly in regards to Mosaique, Shant, Nancarrow Meditations,
Apollonian Echo, and to a lesser extent, Chopn, all of which I deemed successful works.
While composing Necessary Steps, I was also thinking about what had made these
quotation pieces work, and I came to the conclusion that intuitively drawing fragments
from sources with coherent self-similarity led to an inherent unity in the resulting
composition, as well as a certain aesthetic tint to the musical result that would not have
been present if I had simply composed a new work in my customary idiom. The
importation of materials, therefore, impacted my compositional process in interesting and
sometimes surprising ways, while also creating artificial limitations that channeled my
process in particular directions.
As a composer, I have found that having certain constraints present at the outset
of a new work actually has a positive effect on my process, a concept also alluded to by
Stravinsky. In his Poetics, he states, The more constraints one imposes, the more one
frees ones self from the chains and shackles of the spirit the arbitrariness of the
constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.124 By having restrictions in
place, in this instance dictated by the imported materials, the composers mind is freed of

124
Stravinsky, 68.
197

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certain considerations and is able to focus on other elements more completely without
being entirely concerned with every aspect of the musical parameters of the composition.
Necessary Steps (2014) involved significant pre-compositional planning. The
structure, characters, and timings of sections of the work were all predetermined, as were
the instrumentation and general textural plan. I also used Golden Section ratios to govern
aspects of the form, which is a proportion that I am always at least aware of, but do not
always necessarily adhere to in every compositional decision. I knew I wanted to
compose a work using hidden quotation and micro-quotation from a single source, but I
very carefully considered various pieces and repertoires for my borrowing. Because I
knew that I wanted the resulting music to have a particular aesthetic, I decided to confine
myself to works that were either cast in tertian harmony, or that at least used a significant
percentage of consonant materials. At certain points I considered and discarded music by
Steve Reich, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, and Richard Strauss, as well as popular
music by the bands Tool, Radiohead, and the electronica of Aphex Twin.
The decision to use John Coltranes Giant Steps was at least partially the result of
a conversation with a guitarist friend of mine. We were discussing that works role as a
benchmark for jazz improvisation and he expressed his opinion that being able to
effectively play over those changes was a sort of measuring stick of ones prowess as a
jazz improviser. I have never worked in a jazz idiom as a composer, although I always
enjoyed listening to jazz and even played a little bit as a percussionist, so I was initially a
bit unsure as to whether I had the aesthetic authority to borrow from that repertoire.
However, I reasoned that if I was really planning to use the materials in a hidden or
molecular fashion and did not intend to attach any referential import to them, my

199
relationship to the source music was really immaterial. And I remember thinking, Well,
I just love Giant Steps. Its such a great piece and I respect the music, so that gives me
license enough to work with it. For me, this compositional affirmation of the work and
accordant respect for its materials is a key factor in regards to assuming the authority for
musical borrowing. Leaving aside for the moment the interesting and innovative
harmonic patterns in the piece, Coltranes solos on the studio recording are fantastic. As I
became more familiar with the work by studying it as a possible reservoir for borrowed
materials, I was struck more and more by the solo itself, so I decided that, for the most
part, I would leave the head and chord changes alone and focus on the improvised solos.
At the time I was ignorant of the existence of David Demseys excellent
transcriptions of Coltranes 1959 recording sessions, so I undertook the task of
transcribing the solo myself, by ear. If I had not done this, however, I may not have
focused on the particular features that I did, or deployed the materials in precisely the
same way. The process I used to accomplish the transcription involved digitally slowing
down and looping passages while playing along at the piano until I felt I had obtained the
correct pitches and rhythms. This focused my ear on very short fragments of the solo and
also had the effect of presenting them to me as repetitive cells, which is how I ended up
using many of them in Necessary Steps. I had planned on the work being in a
Postminimal idiom anyway, but hearing snippets of the solo repeated in this fashion
while transcribing it may have subconsciously influenced my selection preferences when
building textures in the concerto.
The decision to make Necessary Steps into a trumpet concerto, rather than just an
orchestra piece or a concerto for another instrument, was something that I went back and

200
forth on several times. I initially composed the work as a trumpet concerto, with a C
trumpet soloist. Next, after completing a rough draft of the work and subsequently
making many edits and revisions which affected tempi, textures, and entire sections of
material, I decided that the work might better serve as a saxophone concerto. I reasoned
that this made sense, as the solo from Giant Steps is performed on the saxophone.
However, two factors impeded this. Firstly, while the general tessitura of the solo is quite
high, there are also mellow, lyrical low passages as well. These work well on the
trumpet, but would probably necessitate frequent changes between saxophones to
maintain comfortable tessituras for that instrument, and at certain points these passages
are juxtaposed quite closely. I wanted to avoid the logistical issue of having the
performer change instruments frequently, as it can be distracting, and also wanted to
avoid having to transpose certain passages that I had conceived of as being in a particular
register.
Secondly, parts of the solo just did not work as well for the saxophone. While I
could have recomposed these passages, they would not have had the same impact, nor
been able to serve the same role in the narrative of the piece. One example of this type of
situation is repeated note percussive passages, such as are encountered in the fast
portions of the first and third movements. While the saxophone is a versatile instrument
and could certainly play these passages, they work much better for the incisive
articulations available to brass instruments.

201
Ex. 6.1: Example of a percussive, incisive trumpet passage from Movement I of Necessary Steps.
The next iteration of the works orchestration, which I thankfully decided to
abandon after only reworking the last movement, was an attempt to distribute the melodic
content of the solo across the orchestra and create a purely orchestral piece. While it
wasan interesting exercise, the result was somewhat flat, and there was only so far that I
could rely on the orchestral trumpets to shoulder the burden of melodic presentation
without making the piece a de facto concerto grosso for the trumpet section. Additionally,
as the work was originally conceived as a concerto, much of the soloists material is
intricate, gymnastic, and ultimately too demanding to be reliably expected of the rank and
file members of an orchestra. I soon decided that this iteration of the piece was a failed
experiment and ceased working on the purely orchestral version.
This led me back to where I started, with a trumpet concerto, albeit significantly
altered from the previous versions, as throughout this process I had been editing,
reworking sections, and changing orchestrational features. One significant difference, for
instance, was that I decided to use a B-flat, rather than C trumpet for the soloist, as this is
the favored instrument of jazz trumpeters. I decided this was more apt for this work, for
the obvious reasons, and also could be considered a subtle stylistic allusion. Another
difference was the addition of melodic material throughout the work for the orchestral
trumpets in the final draft. During the time I was reworking Steps as a saxophone

202
concerto and orchestral piece, I realized that I had really only had the trumpets
participating in full brass section gestures, as I had originally wanted to reserve this
timbre mostly for the soloist, so I used these instruments more liberally in these
iterations. When I changed the orchestration back to a trumpet concerto in the final draft,
I carefully considered these new trumpet section passages and, while I removed many of
them, some of them made it into the finished work.
Ex. 6.2: Example of a trumpet passage added into the saxophone version that I decided to keep.
Movement I, rehearsal J, brass only.
Necessary Steps is cast in three movements, with the traditional concerto tempo
plan of fast-slow-fast, although the final movement has interjections of slow music. The
work is approximately fourteen minutes long, and uses an instrumentation of 2+picc-2-
2+bass-2, 4-2-2-1, hp, timp, 2 perc, strings (divisi in all parts, except bass), plus the B-
flat trumpet soloist, whose part ranges from a low G-sharp to high G in the third octave
above middle C, transposed. Some of the high-tessitura passages are marked as
optionally transposable. While the soloist is the focus for much of the work, there are

203
passages where other instruments, or textural/ensemble passages, are the primary means
of melodic presentation.
There are four main approaches of borrowing present in this work: 1) the use of
micro-quotation to build textures and melodic lines out of very short fragments of the
solo in Giant Steps; 2) the use of actual recognizable gestures from the solo; 3) the use of
particular stylistic features of Coltranes improvisation and bebop jazz, in imitation of the
original material but not necessarily drawn directly from it; and 4) the use of the chord
changes from the Coltrane, not in literal quotation, but as generative resources for large
scale harmonic plans in several parts of the concerto. Each of these methods of
importation have their own particular degree of impact on the composition and have
differing levels of perceivability. I took advantage of the variety of perceptibility of these
borrowing techniques by treating it as a musical parameter which I could freely
manipulate by employing each in turn. These compositional techniques will be discussed
after the following analysis of Necessary Steps, which focuses on other musical features.
The first movement, subtitled Initial Steps, is comprised of five main sections,
with a rhythmically free cadenza interpolated between the fourth and last. The
introductory slow section is characterized by static harmonies, relying heavily on the G
major triad, D and D-flat half- and fully-diminished seventh, and E-flat major seventh
harmonies in the strings. There is also a moment of quintal harmony near the end of the
section, but it quickly resolves back to a G major center through glissandi and retains the
common tone of B.

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Fig. 6.1: Harmonic plan of the first minute and ten seconds of Necessary Steps, and diagrams of
pertinent harmonic structures.
The common pitches of D, then G and B-flat, then A-flat/G-sharp and D-flat/C-
sharp are used here to smoothly lead between structures that otherwise share few pitches.
The D-flat fully diminished seventh chord also has an ambiguity here in that it functions
as both the secondary diminished seven of the D, which precedes it, and as an A-sharp
diminished seventh chord, tonicizing the quintal B tetrachord which follows it. The half-
step togglings of the D half-diminished, E-flat major, and D-flat diminished seventh
chords are also allusions to the half-step ascent at the beginning of Coltranes famous
alteration of the turnarounds in Countdown, while the E-flat, G, and the B quintal
tetrachord allude to the chromatic thirds cycle present in the changes of Giant Steps.
Fig. 6.2: Coltrane changes in Giant Steps.
I7 (Coltrane Changes) ii7 V7/bVI bVI (Coltrane Changes) V7 I7

(V - I) (V - I) (V - I) (V - I)
B7 D7 G7 Bb7 Eb7 Am7 D7 G7 Bb7 Eb7 F#7 B7
PC:(E 7 3 7 3 E)
In the introduction to Necessary Steps, and indeed throughout the piece, both the
melodic presentation instruments and the harmonizing lines in the other parts arrive at
consonant notes through expressive chromaticism, often through the sixth and chromatic
seventh scale degrees of given scales, or through the tritone, mirroring these features
contained in the bebop scales, which is also a stylistic allusion to Giant Steps.

205
Ex. 6.3: Example of chromatic approach in Necessary Steps in the flute and clarinets, in measures
15-17.
Ex. 6.4: Dominant, Dorian/Minor, and Mixed Bebop Scales.
The harmonic patterns of the introduction of first movement are carried through
into the next main section at rehearsal A, although instead of sustained, static harmonies,
the G Major and D minor/diminished centers alternate more quickly and are arpeggiated,
with the G eventually becoming the center of tonal gravity. The textures in this section
are built from borrowed cells, whose origins will be discussed in the second part of this
chapter. For the moment it is only necessary to note the manner of their deployment, as
they are juxtaposed in rhythmic dissonance summation processes.125 This technique of
building sections from small, evolving repeated cells is ubiquitously employed
throughout the first and third movements of Steps, and is a core technique of my musical
language. After a few resets as the harmony toggles between G and D in measures 41-5,
the music locks into a G pitch center in measure 46 and the 4:5 rhythmic dissonance
process runs to completion at rehearsal B. Although the strings alone are presented in

125
Rhythmic dissonance terminology derived from the scholarly writings of Harald Krebs, et al,
which have been previously discussed in chapter 4. His definitions of these terms will be assumed for the
rest of this essay.

206
example 6.5, other instruments weave in and out of the texture as well, and also present
melodic material in counterpoint with the soloist.
Ex. 6.5: Measures 39-52 of Steps, strings only. 5- and 4-cycles begin in earnest in the third system.
At rehearsal B the harmonic focus shifts to E-flat major seventh, add nine, which
is again a member of a chromatic thirds cycle with G. The soloist is involved here in a
trio with the harp and drum-set, against a texture of strings and winds. This section is
also the first time the ide fixe is presented in the concerto, which is encountered later in
this movement, in the cadenza and the finale, and is also used in various guises in the
next two movements.
Ex. 6.6: First encounter with the ide fixe, in the solo trumpet (transposed to C), measures 52-9.

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By the end of this material, at measure 56, the harmonic focus shifts to center on
A-sharp/B-flat half-diminished seventh with the C-sharp/D-flat in the bass, which shares
the B-flat with the previous E-flat major seventh, with the other three notes moving by
half step. The harmonic underpinning then shifts again when the violins take over
melodic presentation at rehearsal C to the chromatic-third related G major seventh, flat-
nine, which shares the A-flat, and has the B-flat and D-flat move by step to B and D.
The next shift in harmony, at measure 65, is back to B flat, but this time it is a
major seventh, add eleven and thirteen, which creates an ambiguous situation, as it could
also be interpreted as a G minor seventh, add nine and thirteen, retaining as it does
pitches G and D, with A-flat, B, and F-sharp moving by step. However, the melodic
material clearly dictates goal-directed motion consistent with the major mode, so while
any ambiguity serves a connective role, the nature of the new harmonic focus is clear.
Fig. 6.3: Half-step and common tone harmonic relationships in measures 51-72.
In this passage bebop-sounding solo material is tossed back and forth between the soloist
and the orchestra, culminating in an additive scalar passage for the soloist and a
chromatically inflected cadence from D-flat half-diminished to G-flat.
The next macro-section of the movement begins at measure 84, with the orchestra
presenting the melodic material, and is at first centered around E-flat dominant seventh,
add nine. The harmonic underpinnings quickly change, however, as I apply common tone
and parsimonious/inversional processes. The B augmented, add nine, chord that I used in

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measures 90-92 includes the pitches of the chromatic thirds cycle in Giant Steps, which is
a totally unintentional, probably subconscious allusion to that work I was not aware of
when I composed it.
Fig. 6.4: Harmonic structures in measures 84-93.
The harmonic instability ceases at rehearsal E, where the key of E-flat/D-sharp
minor is established. This is not readily apparent, however, as I also heavily emphasize
the VI and III harmonies, making the mode ambiguous. The goal direction of the melodic
material in the trumpet as it reassumes the central role, however, clearly dispels any
doubts as to the minor mode of the passage. This subsection, from measure 101-116,
features prominent, incisive trumpet melodic presentation and generally adheres to D-
sharp minor. This passage is also another place where orchestral trumpet parts that I
added while playing with the orchestration of the work made it into the final iteration.
Ex. 6.7: Measures 104-13 of the first movement of Steps, brass section.

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(Ex. 6.7, contd)
The fourth macro-section, from rehearsal F, begins at approximately 345 into
the movement, which is four seconds away from its largest Golden Section ratio. There is
also a marked change in harmony, which begins to incorporate the A-flat dominant
seventh, in the roles of both Neapolitan pre-dominant and as a tritone substitution. The
winds also take on a greater role as presenters of melodic material here, which refers
back to the chromatic ascents through bebop scale patterns encountered at the beginning
of the movement. The strings take up a 5:4 grouping rhythmic dissonance process, which
then also incorporates a displacement dissonance between separate 4-patterns as one of
the five-patterns is truncated, out of phase. A permutation of the ide fixe is also
encountered in this section, with its intervallic content altered to fit into the changing
harmonies as it nears its climax.
Ex. 6.8: Strings and soloist at measure 119. Note two types of rhythmic dissonance present,
starting in 122.

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Ex. 6.9: Ide fixe, measures 137-43 (transposed to C).
After this material there is an orchestrational crescendo with a bebop-inspired
raucous drum solo, leading into the cadenza. I consciously chose to place the cadenza,
which is such an integral feature of a concerto, here at the small Golden Section of the
entire piece. 309.4 seconds is right in the middle of the cadenza, which is .382 of the
entire works duration. In this passage the soloist has free reign in articulation and some
freedom in the timing, as the meter is canceled. In addition to previously stated material,
including the ide fixe, as well as motives derived from previous themes, I employed
borrowed cells in this passage, deploying them in linear additive processes. The final
measure of the cadenza is back to tempo giusto, and a short accumulating tremolo
passage in the strings links it to the final section.
Ex. 6.10: Cadenza from the first movement of Steps.

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The last macro-section begins in measure 154 with a focus on the harmony of B
major seventh, add nine, and at first features the orchestra in a melodic presentation role.
The tonal center remains B for the remainder of the movement, with generally tonally
functional harmony underpinning arpeggios and additive linear processes. Before the
close of the movement, other references to the ide appear, first in the low strings, then
again in the soloists part.
Ex. 6.11: Ide fixe in the last macro-section of Initial Steps, first in the low strings in measures
159-62, then in the solo trumpet (here transposed to C), in measures 170-5.
The final section remains tonally stable through the conclusion, which cadences
on a B dominant seventh chord, whose root is approached by an E dominant sevenths
seventh sliding down through the major and minor sixths of that chord, whose seventh in
turn then slides down through the major and minor sixths to the fifth of the chord in a
gesture reminiscent of bebop scale voice-leading, as seen in example 6.16.

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Ex. 6.12: End of the first movement of Steps, brass and strings.
The second movement of Necessary Steps is subtitled Measured Steps, and

features a slow tempo of q = 56. Initially, I had conceived of a slightly brisker q = 72,
but as I worked with the musical materials, I decided that the slower tempo would
emphasize the harmonically static, rhythmically elastic, and lyrical quality of the music
more appropriately, as well as give the soloist a rest between the gymnastics of the outer
movements. This movement is through-composed, with no starkly contrasting sectional
delineations, although it is very tightly controlled in terms of its form and harmonic
pacing. Contrast is brought about by the slow accumulation of elements over long spans
of time, in a culminating forward-skewed arch form.
The harmonic structure of the movement is governed by two related
compositional processes. Firstly, the harmonic pattern was generated by the chord
changes in Giant Steps. This is not to say the harmonic pattern is quoted verbatim from

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the Coltrane, or is merely a slowed down version of it. It is rather a logical and consistent
substitution process for the original pattern resulted in the harmonic plan for this
movement. This will be discussed later in this chapter, in terms of the clandestine nature
of the allusion.
The second element of the harmonic plan originated from my initial use of the
Fibonacci sequence to determine the durations of the harmonic structures. The original
scheme started with the longest durations, starting from the ratios of either 34 or 21, and
spun down to the shortest three times before the movements climax, after which the
lengths began increasing according to the sequence through the end. I used the numbers
in the sequence as ratios, not actual enumerations of beats or clock time, so that for
instance if in the first arch 34 was equal to twenty seconds, 21 was equal to roughly
twelve, and so on. The next arch would use the ratios differently, such that 21 could
equal ten seconds, 13 roughly six, and so on.
Table. 6.1: Original ratio plan for harmonic motion in Measured Steps.
34 21 13 8 5 3 2
Bmi7 D7 Gmi7 Bb7 Ebmi7 A7 D7
21 13 8 5 3 2 1
Gmi7 Bb7 Ebmi7 F#7 Bmi7 F7 Bb7
21 13 8 5 3 2
Ebmi7 A7 D7 Gmi7 C#7 F#7
3 5 8 13 21 34
Bmi7 F7 Bb7 Ebmi7 C#7 F#7
I ultimately decided to abandon a strict usage of the sequence, as the aesthetic
result was different from my desired outcome. However, the general temporal shape
remained and affected my choices as I intuitively made changes to bring the structure
more into line with my compositional preferences. Although I eventually altered some of

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the harmonies, inserted repetitions of certain harmonic units, and changed some of the
timings to better fit what I wanted, this was all done in the context of altering the
structures generated by the Fibonacci sequence, so it seems apt to include a description of
the original plan in analyzing the final outcome. The remaining shape still results in a
large-scale, multi-tiered forward-skewed arch form, the crux of which not only contains
the one reference to the ide fixe in this movement, but is also located at precisely the
large Golden Section of the entire concerto, and only twelve seconds away from the large
Golden Section of this movement.
Fig. 6.5: Final harmonic plan of Measured Steps. Chr. = chromatic chord, tr. = triad.
Fig. 6.6: Diagram of the macro Golden Sections of Necessary Steps. Recall that the first
movements cadenza is located at the small section of the overall concerto.

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Ex. 6.13: Crux of the arch form of Measured Steps. Note the presence of the distorted ide fixe
in the winds.
Another prominent feature of this movement is the multiple continuous separate
rhythmic planes which are inhabited by the piccolo, harp, and percussion, sometimes
independent of each other and the rest of the material, in some cases for the entire
movement. I specified that I wanted Tibetan prayer cymbals, but would be satisfied with
a large triangle, in the first percussion part for the archs ascent. I then have them switch
to drum set ride cymbal in the second part, stylistically alluding to the source material in
a subtle, but undeniably evocative fashion.
The harp and first percussion planes have metric interdependence in the upward
slope of the arch, displaced as they are by an eighth note in a running cycle of five
quarter notes. I set up a compositional rule that if eithers cycle initiation point occurred
when it was undesirable, I could off-set the percussion, but had to return to the pattern by
the beginning of the next cycle. I also decided that I could choose not to have the harp
sound when its rhythmic plane dictated, but then I would have to wait until the beginning
of the next cycle to use it again. I ended up employing these alterations sparingly, as the
result of the unadulterated process was aesthetically effective. This means that while
these two instruments operate according to their own independent metric scheme, there is

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still an intuitive but orderly interaction between them and the rest of the music.
Additionally, for the first 16 measures of the movement, the piccolo exists in a double
augmentation of this 5-cycle, although it is not arrayed in any additional rhythmic
displacement dissonance from the rest of the music, as the harp and percussion are.
The glockenspiel, which does not enter until right after rehearsal A on the
downbeat of measure 19, is not in a displacement dissonance related to the rest of the
music, but is arrayed in a quarter note 6-cycle grouping dissonance, which means that, at
this point, there are three rhythmic continuums running counter to the over-meter: the
harps quarter-note 5-cycle, first percussions eighth-note displaced 5-cycle, and the 6-
cycle grouping dissonance of the glockenspiel. After the climax of the arch form, the
harp takes up a displaced grouping dissonance 4-cycle and the glockenspiel plays its final
note at a coincidence if its pattern with the harps. The harp then begins skipping every
other cycle, while the first percussions cycle begins to break down, drifting freely
further and further from its correct placement until the conclusion of the movement.

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Fig. 6.7: Rhythmic cycles running counter to the over-meter in Measured Steps. Over-
meter is indicated underneath, with measure numbers and notches indicating quarter notes.
The third movement of Necessary Steps is subtitled Leaps. This is in reference
to both the gymnastic nature of the music and sudden shifts in mood and tempo which
are encountered in this movement, as well as the faster harmonic motion, compared to
the other two movements. The form of Leaps can be thought of as a modified five-part
rondo comprised of nested forms, with two related B sections in slower tempi, and a coda
that also functions as a coda for the entire concerto. A case can also be made that it is
actually a seven-part rondo, with the short orchestral interlude and bass clarinet solo of

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the digression in the central rounded binary or ternary A2 section actually functioning as
a C, with the resulting formal plan being A1B1A2CA3B2A4. It is a relatively short
passage, however, which might contraindicate this interpretation. In composing the
movement, I was thinking of the central A2section as one formal unit, but I recognize that
an argument can also be made for the seven-part interpretation.
Fig. 6.8: Formal plan of Leaps. Possible formal interpretation as seven-part also included,
below composers analysis.
After a short and ominously percussive introduction, the A1 section is fast and
built out of borrowed cells much like the fast arpeggiations in the first movement. This
binary section is constructed out of two related parts. The harmonic motion here takes
advantage of the same transformational processes and parsimonious voice-leading that I
used in the first movement, the main difference being that I cycle through the harmonies
much faster, sometimes changing harmonies as often as every beat. The opening B-flat
dominant seventh, add nine and eleven, moves smoothly into the G dominant seventh
four measures later, retaining the D and F, and approaching the B and G by half-step. The
G dominant seventh then toggles back and forth to the D half-diminished seventh, with
which it shares a similar relationship, before that chord becomes an E-flat dominant
seventh, add nine, for one measure, retaining the F and approaching the E-flat, G, and D-
flat by step. This is then transformed immediately into an F-sharp dominant seventh, add
nine, retaining pitches B-flat and D-flat, respelled as A-sharp and C-sharp, and
approaching the F-sharp, G-sharp, and E by step. This harmony then resolves back into

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E-flat two measures later, though this time the C-sharp moves by step to D, making it an
E-flat major seventh this time. The added nine and thirteen, however, initially create an
ambiguity as to whether this is E-flat or C minor, as these pitches are initially
emphasized in the clarinets, horns, and cellos, and could indicate a C minor seventh, add
nine, eleven. That it is indeed E-flat is confirmed quickly through melodic cues in the
soloists part, and is also suggested by its moving to B-flat in measure 24. This is another
point at which there is a harmonic toggle, as the B-flat major seventh, add nine, alternates
with A-flat major seventh, add nine, with the D and A moving by half-step to E-flat and
A-flat, and the B-flat and C retained in both harmonies.
Fig. 6.9: Harmonic structures from measure 11-24 of Leaps.
This passage also contains references to the ide fixe, presented first unchanged in
measures 17-18, then in the minor mode and echoed by the orchestra. The first
presentation in the soloists part is presaged by an imitation of the figure in the cellos, in
augmentation. The minor/diminished iteration is doubled by the orchestra and is echoed
by the flutes three beats later, which is echoed by the soloist in turn three and a half beats
after that.

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Ex. 6.14: Ide fixe in the first A section of Leaps, measures 14-18 and 24-8.
This passage leads directly into the B1 section of the movement, with the
expression marking Dark and warm and a drastically reduced tempo of q = 80. The
texture here is a reference to the previous movement, and I also employ related
compositional techniques in terms of the rhythms of the harp and percussion parts. The
percussionists are arrayed in grouping dissonance 3-cycles, quarter-note displaced from
each other. The harp operates in a 4-cycle, which is temporally compressed using

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quintuplets to create an artificial grouping dissonance in a ratio of 4:5. The percussionists
play for the final time at rhythmic process completion points of their 3-cycles in measures
37-8, and the harp stops playing at what would be its only rhythmic process completion
point, also in measure 38.
Ex. 6.15: First B section, with independent rhythmic cycles in the harp and percussion parts.
Fig. 6.10: Graph of rhythmic dissonance cycle patterns in the first B section of Leaps. Note that
rhythmic process completion points of the percussion processes align with the last time that they
play, and that what would be the harps only rhythmic process completion point is when it stops
playing.

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At the end of this section there is a brief, interruptive passage reminiscent of the
movements introduction, then the music launches into the rondos central A2 section. I
was thinking of the nested form in this passage as rounded binary or ternary, with a two-
part a section, a brief orchestral digression featuring a bass clarinet solo, then a return
to a with the focus on the trumpet soloist. The first part of the first a section
focuses on F major seventh, add nine, and features a 5:4 rhythmic grouping dissonance at
the sixteenth-note level between the violas and the rest of the orchestra. This process
does not quite come to completion, bleeding over to the second beat of the next section at
rehearsal D, where it would realign on beat two of that measure. I also created a brief
displacement dissonance here in the soloists part, which uses an eight-note off-set.
Ex. 6.16: Metric dissonance in the second A section of Leaps, measures 42-54, trumpet soloist
and strings.

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The second part of the first a section, from measures 55-62, focuses on the
harmony of D dominant seventh, add nine, retaining the C and A from the previous
section, while the F moves to F-sharp by step. This section features a metric grouping
dissonance between the basses, cellos, and trombones, with the second trombone and
cellos operating in a quarter-note 5-cycle, while the basses and first trombone operate in
a 4-cycle. The process comes to completion in measure 59, then two measures of
cadential material lead into the digression.
Ex. 6.17: Metric grouping dissonance in measures 55-67 of Leaps, brass and low strings.
After a short orchestral digression over A minor seventh, which retains the A and
C from the previous harmony and approaches the G by half-step, the return to the a
section of the rounded binary form occurs at measure 67, where the harmony changes to
B-flat major seventh, with every note being approached by half-step from the previous
chord. The soloists material here makes use of staggered 6:4 metric dissonances, freely
employed. This section also returns to the ide fixe, this time in its original triumphant
mode from the first movement, in measure 69, which then segues into the next macro B2
section.

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Ex. 6.18: Soloists 6:4 metric grouping dissonances and reference to the ide fixe, in measures 65-
76.
*May be played down an octave.
The harmonic structures of this central ritornello are tightly integrated through the
use of common tones and parsimonious voice leading. This provides smooth continuity
without the use of strong cadential tonal patterns, relying instead on third relations, both

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chromatic and diatonic. The use of common tones and half-step motion make the
harmonic juxtapositions in this section sound logically connected and not as jarring as
they otherwise might. There are also chord changes where tones converge or diverge by
half-step, such as from measure 54-55, where F and G converge to F-sharp, and measure
71-72, where C-sharp diverges to C and D.
Fig. 6.11: Harmonic structures in the central A2 macro-section of Leaps.
Much like the first B section, its return references the textures and techniques of
the second movement, but the tempo is a little faster this time, only slowing to 100 beats-
per-minute. This faster tempo, coupled with the way the music smoothly accelerates back
to the fast section tempo of q = 120 at the end of the section, gives this iteration of the B
material a much more transitory nature. This was an intentional compositional decision,
with the purpose of propelling the music on its way to the conclusion of the piece. Once
again, the harp and percussion parts are imbued with rhythmic dissonance, operating on
continuous independent rhythmic planes separate from the rest of the meter. The harp
operates in a 6-cycle eighth-note grouping dissonance that is also displaced by a quarter

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note, the triangle in a 7-cycle eighth-note grouping dissonance, seemingly displaced by
an eighth note, but actually just not sounding on its first down-beat in measure 78, and
the glockenspiel runs in a 5-cycle eighth-note grouping dissonance, also displaced by a
quarter note. This metric layering is even further complicated by the fact that these
patterns are juxtaposed against an over-meter of alternating units of six and eight quarter
notes, expressed as two-measure groups of 3/4 and 4/4 for convenience.
Ex. 6.19: Second macro B section in Leaps, q = 100.
Fig. 6.12: Graph of rhythmic dissonance cycles in this section and process completion points.
The final section of Leaps consists of a return to the A section tempo and
material, then a ramp-form coda, with the orchestra taking over the role of melodic

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presentation at first. The soloist soon comes to the fore again, however, in a brief
accompanied duet with the drum-set in measure 99. In another allusion to the source
material, I composed out a six measure bebop-inspired drum solo, but stipulate that the
percussionist may choose to improvise something in that vein, if they so desire.
Ex. 6.20: Drum solo in accompanied duet with trumpet soloist, measures 99-105.
This section begins in measure 90, where there is an arpeggiated harmonic
alternation between C-sharp minor seventh and F-sharp dominant seventh, add nine,
which retain three common tones and one that changes by a half-step, between A-sharp
and B. However, the melodic materials emphasis on the pitches E and B creates
ambiguity as to the whether the mode of the passage is E major or C-sharp minor. This is
due to the fact that there are no dominant-tonic relationships in the harmonic structures
expressed by the strings and that the C-sharp minor seventh chord is reinterpretable as an
E major chord, add thirteen. These two harmonies are restated in different voicings
through measure 96, where a pedal reasserts the tonal center of C-sharp, which is
confirmed in measures 98-99, by a modal vmi7-imi7 cadence in the brass. The soloist

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also ascends to a high C-sharp through the major sixth and chromatic sevenths of the
bebop dominant scale, providing a B-sharp leading tone.
After only two measures of a reconfirmed C-sharp tonal center, the G-sharp flips
up a semitone to A-natural, which is also present in the viola ostinato in the first two
measures, and the soloist reasserts G-sharp, emphasizing A major seventh as the
harmony. This again implies an ambiguity between C-sharp and E, similar to that of the
previous section, as the dominant-tonic relationship between E and A might lend
credence to hearing it as in the major mode, after all. In measure 105, the tonal center
becomes a little more difficult to discern, as a C dominant seventh chord is first
encountered, then scalar material with B-flats, which seems to assert F major.
The C dominant seventh retains the E of the A major seventh, and all of the other
notes move by semi-tone into the new chord. While most of the ostinato and scalar
figures in the passage might lead one to hear it as centered on G Dorian, the real purpose
of this focus is to emphasize the G so that when the C dominant chord becomes the
harmonic focus in measure 108, it sounds like a point of arrival due to the dominant-tonic
relationship. With a few momentary neighbor-harmony diversions to A-flat major, this
focus on the harmony of C dominant seventh remains throughout the rest of the
movement, with several layers of rhythmic dissonance processes throughout the entire
orchestra animating the texture and adding to the tension of the ramp form. There is a
brief focus on the symmetrical harmony of C dominant seventh, flat five, then a final
cadence on F, eschewing long term tonal closure to finish a tritone away from the B
pedal of the first movement and opening harmony of the second, and a half-step away

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from the end of the second movement and beginning of the third, reemphasizing the ideas
of half-step motion and convergence found in much of the harmonic motion in this piece.
Fig. 6.13: Harmonic structures in the final sections of Leaps.
The passage from 105-8, which functions as a linkage to the ramped coda, also
contains the final reference to the ide fixe in the soloists part, timed so that its final
resolution lines up with the previously mentioned moment of arrival in measure 108.
Ex. 6.21: Final use of the ide fixe in Steps, right before the coda at the end of Leaps, measures
118-26.

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(Ex. 6.21, contd)
II. Clandestine Quotation and Micro-Quotation
While there were no systematic criteria for selecting which materials to draw
from Giant Steps, I did have some specific things in mind. I wanted to use molecules that
would not be so generic as to leave no trace of their features in the resulting music, but I
conversely definitely did not want Necessary Steps to sound jazz scored for orchestra.
Whether I have been successful in either of these pursuits is ultimately subjective, and
may even vary from listener to listener, but I think that I was moderately successful in
striking this balance. I also think that this piece is successful on its own intrinsic terms,
regardless of whether the listener is even aware that any allusion is happening. This is a
matter of great importance in this piece, as so many of the borrowings are hidden quite
assiduously. The transcription I made of the solo, from which musical examples are
drawn to show the quotations in Necessary Steps in this section of the chapter, can be
found in the appendix of this document.

231
The first corridor of borrowing that I will discuss here is that of micro-quotation,
which refers to the use of molecular materials from another work in building textures and
melodic patterns in a new composition. Rather than go through and catalogue every cell I
borrowed from Coltranes solo, I will simply provide a representative sampling of
examples of this type of use of the borrowed materials here. The reason for this survey-
style approach is that a full accounting of this practice, so ubiquitously used in this piece,
would be repetitive, and ultimately redundant. Additionally, as I was intuitively roving
back and forth through the solo, drawing cells from here and there, it is important to note
that many of these short patterns are repeated multiple times throughout. The fact that
there are duplications of materials over the course of the solo causes difficulty in
definitively saying in every case where a specific cell came from.
In the first section of the first movement, from measures 2-7 in the flute and oboe
solos, and again in the solo trumpet and oboe solos from measure 10-18, I borrow from
measures 10, 18, and 19 of Coltranes solo. The descending chromatic tuplet, followed
by an arpeggiated chord of 18 and 19, and measure 10s descending scalar/repeated first
note cell, lend their contours to much of the melodic material, transposed as needed to fit
the harmony. The idea of a chromatic rip up through three pitches to a goal note is also
prominently used, which is the first motive from the first part of measure 18 of
Coltranes solo, and is also a stylistic reference to the bebop dominant scale. For
instance, in measure 2, the flute solo uses the descending chromatic tuplet from
Coltranes measure 18, then an appended scalar/repeated note cell starting on G.

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Ex. 6.22: Measures 1-7 and 10-18 of Initial Steps, winds and soloist.
Ex. 6.23: Measures 18-19 and 10 of Coltranes solo.
This free adaptation, transposition, and juxtaposition of various cells into longer
melodic patterns is a technique that I use throughout this work. The interval patterns from
the Coltrane are characteristic enough that they have a specific, coloristic effect on the
resulting music, and yet are generic, malleable, and molecular enough to prevent a sense
of outright referential quotation. The ide fixe of the concerto is another such melodic
usage of cells from the Coltrane. The motive results from a fusion of measures 109-10
with the ascent of beats three and four of measure 7 and descent measure 23, which are
also cells of the solo that I used in other places. Measures 7 and 23 map transpositionally
onto the ide, bolstering the logic for using it as an important feature in the concerto.
Ex. 6.24: Ide fixe of Necessary Steps and measures 7 and 23 from Coltranes solo.

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Another example of this type of melodic micro-quotation can be found in the
cadenza of this movement, which draws from measures 10, 13, 18, 58-9, 90-1, 109, 118,
and 136 of Coltranes solo. Leading into the cadenza, the soloist plays two chordal
inversions of a transposition of the major-third/major-second/major-third cell at the end
of Coltranes measure 118. The next material is clearly an allusion to the material from
measure 18, but as this gesture is found all throughout his solo, its origins are non-
specific.
Ex. 6.25: First line of cadenza and micro-quotations from measures 118 and 18 of Coltranes solo.
The next gesture is a linear additive process, culminating in an inversion of
Coltranes measure 10, following a pattern of down a major seventh, up a minor second,
and so on. This is followed by material drawn from measures 58-9 of the solo, transposed
and with the first note up an octave. The last beat of 58 and the first two of 59 are
repeated, then the first beat of 58 is presented in retrograde chromatic inversion on E-flat.
Ex. 6.26: Second line of cadenza, mirror of measure 10, and other micro-quotations.
The third line of the cadenza presents a linear additive process culminating in an
unadulterated reference to beat two of 136 through the first of 137, then alludes to
measure 13 of Coltranes solo, repeating the whole measure twice. The fourth line then
begins with material from measures 90 and 91 which are somewhat unique gestures in the
solo, as they traverse the range of the instrument in a more temporally compressed
manner than in the rest of the improvisation, using tuplets and sixteenth notes. I chose to

234
present the material as grace-note runs to reflect this, allowing the performer to play them
as fast as possible, representing the original materials temporal relationship to the rest of
Coltranes solo. The cadenza finishes with a statement of the ide fixe, another reference
to measure 18 from the Coltrane, then the ide again.
Ex. 6.27: Third and fourth lines of the cadenza.
The second movement also contains numerous melodic clandestine allusions and
micro-quotations. Focusing specifically on the trumpet part in the beginning of the
movement, many of the melodic cells here are drawn directly from the Coltrane, though
sometimes rhythmically manipulated or transposed to suit my compositional preferences.
The prominent repeating piccolo/flute gesture here is a rhythmic compression of a cell
from the solo, derived from the last two beats of measure 2, transposed up a major sixth
and altered in mode from major to minor.
Ex. 6.28: Piccolo gesture in thesecond movement and measure 2 of the solo.
The soloists first gesture is an ornamented rhythmic expansion of measure 14 of
Coltranes solo, also altered in mode. The next gesture is drawn from the first two beats
of the second measure of the solo, likewise altered. Measure 6s gesture is a similar
alteration of the second two beats of the measure 2 of the solo, and the following gesture
in measures 7-8 is a rhythmic expansion of the same cell, with an extension. In measure

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9, I started with a five note cell from measure 73 of Coltranes solo, although it is really
just a minor scale, so therefore is a very generic borrowing. The gestures in measures 12-
13 are rhythmic distortions of the end of measure 2 and the beginning of measure 3 of the
solo, the second of which is transposed down by a major second, followed by a modal
alteration of measure 28. Measure 14 borrows from measure 25 of the Coltrane, which I
then sequenced down. The sixteenth notes in measure 14 come from beat three of
measure 38 of his solo, and measures 16 and 17 are a rhythmic distortion of Coltranes
measure 169, beat three. After repeating the last two notes of this as sixteenth notes I then
present his entire measure 170 in rhythmic distortion. My measure 22 has references to
Coltranes measure 12-13, and measure 25-7 fragments a borrowing from his measure 58.
Ex. 6.29: Melodic clandestine quotation in the solo trumpet part in the beginning of Measured
Steps. When a specific part of the measure was used, the beat is indicated by b.

236
I continue with similar borrowing techniques throughout the entire movement.
The ending of the movement also has references to measure 18 of the solo, with its
chromatic grace-note ornament to a long note and chromatic descent, other modified cells
from the Coltrane, and also the same material that the ide fixe is derived from. The
technique I used in this part of the movement was more in line with the chromatic
insertion method of connecting borrowed material, as I freely interposed newly composed
music between the cells, intuitively weaving them into the melodies.
Ex. 6.30: Ending of Measured Steps, solo trumpet, measure 38 through the end, and borrowed
cells.
A prominent example of melodic micro-quotation in the third movement is
located in the introduction, where the trumpet and melodic lines in the strings make use
of interlocked cells borrowed from Coltranes solo. As previously mentioned, the subtitle
Leaps refers to several musical features of this movement, but I also incorporated this
concept into my quotational practices here, leaping back and forth through the solo in
wider spans than in the previous movements. The cells from the solo are initially drawn
from measures 70 through 72, with a brief allusion to 83 and 101, but then I leap back to
63, 18, and 36, then back to the 70s. The way in which I deployed the borrowed materials
for most of this movement is similar to the way I used them at the end of the second

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movement, taking the cells as starting points and freely composing new music to connect
them.
Ex. 6.31: Beginning of Leaps and pertinent cells from Coltranes solo.
I did not limit my use of micro-quotation to the creation of melodic material in
Necessary Steps, but also borrowed cells from Coltranes solo for use in the composition
of Postminimalist repetitive pulse patterns to provide middle- and background materials

238
and textures. Once such a pattern was constructed, I often manipulated the resulting
harmonies with the typical Neo-Riemannian, common-tone, and half-step parsimonious
voice-leading processes discussed in the first half of this chapter. Sometimes this would
involve transforming the textures built from Coltranes cells into new materials, but in
many cases the textures move between multiple different patterns based on the Giant
Steps cells, or sometimes even juxtapose multiple cells simultaneously. I also allowed
myself free transposition of the cells, as well as their inversional rotation and pitch-class
octave presentation, as I wanted to retain the higher degree of compositional finesse that
control over these parameters would afford me. I also sometimes changed the mode of
cells that outlined particular harmonies, if I desired a certain aesthetic, rhetorical result
that would be better served by such an alteration. By allowing for such a high degree of
manipulation of the borrowed materials in my compositional process, I set up the
conditions under which the provenance of these materials might be extremely occluded,
in keeping with the idea of clandestine quotation.
An example of this cellular texture building can be found at the outset of the fast
music in the first movement, beginning at rehearsal A. Almost all of the textures in this
section are elaborations of sequential borrowings from a passage starting at measure 6 of
Coltranes solo, but because his solo here focuses primarily on the upper extensions of
the chords of the changes, the harmonic pattern that results is not the same as that of
Giant Steps. In example 6.46, each new repeating textural cell encountered in this part of
the movement is compared with its source in the Coltrane. The pitches of the cells are
rotated to create longer repeating cells which are juxtaposed against the four note cells to
achieve grouping dissonance cycles.

239
Ex. 6.32: Textural cells drawn from Giant Steps, in Initial Steps, measure 6-7.
M. 35-8, cell from m. 6, beat 1-2.
M. 39-42, cell in m. 41 from m. 6, beat 3-4, with octave replication of the D to obtain a 5-cycle.
M. 49-52, cell in m. 51 from m. 7, beat 1-2, with octave replication of the E-flat to obtain 9-cycle.

240
(Ex. 6.32, contd)
M. 53-6, cell in m. 56 from m. 7, beat 3-4, lower octave replication of C-sharp to obtain 5-cycle.
in the first violins. Note the previous 9-cycle coming to completion in the first 2 beats of m. 55
and locking back into the eight-cycle underneath it.
At measure 61 two new cells are directly juxtaposed without grouping dissonance,
and even as they are both occurring at the same time, the upper cell is also being
presented in double augmentation in the cellos. This simplification of the simultaneous
metric streams was intentional, as I wanted the melodic presentation of newly composed
material in the upper strings to be clear. Although the cells appear to be different, they are
both drawn from the same gesture in the Coltrane, which occurs in measure 106, as well
as at other points in the solo. I changed the B-flat to B-natural and transposed it up an
octave in one of the two related cells.
Ex. 6.33: Measure 106 of the solo and measures 61-64 of Initial Steps.

241
At measure 65 I use the cell from the second half of measure 106 in the middle
strings and flutes to create a spinning, articulated texture, brought about by the presence
of the repeated note that occurs as this cell is looped. I also start to interject one of the
previous cells as a continuation of the repeating-note cell in the flutes, this time
transposed to start on F. The use of these cells and their various permutations continues
through the next section, as they are varied and juxtaposed against newly-composed
music.
Ex. 6.34: Measure 106 of the solo and measures 64-8 of Initial Steps, strings and winds.
Another section in this movement where I use borrowed cells to build textures
takes place at rehearsal E, where I create shimmering interlocking scalar textures out of
cells from Coltranes solo. While these materials are fairly generic, they were
nevertheless extracted from the solo and their specific interval patterns have ramifications

242
on the resultant music. The motive in the oboes comes from the third and fourth beat of
measure 24 of the solo, at first altered to be in a minor mode and transposed down a
minor third. The descending scale, followed by descending third and fourth, is drawn
from the same spot, but continues through the first note of measure 25, transposed down
a minor second relative to measure 24. This material is presented mostly in line with the
over- meter in the flutes and clarinets during this section, while the strings and oboes
present it in 5-, 9-, and 10-cycles, later joined by the piccolo.
Ex. 6.35: Measures 24-25 of Coltranes solo, and measures 109-13 of Initial Steps, strings and
winds.
Similarly, the texture that I used for the last section of the first movement, coming
out of the cadenza, makes use of a transposition and minor mode alteration of the first
two beats of measure 6 of Coltranes solo. Again, this material is just an arpeggiated

243
triad, so is quite generic, but the voicing of the chord is maintained. I then manipulated
the harmonic motion by changing tones through parsimonious voice-leading, through the
end of the movement.
Ex. 6.36: Measure 6 from Coltranes solo and 152-5 of Initial Steps, strings only.
The second movement does not employ cells from the Coltrane in this fashion,
instead using different features of the work to generate textures and harmonies, which
will be discussed shortly. The last movement, however, uses this technique extensively.
The previously discussed melodic use of the motivic cells is continued into the repeated
pulse pattern texture passages, like the one beginning in measure 15. Here I also used
measures 6-7 of Coltranes solo, at first alternating between the two patterns in 6, with
the first note of the first gesture transposed to G, then switching to the E-flat scale/third
patterns in measure 17. In measure 18, I borrow a slightly altered and transposed version
of measures 135-6, fragmented and distributed in 4-, 6-, and 8-cycles.

244
Ex. 6.37: Measures 14-18 of Leaps, strings only, and measures 6-7 and 135-6 of the solo.
Similarly, the textures in the passage from 44-78 are comprised of borrowed cells
from 146-170, then 7, 45, and 82 of the solo, although many of them are altered in regard
to interval quality and mode, occluding the references significantly. The cell used at
measure 44 is a tritone transposition of the first two beats of measure 146 of the solo, and
the one used at rehearsal D is a combination of the cell of the first two beats of measure
152 of the solo, transposed a fourth, and the first two of measure 170, transposed a major
third.
Ex. 6.38: Measures 44-54 of Leaps, strings only, and micro-quotation sources. The textural
patterns are also included in various other instruments throughout.
M. 42-6 of Leaps, new cell starting at m. 44.
M. 146 of Coltranes solo, beats one and two (trans. down a fourth).

245
(Ex. 6.38 contd)
M. 47-54 of Leaps, new cell starting at D.
M. 152, beats one and two (trans. up major third), and m. 179 of Coltranes solo (beats 1-2 trans.
up major third).
This is interconnected through the referenced material with the next cell at measure 55,
which alludes to beats three and four of the same measure, 170, also transposed a major
third. Measure 62 leaps back to beats one and two of measure 7 of the Coltrane, with an
altered interval quality pattern, and appended repetition of notes at the octave to create
rhythmic dissonance cycles
Ex. 6.39: Measures 55-64 of Leaps, strings only, and micro-quotation sources.
M. 170 of Coltranes solo (beats 2-3 trans. up major third).

246
(Ex. 6.39, contd)
M. 60-4 of Leaps, new cell from Coltranes m. 7 starting m. 62.
M. 7 of Coltranes solo (beats 2-3, all but E trans. down a minor second).
At rehearsal E I used a cell from the first and second beats of measure 45, verbatim, again
duplicating and appending tones at the octave to create rhythmic grouping dissonance
cycles.
Ex. 6.40: Measures 65-68 of Leaps, strings only, and micro-quotation source.
M. 65-68 of Leaps, new cell starting at reh. E.
M. 45 of Coltranes solo (beats 1-2, verbatim).
Measure 70 then alludes to the first two beats of measure 82, transposed a minor third,
and with the second note raised by a half-step.

247
Ex. 6.41: Measures 69-71 of Leaps, strings only, and micro-quotation source.
M. 82 of Coltranes solo (beats 1-2, second note raised by half-step and cell trans. a minor third).
As can be seen here, the combination of micro-quotation of generic patterns, and
manipulated and occluded through clandestine quotation, allows for a selective and
nuanced way of dealing with borrowed materials. At certain points, when quoting
verbatim, the molecular nature of the materials creates ambiguity as to their origins,
while at others the nature of the borrowing is hidden by manipulation of the materials.
However, in most cases at least their basic shapes are retained, and often their specific
interval content remains and substantially influences the character of the resultant music,
both melodically and harmonically.
There are very few quotations in Necessary Steps that are readily identifiable as
such, but there are a few moments of note, when materials from the solo come to the fore,
or the bebop idiom is explicitly referenced overtly. One such instance occurs in the first
movement, where there fragments from measures 9-11 of the solo are passed about the
orchestra, and do not conform to the prevailing tonal center or sounding harmony. This
passage, from measure 68 through 72, even has an expression indication for the soloist to
play against the grain, bebop feel.

248
Ex. 6.42: Bebop fragments in measures 68-72 of Initial Steps, winds and soloist, and their
sources in Coltranes solo, measures 9-11.
Likewise, the previously mentioned allusion to measure 13 of the solo in the
cadenza is quite specific, repeating a seven note pattern twice, in the original rhythm,
almost verbatim. Also, the material referenced in the woodwinds in measures 124 and
127 of the first movement retain a strong resemblance to their origins in Coltranes solo,
and might be recognized by an acute listener who was familiar with the source material.
Ex. 6.43: Measures 124 and 127 in Initial Steps, winds only, and pertinent measures from
Coltranes solo, 63 and 10.

249
This grace-note ornament, approaching a high note through the sixth and
chromatic sevenths below it as encountered in measure 124 in the previous example, is so
pervasive in the concerto that it deserves mention here, as it is also a prominent musical
feature of Coltranes solo. It is like-wise a stylistic feature of bebop jazz generally, as this
gesture is contained in the bebop dominant scale. The repeated use of drum set gestures
throughout the concerto is also stylistically referential to the idiom, reflecting different
aspects of the way this instrument is used in bebop or jazz in general, sometimes
soloistically and sometimes presenting characteristic accompaniment patterns.
Ex. 6.44: Moments of Steps where the drum set references bebop and jazz idioms.

250
The final corridor of borrowing discussed here is the use of the chord changes of
Giant Steps to derive the harmonic plan of the second movement of Necessary Steps. I
wanted to use the chords in some capacity, but again, I wanted to obscure the source of
my borrowing through some consistent system that would alter the nature of the
harmonies, making their origins difficult to divine. I decided that I would take the root
pattern of the chord changes, but I would alter the qualities of the chords systematically.
Since this was the slow movement of the concerto, I decided that I wanted to devise a
system that would prefer creating minor seventh chords and also minimize the creation of
dominant seventh chords, as this is one of the most common types encountered in the
Coltrane and such a prominent feature of jazz harmony, and thus the least in line with the
clandestine nature of what I was trying to do. In one sixteen bar cycle of the solo, there
are ten major seventh chords, ten dominant seventh chords, and six minor seventh chords.
I came up with a simple substitution pattern, basing minor seventh and add nine chords
on the roots of major seventh chords, major seventh and add nine chords on the roots of
dominant seventh chords, and dominant seventh and add nine chords on the roots of
minor seventh chords, thus maximizing the number of minor seventh chords and
minimizing the number of dominant sevenths.
Fig. 6.14: Seventh chord substitution pattern used in Measured Steps.
I had originally also transposed the pattern down a major third, so that the overall
harmonic emphasis was on G minor, but later abandoned this key, as B gave better

251
priority to the instrumental tessituras I wished to utilize. The substitution plan also
drained the harmonic structure of its reliance on chromatic third tonics, without entirely
abandoning this root pattern. It also produced chord patterns that were not diatonic to the
emphasis-created pitch center of B minor and created fifth relations between non-
dominant seventh chords and their relative tonics. In addition to abandoning the use of
the Fibonacci sequence in the final iteration of the movement, I opted to deviate in a very
limited capacity from this harmonic plan for aesthetic reasons. I chose to repeat the B
minor seventh and D major seventh chords at the beginning of the movement and to
repeat the next B-flat major seventh and E-flat minor seventh pattern. I changed the B-
flat to a major seventh the second time, the next B-flat major seventh to B natural major
seventh, and altered the final B major seventh into a highly chromatic structure which is
still centered on B.
Table 6.2: Deviations from the original ratios in the harmonic plan of Measured Steps, italicized
pairs of chords repeated and underlined chords chromatically altered.
34 21 13 8 5 3 2
Ebmi7,
(Bmi7 D7) Gmi7 (Bb7 2nd A7 D7
time)
21 13 8 5 3 2 1
Gmi7 B7 Ebmi7 F#7 Bmi7 F7 Bb7
21 13 8 5 3 2
Ebmi7 A7 D7 Gmi7 C#7 F#7
3 5 8 13 21 34
B chr. F7 Bb7 Ebmi7 C#7 F#7
Thus, while sounding very little like the original chord changes from Giant Steps,
the harmonic pattern of Measured Steps is derived directly and systematically from its
basic shape, with a few minor alterations resulting from my compositional choices and

252
aesthetic preferences. Additionally, the extreme dilation of sixteen measures into three
and a half minutes of music contributes to the listeners perception of these structures as a
series of tonal centers and not as a chord progression.
After having engaged in such clandestine quotational practices in the usage of
borrowings from Coltranes Giant Steps, one might ask why I chose to reference his work
in the title and the subtitles of the movements. The decision to use these titles did come
after the composition of the works first iteration, not before. I decided that I did want to
acknowledge the source material in some way, even after going to such pains to hide the
borrowings, if not as an apology, then at least a sort of a restitution for the music that I
had appropriated so liberally.
In a final accounting, however, I strongly believe that there are two factors which
I can point to which may justify my liberal borrowings in this work and others. One, I
firmly believe that one artist can take ownership of anothers work through a sort of tacit
affirmation of that musics worth, a kind of transcendental yes on the part of the
borrowing composer to the implicit question posed by the earlier piece. Second, as Robin
Holloway so eloquently put it in our interview, quoting anothers music isnt stealing if
you pay for it.126 By this he meant that, in the manner of their deployment and the
quality of the new music against which they are juxtaposed, the borrowing composer
ought to bring just as much to the new composition as the borrowed materials. I think that
I have done that in Necessary Steps, and that the diminished perceivability of the
borrowed materials through the use of clandestine and micro-quotation, in relation to the
newly composed music and artfulness of its occlusion, strengthens this argument

126

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considerably. And perhaps I ought not to be overly concerned as to justifying the
legitimacy of my quotational practices. In closing, it seems appropriate to refer to T.S.
Eliots ideas on the practice, laid out in The Sacred Wood:
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and
good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The
good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different
from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has
no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or
alien in language, or diverse in interest.127
In his summation of this idea, of course, Igor Stravinsky was much more concise:
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

127
T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (London: Methuen, 1920), 114.

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PETER JAMES LEARNS TRANSCRIPTION OF
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Clandestine Quotation and Micro-Quotation As Compositional Resources in The Trumpet Concerto Necessary Steps

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Clandestine Quotation and Micro-Quotation as

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CLANDESTINE QUOTATION AND MICRO-QUOTATION AS COMPOSITIONAL

Peter James Learn

Submitted to the Faculty

Coral Gables, Florida

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

CLANDESTINE QUOTATION AND MICRO-QUOTATION AS COMPOSITIONAL

Peter James Learn

Abstract of a doctoral essay at the University of Miami.

Doctoral essay supervised by Professor Dorothy Hindman.

This document proposes to examine the aesthetic ramifications of quotation as

applied in musical composition. While this essay focuses on the techniques of

clandestine and micro-quotation, other methods of quotation employed as a

history of quotation in Western art music, as well as a focused discussion of recent

categories of the use of quotation as a compositional device. Direct, referential quotation

is distinguished from significant manipulation or use at deeper structural levels, which in

turn is differentiated from hidden or clandestine quotation. These categories are

categorization is primarily based on the musical features of particular works, salient

and to Dennis Kam and Dorothy Hindman,

without any of whom this would not have been possible.

Thanks also to Lansing McLoskey and Robin Holloway

for their valuable insights into the whys of quotation

and their fascinating music.

To Melissa de Graaf, for putting up with

the inquiries into minutiae.

and impromptu therapy sessions.

1. HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND CONTEXT .................................................. 11

Medieval and Renaissance .................................................................................... 12

Variation and Baroque Practices ........................................................................... 21

Classical and Romantic Borrowing ...................................................................... 28

2. DIRECT, RECOGNIZABLE, AND REFERENTIAL QUOTATION ................... 33

Music for the Magic Theater................................................................................. 40

Three Dire Medical Emergencies ......................................................................... 49

3. MANIPULATED, JUXTAPOSED, AND STRUCTURAL QUOTATION ........... 63

Rewriting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony ............................................................ 78

Mosaique ............................................................................................................. 100

4. CLANDESTINE QUOTATION AND MICRO-QUOTATION ........................... 119

OK-OK ................................................................................................................ 122

Robin Holloway .................................................................................................. 129

Nancarrow Meditations ...................................................................................... 134

Apollonian Echo.................................................................................................. 145

5. POTENTIAL USES OF QUOTATION AS A COMPOSITIONAL TOOL AND

Extra-referential Reasons to Borrow .................................................................. 175

Linguistic Models and Embedded Topics........................................................... 178

Ethical Considerations and Aesthetic Authority ................................................ 185

Why Use Quotation? ........................................................................................... 192

6. REMARKS ON AND ANALYSIS OF NECESSARY STEPS

I. Conception, Composition, and Analysis...................................................... 197

II. Clandestine and Micro-Quotation .............................................................. 230

7. NECESSARY STEPS: A CONCERTO FOR TRUMPET AND ORCHESTRA ....... 254

APPENDIX: PETER JAMES LEARNS TRANSCRIPTION OF JOHN COLTRANES

REFERENCES CITED .......................................................................................... 328

MUSICAL WORKS CITED ................................................................................. 334

LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES

Ex. 1.4: Terribilis est locus iste. ...............................................................................14

Ex. 1.5: Laus tua Deus troped into Gloria A. ...........................................................15

Ex. 1.6: Dufays Missa se la face ay pale, Kyrie. .................................................16

Ex. 1.7: Dufays Ballade, Se la face ay pale. ............................................................17

Ex. 1.8: Kyrie from Josquins Missa lhomme arm. ...............................................17

Ex. 1.9: Secular popular song, lHomme arme. ........................................................17

Ex. 1.10: Josquins Missa pange lingua, Kyrie. ....................................................18