Annotated bibliography on musical borrowing

Auner, Joseph H. "Schoenberg's Handel Concerto and the Ruins

of Tradition." Journal of the American Musicological Society 49
(Summer 1996): 264-313.

In the early 1930s, Schoenberg transcribed and recomposed

compositions of the Baroque era to reaffirm his position in the
lineage of German composers during a time when Germany was
under the government of the National Socialists. Schoenberg
described his Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra as "freely
transcribed" from Handel's Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 7. Its
reworking is different from that of Schoenberg's arrangements of
Bach and Brahms, as it alters the original much more, using
techniques such as reharmonization, the addition of contrapuntal
parts, and compressing and expanding the material. Schoenberg
reinterprets Handel's music most freely in the third movement. In
so doing, he created a duality between the past and the present
and contrasted Baroque tonality and compositional techniques
with the chromatic/atonal traditions of the twentieth century.
Schoenberg also transposed the third movement to a new key,
changed the tempo from Andante to Allegro grazioso, and
imposed a formal Sonata-Allegro plan onto the material. This
work suggests Schoenberg's identity crisis as German and
Jewish as well as the larger social and cultural world of the 1930s
(specifically 1933), when the work was composed.

Works: Schoenberg: Cello Concerto (264, 285-86), Concerto for

String Quartet and Orchestra (265-69, 271, 287-313).

Straus, Joseph N. "Recompositions by Schoenberg, Stravinsky,

and Webern." The Musical Quarterly 72 (July 1986): 301-28.

The practice of recomposition, in which compositions from earlier

periods are absorbed and modified in new ones, is evident in
many works of the twentieth century. In Stravinsky's Pulcinella,
Schoenberg's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, and
Webern's orchestration of the Ricercare from Bach's The Musical
Offering, a post-tonal musical structure is imposed upon a tonal
model. In the Schoenberg the first movement is a recomposition
of Handel's Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 7; the last three
movements are fantasias on material drawn from Handel.
Schoenberg's recomposition enhances the motivic structure of the
model. "Motivic saturation" is also evident in Schoenberg's
orchestration of the Bach Chorale Prelude, Schmücke dich (BMW
654). The Stravinsky is a recomposition of music by Pergolesi and
others. Recomposition is also evident in Stravinsky's
orchestration of Bach's Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel Hoch.
He also recomposed two songs by Wolf and worked on setting
selected preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier. In
general, these twentieth-century recompositions force us to
rehear each model as a network of motivic associations. (DCB)

Krämer, Ulrich. "Quotation and Self-Borrowing in the Music of

Alban Berg." Journal of Musicological Research 12 (1992): 53-82.

Despite Adorno's interpretation of Berg's quotation practice as

deliberately disjunct, Berg's quotations are painstakingly
incorporated into the surrounding musical context, as
demonstrated by an analysis of his use of the Carinthian folk song
in his Violin Concerto. Berg's quotations fall into four categories:
(1) Quotations from Schoenberg, especially Schoenberg's early
works; (2) thematic references to works from different stylistic
spheres which Berg incorporates into his own idiom; (3)
quotations in Wozzeck and Lulu that function as ironic
commentary on the stage action; (4) quotations that form an
integral part of the surrounding motivic network. The folk-song
quotation in the Violin Concerto is an example of the last type.
Berg's self-borrowings are largely from a collection of early sonata
fragments, dating from 1908 to 1909, and are also of the fourth
category. The quotations may work simultaneously on a variety of
levels: as the sort of technical problem Berg requires as a creative
stimulus; as representative of Berg's desire to retrieve musical
ideas important to the evolution of his musical language; and as
reminiscences of his period of study with Schoenberg. There is
detailed discussion of these self-borrowings as they appear in
Wozzeck and the String Quartet, Op. 3. The article's appendix
offers a detailed list of Berg's works in which borrowings have
been identified and the sources of the borrowings.
Works: Berg: Four Songs, Op. 2, String Quartet, Op. 3, Wozzeck,
Chamber Concerto, Lyric Suite, Lulu, Violin Concerto. (DL)

Works: Debussy: Images (23-26); Stravinsky: Le Rossignol (38-

49), Le Sacre du printemps (84-100); Milhaud: La Creation du
monde (116-21); Krenek: Jonny spielt auf (150-53); Thomson:
Four Saints in Three Acts (153-55); Ellington: Black and Tan
Fantasy (187-88); Gershwin: Porgy and Bess (195-202);
Stravinsky: David, projected collaboration with Cocteau (238-43,
256-64), Three Pieces for String Quartet (260-64); Schoenberg:
Pierrot lunaire (282-84); Stravinsky: Renard (285-87); Debussy:
The Children's Corner (297-98); Antheil: Ballet mecanique (327-
29); Stravinsky: Agon (360-74); Varese: Ameriques (389-90);
Satie: Le feu d'artifice (399); Ives: Flanders Field (400); Britten:
War Requiem (405); Rouse: Symphony No. 1 (407-8); Schnittke:
Symphony No. 1 (410); Gubaidulina: Offertorium (411-12); Riley:
Salome Dances for Peace (414-15); Berio: Sinfonia (416-17),
Rendering (417); Berg: Violin Concerto (430-32); Britten: The
Prince of the Pagodas (445-46).

Sources: Traditional: America (400), Columbia, the Gem of the

Ocean (400); Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (407-8); Lasso: Stabat
Mater (411); Beethoven: Grosse Fugue (410); Bach: The Musical
Offering (410); Mahler: Symphony No. 2, Resurrection (416).
(MDA)
Marschner, Bo. "Stravinsky's Le baiser de la fée and Its Meaning."
Dansk årbog for musikforskning 8 (1977): 51-83.

Despite Stravinsky's protestations to the contrary, it is possible to

find meaning in his music, especially in Le baiser de la fée. As the
work borrows from Tchaikovsky and makes reference to Richard
Wagner a great deal, meaning can be found by examining Le
baiser de la fée's borrowing and incorporations. The ballet's
climax uses the half-diminished seventh chord, which is identical
to the "Curse structure" of Wagner's Ring and the "Tristan
structure" in Tristan und Isolde. Incidentally, this particular chord
is also found in many of the Tchaikovsky works from which
Stravinsky borrows. This structure is used abundantly throughout
Le baiser de la fée, by both avoiding it and eventually capitulating.
This is one example of a "symbol" that can be traced throughout
the work and that can be said to carry "meaning."

Works: Stravinsky: Le baiser de la fée (51-83).

Sources: Tchaikovsky: Soir d'Hiver (62), Tant Triste, Tant Douce

(62), Polka peu dansante (63), Ah, qui brûla d'amour (63, 68);
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (64, 70, 71); Tchaikovsky: Humoreske
(71-73, 81-82), Reverie du Soir (72, 81), Berceuse de la Tempête
(75-76); Wagner: Das Rheingold (76). (MEG)

Boyd, Malcolm. "Dies Irae: Some Recent Manifestations." Music

and Letters 49 (October 1968): 347-56.

Amplification of Gregory 1953. Quotation of the Dies Irae has

been overdone, but some modern works have enriched the
symbolism grown around the ancient plainchant melody. Russia
especially has most closely associated this melody with the death
of a revolutionary hero. Khatchaturian, in his Second Symphony,
uses it in the general expresion of mourning of the war 1914-
1918. Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3 lacks a program to explain the
chant's presence. In Respighi's Impressioni Brasiliane, the chant
portrays the physical characteristics and deadly qualities of
snakes. Dallapiccola's Canti di Prigionia uses the chant
structurally in an outcry against tyranny and oppression. Pierres
and Stevenson use it for similar effect. Some borderline cases are
Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead and Mahler's Second Symphony.
A list (pp. 355-56) of some secular references to the Dies Irae is
provided.

Works: Bantock: Macbeth (355); Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique

(347, 348, 355); Dallapiccola: Canti di Prigionia (351, 352, 355);
Peter Maxwell Davies: St. Michael (355); Khatchaturian:
Symphony No. 2 (348, 350, 355); Kraft: Fantasia Dies Irae for
Organ (355); Liszt: Totentanz (351, 355); Mahler: Das klagende
Lied (355), Symphony No. 2 (354, 355); Medtner: Piano Quintet
(356); Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 6 (348-350, 356); Mussorgsky:
Songs and Dances of Death, #3 (356); Pierres: A Litany for the
Day of Human Rights (352, 356); Pizetti: Requiem (348);
Rachmaninoff: The Isle of the Dead (353, 354, 356), The Bells
(353, 356), Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (354, 356),
Symphonic Dances (354, 356); Respighi: Impressioni brasiliane
(351, 356); Saint-Saëns: Danse Macabre (356); Schelling: Victory
Ball (356); Sorabji: Variation upon Dies Irae (356), Sequentia
cyclica (356); Stevenson: Passacaglia on DSCH (352, 356);
Stravinsky: Three Pieces for String Quartet (356); Tchaikovsky: In
Dark Hell (356), Suite No. 3 (356); Vaughan-Williams: Five Tudor
Portraits (356); Bergman film: The Seventh Seal (356); Fernandel
film: The Sheep has Five Legs (356). (JP)

Griffiths, Paul. "Quotation-->Integration." In Modern Music: The

Avant-Garde Since 1945, 188-222. New York: George Braziller,
1981.

The move from quotation to integration can be summarized under

four headings: (1) Out of the Past, (2) Out of the East, (3) Collage,
and (4) Integration. The music of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries was too close to composers' own time to be approached
without an ironic detachment, so the much more distant past can
be used without being labeled conservative. Plainsong melodies
and twentieth-century techniques of variation are used by Peter
Maxwell Davies to create un-fifteenth-century sounding melodies.
For example, his opera Taverner uses the sequence Victimae
paschali laudes, which is parodied and used as a symbol of the
Resurrection. Davies uses plainsong to question his own music
and methods and those of his contemporaries, in an attempt to
convince himself of his work's genuineness. The East has exerted
a marked influence on composers since 1950, including
Messiaen, Cage, Reich, and LaMonte Young. The percussion-
based ensembles in works by Boulez and Stockhausen have
exotic Eastern resonances, but this influence has been seen less
in works by Eastern composers themselves. Takemitsu, for
example, seems to be more inspired by Debussy, Boulez, and
Feldman than any particular Eastern orientation. Collages have
been composed in order to test the present against the past, and
vice versa, and to improve audience contact by providing a
familiar subject. Cage's works of the 1960s, such as Williams Mix,
Fontana Mix, Variations IV, and HPSCHD, were attempts to bring
together real-world sounds and composed music (both live and on
tape), often including much multi-media apparatus. Bernd Alois
Zimmermann, however, often brings together musical worlds with
the intent of setting the quoted material in relief, in direct contrast
to the methods of Cage, whether it comes from Bach, Prokofiev,
or Berg. Integration is similar in style to collage, but the two differ
greatly in intent. In integration, the original material is suppressed
in order to serve the new work, as is the case in the third
movement of Berio's Sinfonia. The assembly of so many
quotations is accomplished so well that the work may well be
considered a new creation. Again unlike Cage, the work is an
organized picture of disorder, rather than disorder itself.
Stockhausen's Hymnen is also an integration, this time of national
anthems. Recordings of various anthems are intermodulated
within each other, setting up juxtapositions of the anthems.
Hymnen sets up a stream of electronic sound around, between,
and through the presentation of the anthems, seemingly drifting
from one region to another.

Works: Messiaen: Couleurs de la cité céleste (190-91), La

Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (191, 196); Peter
Maxwell Davies: Taverner (190, 192), Alma redemptoris mater
(191), String Quartet (191), Blind Man's Buff (192), St. Thomas
Wake (192), First Fantasia on an In nomine of John Taverner
(192), Second Fantasia on an In nomine of John Taverner (192-
93), Worldes Blis (192-93), Ave maris stella (193), Prolation (193),
St. Michael Sonata (193), Symphony (193), A Mirror of Whitening
Light (193-5); Jean-Claude Eloy: Equivalences (197), Faisceaux-
diffractions (197), Kamakala (197), Shanti (197); Henze:
L'autunno (197); Tristan (197); Stockhausen: Telemusik (199-200,
206-7, 210, 213); Cage: Credo in Us (200), Variations V (200-
201), Fontana Mix (200), Theatre Piece (201), Variations IV (201);
Cage and Lejaren Hiller: HPSCHD (201); Eric Salzman: The
Nude Paper Sermon (201); Crumb: Ancient Voices of Children
(202), Night of the Four Moons (202); Bernd Alois Zimmermann:
Die Soldaten (202), Antiphonen (202), Nobody knows the trouble
I see (202), Présence (202), Musique pour les soupers du Roi
Ubu (202-3), Photopsis (203), Monologe (203-5); Michael Tippett:
Symphony No. 3 (203); Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 in A
Major (203); Mauricio Kagel: Ludwig van (203), Variationen ohne
Fuge (203-8); Stockhausen: Kurzwellen (206), Opus 1970 (206-
7); André Boucourechliev: Ombres (206, 220); Berio: Sinfonia
(207-9, 219-20); Stockhausen: Hymnen (210-13); Henri
Pousseur: Echos de Votre Faust (213), Jeu de miroirs de Votre
Faust (213), Votre Faust (213), Miroir de Votre Faust (213-14),
Couleurs croisées (214), Les ephemeredes d'Icare (214),
Mnemosyne II (214), Racine (214), Répons (214), Invitation à
l'utopie (214), Icare apprenti (214), Die Eprobrung des Petrus
Hébraïcus (214-15), Stravinsky au future (215), L'effacement du
Prince Igor (215, 217); Peter Schat: Canto general (216, 218), To
you (216); George Rochberg: Blake Songs (219), Contra mortem
et tempus (219), Music for the Magic Theater (219), String
Quartet No. 1 (219), String Quartet No. 2 (219), String Quartet
No. 3 (219), Symphony No. 2 (219), Symphony No. 3 (219), Violin
Concerto (219).

Sources: Machaut: Messe de Notre Dame (189); Plainchant:

Victimae paschali laudes (190); Monteverdi: Vespers (191);
Plainchant: Dies irae (193); Berg: Wozzeck (202); Beethoven:
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor (203); Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C
Minor (208), Symphony No. 4 in G Major (208); Henri Pousseur:
Votre Faust (213); Stravinsky: Agon (215-16); Webern: Variations,
Op. 27 (216). (MEG)

Bonner, Dyl. "Ready-made Music." Music and Musicians 23

(August 1975): 28-30.

An aesthetic of musical borrowing is emerging where the

borrowed material functions as the central idea and inspiration of
a work. The works of Bernd Aloys Zimmerman and Peter Maxwell
Davies receive particular attention in a discussion that mentions
numerous examples of works incorporating musical borrowings.
Bonner theorizes that the technique has become particularly
important in music of this century due to the growing lack of
communication between composers and modern audiences.
Borrowed material in new compositions provides a basis of
familiarity, thereby serving as a path to comprehension of the new
work.

Works: William Albright: Tic (30), Caroms (30); Alban Berg:

Wozzeck (30), Violin Concerto (30); Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (30);
William Bolcom: Whisper Moons (30), Sessions IV (30); Gavin
Bryars: Jesus's Blood (30); John Cage: HPSCHD (30); Peter
Maxwell Davies: Alma Redemptoris Mater (29), Frammenti di
Leopardi (29), St. Thomas Wake (29), Eight Songs for a Mad
King (29), I Love Dr. Herberden Best (29), Comfort ye (29); Brian
Dennis: Programmes (30); Hans Werner Henze: Second Violin
Concerto (30); Alec Hill: Mayerl Order (29); Christopher Hobbs:
Remorseless Lamb (29); Gustav Holst: Hymn of Jesus (28);
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "Supper scene" from Don Giovanni
(28); Robert Schumann: Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17 (28); Dimitri
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 (30); Karlheinz Stockhausen:
Hymnen (30), Opus 170 (28), Prozession (30); Igor Stravinsky:
L'Histoire du Soldat (30); John Tavener: Coplas (30), Celtic
Requiem (30); Michael Tippett: Third Symphony (30); William
Walton: Façade (28); Bernd Aloys Zimmerman: Die Soldaten (28),
Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu (28), Monologue (28).
(NKT)

Kay, Norman. "Shostakovich's 15th Symphony." Tempo, no. 100

(Spring 1972): 36-40.

Shostakovich achieves his life-long goal of writing a truly classical

symphonic allegro in his Fifteenth Symphony. The work as a
whole is characterized by economy: a quotation from Rossini's
William Tell Overture forms the basis for all motives in the first
movement. It is significant that Shostakovich chooses a model far
removed from Viennese classicism from which to build this
movement. The second movement quotes twice from the
Eleventh Symphony, and the third introduces the infamous D-S-
C-H motive. The final movement quotes Wagner's "Fate Motive"
from Der Ring des Nibelungen as well as the rhythm of Siegfried's
"Funeral March" from Gotterdämmerung. The quotation of the
"Fate Motive" may be a back-handed comment on "poster-
coloured" optimism, but becomes more personal when juxtaposed
with the D-S-C-H motive. This progression from the Rossinian
light-heartedness of the first movement to the gravity of the last
exemplifies Shostakovich's affinity for tragedy. (RVT)
Hartford, Robert. "Correspondences: Shostakovich, Wagner and
the Revolution." Gramophone 61 (June 1983): 4, 89.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15 quotes Rossini's William Tell

Overture in the first movement and Wagner's "Annunciation of
Death" motive from Die Walküre in the final movement. These
quotations are symbolically related to Eine Kapitulation (1870), a
play by Wagner that expressed "contempt for the lost ideals of
failed revolutionaries." Shostakovich, through the use of musical
allusion, was making a forbidden political statement and giving his
Soviet masters "the Russian equivalent of two fingers."

Works: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15.

Sources: Rossini: William Tell Overture; Wagner: Die Walküre.

(LAR)

Index classifications: 1900s

urkholder, J. Peter. "Brahms and Twentieth-Century Classical
Music." 19th-Century Music 8 (Summer 1984): 75-83.

Defining the modern composer as a composer who emulates

masterpieces of the past and in a dialectical process merges their
most distinct features with a musical language of his own time,
Brahms and not Wagner has to be considered the one who has
written the "music of the future." The chaconne finale from
Brahms's Fourth Symphony has two principal models, J.S. Bach's
Chaconne for solo violin and the variation finale from Beethoven's
Eroica Symphony. With Bach's piece, Brahms's finale shares the
chaconne technique, the finale position of the movement, minor
key in a slow triple time, the grouping of the variations in pairs, the
division into three sections of which the middle one is in the
parallel major, and the increase of rhythmic activity within each
section. In both Beethoven's and Brahms's variations, the theme
is first presented in the middle and upper registers before it is
placed in the bass; the tripartite movements suggests sonata-
form; and both movements end with a faster coda, which is
introduced by a recollection of the movement's opening and
continued by a development independent of the thematic eight-
measure pattern.

Works: Brahms: Symphony No. 4, fourth movement (78), String

Quartet in C Minor, Op. 51, No. 1 (79), Intermezzo in E Minor, Op.
116, No. 5 (79).

Sources: Bach: Chaconne from BWV 1004 (78); Beethoven:

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, "Eroica" (78-79). (AG)

unter, Mead. "Interculturalism and American Music." Performing

Arts Journal 11, no. 3 and 12, no. 1 (1988): 186-202.

Interculturalism, musical borrowing from multiple cultures, is a

burgeoning trend in twentieth-century art music, theatrical music
(opera, musicals, Gesamtkunstwerks), film music, and popular
music. "World beat," an aesthetic that fuses popular styles from
different parts of the world, is one manifestation of
interculturalism. Interculturalism creates meaning in musical
works, which manifest as political statements, instructional tools,
"syntheses of styles, cultures and perspectives," or works that
embrace or reject particular cultural values. These extramusical
meanings result from various intercultural borrowing techniques,
including patchwork, collage, and "suggestive" allusion (stylistic
and pertaining to specific works).

Works: Dissidenten: Sahara Electric (190); Toshi Tsuchotoris:

score to Mahabharata (192); Bob Telson: score to Sister Suzie
Cinema (192-93), score to The Gospel at Colona (193), score to
The Warrior Ant (194); Philip Glass: Satyagraha (196), Akhnaten
(197-98); John Cage: Truckera (200), Europeras 1 & 2 (200-201).
(VLM)
Index classifications: 1900s, Popular, Film

Osthoff, Wolfgang. "Eine neue Quelle zu Palestrinazitat und

Palestrinasatz in Pfitzners Musikalischer Legende." In
Renaissance-Studien. Helmuth Osthoff zum 80. Geburtstag, ed.
Ludwig Finscher, 185-209. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1979.

It has long been unclear how much Hans Pfitzner borrowed from
Palestrina in his opera (1917) named after this 16th-century
composer. Only two borrowings have been identified, whereas
four others have remained doubtful. In 1973, the Bayrische
Staatsbibliothek received Pfitzner's copy of Palestrina's Missa
Papae Marcelli. This manuscript proves that Pfitzner studied this
work much more carefully than scholars hitherto have believed. It
includes many marked passages with square brackets and
Osthoff shows that these passages were intended to be used in
the opera. Pfitzner, however, not only quoted from the Missa
Papae Marcelli. In the sketches of his opera, he designated the
melody in Act I on "patrem omnipotentem" (sung by the chorus of
the angels) as a cantus firmus. Osthoff identifies it as a quotation
from the Missa Aspice Domine (a parody mass) and not from the
Missa Papae Marcelli as Albert Fleury claimed before. The
markings also indicate that Pfitzner borrowed not only melodic
and harmonic passages but also techniques, such as
falsobordone, parallel tenths in outer parts, and sixteenth-century
stereotyped figures including the cambiata and typical cadences.
According to Osthoff, the technique of inserting small isolated
elements into a new composition is significant for the structural
thinking of twentieth-century composers. (AG)

Index classifications: 1900s

Sweeney-Turner, Steve. "Resurrecting the Antichrist: Maxwell
Davies and Parody--Dialectics or Deconstruction?" Tempo, no.
191 (December 1994): 14-20.

Peter Maxwell Davies's compositions have often been interpreted

through dialectical criticism. Davies seeks a fundamental truth
through the juxtaposition of opposing ideas. In the case of Vesalii
Icones, this opposition occurs between Davies's use of a
plainsong, Ecce manus tradentis, and portions of Pierre de la
Rue's Missa L'homme armé. Scholars tend to read this work as
an opposition of good and evil resulting in the eventual triumph of
evil manifested in the Antichrist. Davies achieves this conflict
through stylistic juxtaposition, parody, stripping the music of any
decoration or embellishment in a reverse Schenkerian process,
and stylistic transformation of material into a foxtrot parody. Yet,
this interpretation of the work ultimately rests on the shoulders of
Davies's analysis, his "program" given in the liner notes to the
recording of Vesalii Icones, and his attitude toward popular music
as inherently untruthful. One can also interpret this composition in
terms of deconstruction. Deconstruction, unlike dialectics,
attempts to eradicate a closed system of interpretation and resists
the urge to use the opposing ideology to reinforce the primary
belief. In this composition, the opposing forces are rarely stable
enough to produce dominance of one over the other. Instead,
what Davies has done is to juxtapose several conflicting ideas
through "distortion," "ambiguity," "dissolution," and
"fragmentation." Davies borrows from a specific repertoire to
undermine that repertoire and distort ideas for which it stands, in
an attempt to deconstruct those ideas, but what emerges results
is an open composition in which multiple interpretations are
possible.

Works: Davies: Vesalii Icones (14-20), Missa super L'homme

armé (14).
Sources: Plainsong: Ecce manus tradentis (15-16); Pierre de la
Rue: Missa L'homme armé (16). (CMH);p