Musical Borrowing
An Annotated Bibliography

Contributions by J. Peter Burkholder

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[+] Babbitt, Milton. "Contextual Counterpoint." Chap. in Words about Music. Edited by Stephen Dembski and Joseph N. Straus. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.

During a discussion of twelve-tone counterpoint, it is noted that the "Contrapunctus Secundus" from Luigi Dallapiccola's Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera is a gloss on the second movement of Webern's Piano Variations, Op. 27.

Works: Dallapiccola: "Contrapunctus Secundus," Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera (38-40).

Sources: Webern: Piano Variations, Op. 27 (33-40).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder

[+] Burkholder, J. Peter. “Making Old Music New: Performance, Arranging, Borrowing, Schemas, Topics, Intertextuality.” In Intertextuality in Music: Dialogic Composition, ed. Violetta Kostka, Paulo F. De Castro, and William Everett, 68-84. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021.

Musicians use a broad spectrum of practices to make new music out of old: performance, including everything from making performing choices to improvising variants or added material; creating a new version of a piece by arranging it, transcribing it for different media or setting it with a new accompaniment; borrowing material from one or more existing pieces to use in a new one; building a new piece out of schemas, shared routines that can be deployed in endless new combinations; using topics, references to familiar styles and types of music, to delineate form and create meaning through association; and other forms of intertextuality, which encompasses these and other kinds of relationships between and among pieces of music. Borrowing has been a subject of musical scholarship for centuries, and in the past four decades scholars have developed parallel fields of study focused on the others. Each of these approaches is useful, drawing our attention to significant and longstanding practices in our musical tradition and to ways creators shape music and listeners understand it. Moreover, all of these scholarly approaches and musical practices are related, serving to demonstrate how central to our tradition are our many ways of making old music new.

Works: Franz Liszt: William Tell Overture, S. 552 (72); Bob Rivers: Not So Silent Night (72-73, 78); Stravinsky: Pulcinella (73), The Fairy’s Kiss (73); Josquin Desprez: Missa Pange lingua (74); Charles Ives: Symphony No. 2 (74, 78)

Sources: Rossini: William Tell Overture (72); Franz Xaver Gruber (composer), John Freeman Young (English lyricist): Silent Night (72-73, 78); Henry Clay Work: Wake Nicodemus (74); David Walker (composer), Anonymous (lyricist): Where, O Where are the Verdant Freshmen? (78)

Index Classifications: 1500s, 1900s, Popular

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder, Matthew Van Vleet

[+] Burkholder, J. Peter. “Musical Borrowing or Curious Coincidence?: Testing the Evidence.” Journal of Musicology 35, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 223-66.

Studies of allusion, modeling, paraphrase, quotation, and other forms of musical borrowing hinge on the claim that the composer of one piece of music has used material or ideas from another. What evidence can be presented to support or refute this claim? How can we know that the material is borrowed from this particular piece and not from another source? How can we be sure that a similarity results from borrowing and is not a coincidence or the result of drawing on a shared fund of musical ideas? These questions can be addressed using a typology of evidence organized into three principal categories: analytical evidence gleaned from examining the pieces themselves, including extent of similarity, exactness of match, number of shared elements, and distinctiveness; biographical and historical evidence, including the composer’s knowledge of the alleged source, acknowledgment of the borrowing, sketches, compositional process, and typical practice; and evidence regarding the purpose of the borrowing, including structural or thematic functions, use as a model, extramusical associations, and humor. Ideally, an argument for borrowing should address all three categories. Exploring instances of borrowing or alleged borrowing by composers from Johannes Martini and Gombert through Mozart, Brahms, Debussy, Ives, Stravinsky, and Berg illustrates these types of evidence. The typology makes it possible to evaluate claims and test evidence for borrowing by considering alternative explanations, including the relative probability of coincidence. A particularly illuminating case is the famous resemblance between the opening themes of Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, discussed by hundreds of writers for more than 150 years. Bringing together all the types of evidence writers have offered for and against borrowing shows why the debate has proven so enduring and how it can be resolved.

Works: Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique (227, 241); Liszt: Totentanz (227); Camille Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre (228); Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (228), Symphonic Dances (228); Luigi Dallapiccola: Canti di Prigionia (228); Alban Berg: Lyric Suite (229-30, 233), Warm die Lüfte (237-41); Claude Debussy: Golliwogg’s Cakewalk, from Children’s Corner (229-31, 233-34), Pour la danseuse aux crotales, from Six epigraphes antiques (237-41); Nicolas Gombert: Ave regina celorum (231-33); Mozart: Requiem in D Minor, K. 626 (235-36); Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98 (237); Ives: Symphony No. 1 in D Minor (235), Violin Sonata No. 4 (242-43); Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (244-46); Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, Eroica (250-65)

Sources: Attributed to Thomas of Celano: Dies irae (227-28, 241); Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (229-31, 233-34); Poissy Antiphonal: Ave regina celorum (231-33); Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, From the New World (235); Bach: Chaconne, from Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1004 (237); Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit (237-41); William Howard Doane: Old, Old Story (242-43); Mozart: Bastien und Bastienne (250-65)

Index Classifications: 1500s, 1800s, 1900s

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder, Matthew Van Vleet

[+] Burkholder, J. Peter. “Stylistic Heterogeneity and Topics in the Music of Charles Ives.” Journal of Musicological Research 31, no. 2-3 (2012): 166-99.

Juxtaposing disparate styles is a defining characteristic of Ives’s music. Analyzing The Alcotts from the Concord Sonata, Larry Starr showed how styles ranging from diatonic tonality to three distinct post-tonal styles delineate the form, and argued that Ives was exceptional in embracing “stylistic heterogeneity” as a basic principle. Yet Ives’s practice fits well in the tradition of musical topics described by Leonard Ratner and others, especially the coordination of contrasting styles to provide variety and articulate the form. A topical approach also reveals how using styles that carry particular associations creates expressivity and mean- ing. Ives uses as topics numerous traditional styles, beginning in his early tonal music, as well as modernist stylizations of familiar styles. Often, these musical topics overlap considerably with Ives’s use of borrowed musical material. For example, in The Alcotts the hymn topic contains material derived from Missionary Hymn and the pounding chords of the Hammerklavier topic explicitly evoke Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata. Understanding Ives’s stylistic heterogeneity as the use of topics allows a deeper and more comprehensive analysis of The Alcotts and other works and links his practice to that of past composers such as Mozart.

Works: Ives: Memories (177-81), Symphony No. 2 (181-83), Luck and Work (186-89), Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass., 1840-60 (189-97)

Sources: Stephen Foster: Gentle Annie (178-81), Massa’s in de Cold Ground (183) Anonymous: Pig Town Fling (181-83); Schubert: Gretchen am Spinnrade (186-76); Robert Robinson: Come, Thou Fount of Ev’ry Blessing (187-88); Wagner: Lohengrin (191-92); A. F. Winnemore: Stop That Knocking at My Door (192); Lowell Mason: Missionary Hymn (192-94); Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106, Hammerklavier (192-97), Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 (193-94)

Index Classifications: 1800s, 1900s

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder, Matthew Van Vleet

[+] Kirkpatrick, John. "Comparison of Sources." In Charles E. Ives, The Pond, 8. Hillsdale, N.Y.: Boelke-Bomart, 1973.

The final version of The Pond ends with a brief reference to "Taps." But two earler drafts features longer, more complete quotations, shown in examples. Kirkpatrick suggests that, in shortening the quotation in his revision, "Ives apparently decided to be more reticent or cryptic."

Works: Ives: The Pond

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder

[+] Kirkpatrick, John. "Critical Commentary." In Charles E. Ives, Trio for Violin, Violoncello, and Piano, edited by John Kirkpatrick. New York: Peer International, [1984].

The second movement is a medley of popular tunes and fraternity songs. The finale reworks Ives's The All Enduring, composed for the Yale Glee Club. The finale closes with Toplady ("Rock of Ages"), and a theme heard earlier in the movement may be a cryptic variant of that hymn tune.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder

[+] Mathiesen, Thomas J. "'The Office of the New Feast of Corpus Christi' in the Regimen Animarum at Brigham Young University." Journal of Musicology 2 (Winter 1983): 13-44.

An English codex from 1343 includes a nearly complete exemplar of the Office for the Feast of Corpus Christi, with notation, providing new clues to the development of this office. Both texts and chants differ in some respects from other sources. Neither the texts nor the chants for this office were composed by St. Thomas Aquinas, as tradition holds. The chants were borrowed from numerous earlier sources, accurately listed in the marginalia in a Paris manuscript for the feast. These sources include the relatively late feasts of St. Thomas of Cantebury and St. Bernard, who were canonized in 1173 and 1174.

Index Classifications: Monophony to 1300, 1300s

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder

[+] mcclung, bruce d. "Life after George: The Genesis of Lady in the Dark's Circus Dream." Kurt Weill Newsletter 14, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 4-8.

Kurt Weill originally conceived the third dream sequence in Lady in the Dark as a minstrel show, but lyricist Ira Gershwin preferred Gilbert and Sullivan as a model, particularly Trial by Jury. Early drafts and the final version include many parallels and echoes in the text. Weill joined in by borrowing the Mikado's entrance song from The Mikado for the entrance of the jury.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Jazz

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder

[+] Noblitt, Thomas L. "Obrecht's Missa sine nomine and its Recently Discovered Model." The Musical Quarterly 68 (January 1982): 102-27.

A Missa sine nomine attributed to Obrecht in Leipzig 51, of which only the tenor and bassus parts survive, is based on the anonymous chanson Veci la danse Barbari. The Obrecht Mass initiated a tradition of works based on this chanson, including Masses by Adam Rener and Anton Barbé, each of which also drew on previous works in the tradition. The chanson survives only in a set of partbooks lacking the bassus. The tenor of the Mass beginning at Et iterum venturus est in the Credo is almost identical to that of the chanson, and the bass of this passage fits contrapuntally with all voices of the chanson, showing that it must closely approximate the lost bassus of the chanson. This Credo also appears in two other manuscripts, freestanding in one of the Annaberg Choirbooks and as part of a Mass on the same chanson in Jena 36 attributed to Adam Rener. Many musical features tend to confirm Obrecht's authorship of the Mass in Leipzig 51, other than the Credo movement, and none contradict it. The tenor part is almost entirely derived from that of the chanson, and the bassus uses ostinatos based on fragments of the chanson tenor, and little from other voices is used (except the altus, which moves in canon or imitation with the tenor throughout the chanson). By contrast, the Credo also borrows from the bassus and discantus, much more of its bassus is derived from the model, and all four voices of the model are incorporated complete. Along with other stylistic evidence, this suggests strongly that the Credo is not by Obrecht. The Credo borrows directly from Obrecht's Gloria, showing that its composer drew not only on the chanson but also on Obrecht's Mass. These borrowing practices and other stylistic features are also uncharacteristic of the other movements of Rener's Mass, which appear to have been based on a different version of the chanson model, so that Rener is unlikely to have composed the Credo. One hypothesis that explains these facts is that Obrecht (d. 1505) left his Mass unfinished (the Agnus Dei is also missing); an unknown composer wrote the Credo to make the Mass usable, drawing extensively from the model and from Obrecht's Mass; then Rener (d. ca. 1520) wrote his Mass, incorporating the existing Credo, drawing on its material in other movements, and using Obrecht's Mass as a model. A much later Mass by Anton Barbé on the same chanson (in a version similar to that used by Rener) also draws material primarily from tenor and altus, and pays homage to the Masses by Obrecht and Rener by borrowing a brief passage from each in the opening of each movement.

Works: Obrecht: Missa sine nomine (Missa Veci la danse Barbari); Adam Rener: Missa sine nomine (Missa Veci la danse Barbari) (104, 111-12, 116-27); anonymous, Credo Veci la danse Barbari (105, 111-12, 116-27); Anton Barbe', Missa Vecy la danse de Barbarie (124-27).

Sources: Anonymous: Veci la danse Barbari; anonymous, Credo Veci la danse Barbari (111-12, 123-24); Obrecht: Missa sine nomine (Missa Veci la danse Barbari) (118-20, 123, 126-27); Adam Rener: Missa sine nomine (Missa Veci la danse Barbari) (126-27).

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: J. Peter Burkholder

[+] Watson, J. Arthur. "Beethoven's Debt to Mozart." Music and Letters 18 (July 1937): 248-58.

Beethoven paid tribute to Mozart through imitation and borrowing, yet demonstrated his own genius in accepting the influence while assessing his own personality. The article focuses primarily on chamber works, and treats probable influences, direct influences, and "deliberate imitations or unconscious reminiscences" of Mozart's muse.

Works: Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 (249), String Trio, Op. 3 (250), String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 1 (251, 253), String Quintet, Op. 29 (251, 255), Duo for Clarinet and Bassoon (1792) (253), Duet for Augengläser (253-54), String Trio, Op. 9 (253), Serenade for Flute, Violin, and Viola, Op. 25 (253), Quintet for Piano, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and French Horn, Op. 16 (253), Oboe Trio (254-55), String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 4 (254-55), String Trio in C Minor (256), String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 6 (256), String Quartet, Op. 56, No. 1 (256-57), String Quartet, Op. 131 (256-57); Mozart: Quartet in E-flat Major, String Quintet, K. 515 (254).

Index Classifications: 1700s, 1800s

Contributed by: Marc Moskovitz, J. Peter Burkholder



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