Musical Borrowing
An Annotated Bibliography

Contributions by Elizabeth Bergman

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[+] Berger, Arthur V. "Aspects of Aaron Copland's Music." Tempo, no. 10 (March 1945): 2-5.

Aaron Copland alters material borrowed from American folksong to make it individual and to evoke folksong as a genre. In adapting the source tunes, Copland changes their character (Lincoln Portrait), shifts rhythmic emphasis (Billy the Kid, Rodeo), and fragments motives (El salón México). The compositional technique is comparable to that in the more abstract works; for example, Danzon Cubano and the Violin Sonata employ similar rhythmic patterns. Works by Copland that draw upon folksong portray not only the open space of the prairies, but also the isolation of New York City, Copland's own environment.

Works: Copland: Piano Sonata (2), Danzon Cubano (2-3), Violin Sonata (2-3), Lincoln Portrait (3), Billy the Kid (3), El salón México (4), Rodeo (4).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman

[+] Berger, Arthur. Aaron Copland. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953.

Within a life and works study, musical borrowings from American folk music are considered. A number of works after 1934 borrow from folk sources, including El salón México,Billy the Kid,Rodeo, and Lincoln Portrait. Copland transformed and developed his borrowings through melodic and rhythmic displacement, character changes, and motivic fragmentation. As a result of folk influence, Copland composed more melodic music that relies upon diatonic harmonies. The use of folksong assisted Copland in his search for a simpler style accessible to a wider audience. Copland's borrowings were also the result of his Americanism and his desire to bring the American popular-music heritage into the concert hall.

Works: Copland: Vitebsk (52), Lincoln Portrait (60-61), Rodeo (63-64), El Salón México (63-65), Billy the Kid (65n, 91), Appalachian Spring (65n), Third Symphony (72-80), The Heiress (film score) (89), Las Agachadas (91); Rimsky-Korsakoff: Russian Easter Overture (73); Stravinsky: Petrouchka (73, 91), Pulcinella (91).

Sources: Springfield Mountain (60-61); El Mosca (63); If He'd Be a Buckaroo (63-64); Sis Joe (64); El Palo Verde (65); The Gift to Be Simple (Simple Gifts) (65n); Goodbye Old Paint (65n, 91); Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man (75); Giovanni Martini: Plaisirs d'amour (89).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman

[+] Brodhead, Thomas M. "Ives's Celestial Railroad and His Fourth Symphony." American Music 12 (Winter 1994): 389-424.

About half the music of "Hawthorne," the second movement of Ives's Second Piano Sonata, Concord, Mass., 1840-60, also appears in The Celestial Railroad, a "Phantasy" for solo piano, and virtually all of the latter appears in the second movement of his Fourth Symphony. In Memos, Ives wrote that the sonata was written first, then the symphony movement, and then The Celestial Railroad. An examination of his manuscripts suggests a different order, in which The Celestial Railroad was adapted from "Hawthorne" and then was used in turn as the basis for the symphony movement. All three works have a common root in the abandoned "Hawthorne" Piano Concerto, conceived between 1910 and 1916 as part of Ives's planned "Men of Literature" series. The "Hawthorne" Concerto was reworked as the sonata movement. In the early 1920s, Ives was working on a "Concord" suite for piano, derived from the sonata. Four Transcriptions from "Emerson" recasts material from the first movement, and The Celestial Railroad, using material from "Hawthorne," was intended to be the second section of the suite. Clippings from the published score of the sonata appear in the manuscript of The Celestial Railroad. Ives worked on it in stages, affixing new patches with revisions onto the manuscript. The final stages correspond to material as presented in the Fourth Symphony movement. Thus Ives worked out the material in detail for The Celestial Railroad, then orchestrated the work for his Fourth Symphony. Because The Celestial Railroad predates the second movement of the Fourth Symphony, the program of the piano work--a short story by Hawthorne--may be used to interpret the narrative of the symphonic movement.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman

[+] Copland, Aaron, and Vivian Perlis. Copland Since 1943. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.

This is the companion volume to Copland: 1900 Through 1942. References to musical borrowings occur throughout the text. Much of the borrowing now focuses on associative connections for film scores. Apart from outright arrangements or music intended for student performers, there are few pieces that incorporate American folksongs past The Tender Land (1954). Much of Copland's borrowing in this period is of stylistic traits rather than direct quotation. Self-borrowing is most common in the later works.

Works: Aaron Copland: The North Star (film score) (15-16), Appalachian Spring (32-33), Variations on a Theme by Goosens (61), The Cummington Story (film score) (62-63), Third Symphony (68-69), Tragic Ground (unfinished) (76, 166-67), The Red Pony (film score) (88-91), The Heiress (film score) (98-107), Old American Songs (166-67), The Tender Land (220-21), Three Latin-American Sketches (273), Dance Panels (275-76), Music for a Great City (333-34), Emblems (343-44), Happy Anniversary (261)

Sources: Song of the Fatherland (16); Internationale (16); Simple Gifts (32-33, 166); Aaron Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man (68), Tragic Ground (88) Something Wild (film score) (333-34); I Got Me a Cat (76); So Long, Old Paint (90); Giovanni Martini: Plaisirs d'Amour (100, 106); Daniel Decatur Emmett: The Boatmans's Dance (166); The Dodger (166); Long Time Ago (166); The Little Horses (167); John G. McCurry (attrib.): Zion's Walls (167, 220-21); The Golden Willow Tree (167); Robert Lowry: At the River (167); Ching-a-Ring Chaw (167, 220); Amazing Grace (343); Happy Birthday (361, 375).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman, Felix Cox

[+] Copland, Aaron, and Vivian Perlis. Copland: 1900 Through 1942. New York: St. Martin's/Marek, 1984.

Within the context of a comprehensive autobiography, numerous musical borrowings are considered. The majority of pieces quote or paraphrase American folksongs; these are named when known. Other types of borrowing include arrangement, variations, settings, and self-borrowing. Copland also mentions instances of borrowing in the music of his colleagues.

Works: Aaron Copland: Dance Symphony (86, 163), Vitebsk (160-63), Statements for Orchestra (236), El Salón México (245ff), Second Hurricane (261), Billy the Kid (279-80), Billy the Kid (suite) (284-85), John Henry (291), Lincoln Portrait (342ff), Las Agachadas (355), Rodeo (357), Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo (363); Virgil Thomson: The Plow That Broke the Plains (357, 388n19).

Sources: Aaron Copland: Grohg (86, 163); James W. Blake and Charles B. Lawlor: The Sidewalks of New York (236); El Mosca (246); El Palo Verde (246); La Jesusita (246); La Malacate (246); The Capture of Burgoyne (261); Great Grand-Dad (280, 284-85); The Chisholm Trail (280, 284); Git Along Little Dogies (280, 284); Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie (284, 354); John Henry (291); Stephen Foster: Camptown Races (342-43); Springfield Mountain (The Pesky Sarpent) (342-43); Ground Hog (357); Old Paint (363, 388n19); If He Be a Buckaroo by Trade (363); Sis Joe (363, 354); Bonyparte (363); McLeod's Reel (363); The Man on the Flying Trapeze (367).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman, Felix Cox

[+] Hitchcock, H. Wiley. "Ivesiana: The Gottschalk Connection." Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter 15 (November 1985): 5.

In Psalm 90, Ives quotes Louis Moreau Gottschalk's famous piano work, The Last Hope. The quotation appears in the second half of Verse 6, with the text "in the evening it is cut down, and withereth." Ives's borrowing may refer to The Last Hope, subtitled "religious meditation," or to the hymn Mercy, also known as Gottschalk, itself derived from The Last Hope and attributed to Edwin Pound Parker.

Index Classifications: 1800s, 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman

[+] Offergeld, Robert. "More on the Gottschalk-Ives Connection." Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter 15 (May 1986): 1-2 and 13.

In response to H. Wiley Hitchcock's "Ivesiana: The Gottschalk Connection" (I.S.A.M. Newsletter 15, November 1985), a more thorough treatment of the quotation in Ives's Psalm 90 from Gottschalk's The Last Hope is offered. A hymn setting of Gottschalk's The Last Hope was made in 1866 by the Gottschalk-enthusiast Hubert Platt Main. Alternately titled Gottschalk or Mercy, the hymn is often credited to Edwin Pond Parker and mistakenly dated to 1880. Main's use of The Last Hope, a Gottschalk signature-piece, as a hymn may have been motivated by an infamous incident in 1866 involving Gottschalk and the honor of two young women in San Francisco. In this context, the hymn Gottschalk serves as a confession for the unrepentant pianist. Both George and Charles Ives knew the hymn, and the quotation in Psalm 90 most likely refers directly to it and not to Gottschalk's piece.

Index Classifications: 1800s, 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman

[+] Perkins, Leeman L. "The L'Homme Armé Masses of Busnoys and Okeghem: A Comparison." Journal of Musicology 3 (Fall 1984): 363-96.

At the origin of the L'homme armé tradition in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries is a group of four masses: Busnoys's L'homme armé, Okeghem's L'homme armé, Dufay's Missa L'homme armé, and Johannes Regis's Missa Dum sacrum mysterium. All four borrow elements from two chansons--Robert Morton's Il sera pour vous/L'ome armé, a polyphonic setting of the popular tune, and Okeghem's L'aultre d'antan, itself modeled upon Morton's setting. Modal procedure, mensuration, and similarities of melodic and contrapuntal design provide evidence of the borrowings. The masses by Busnoys and Okeghem show that one cantus firmus mass may be modeled on another, and thus the distinction between cantus firmus and parody masses is conceptual rather than compositional. Since Il sera pour vous originated in the Burgundian ducal court, Busnoys's mass is presumed the earliest. Okeghem most likely composed his mass soon after, judging by the treatment of material borrowed from the two chansons and by similarities to Busnoys's work. These borrowings are rooted in the rhetorical tradition of imitatio, a concept with which Busnoys, Okeghem, Dufay, and Regis were familiar.

Index Classifications: 1400s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman

[+] Starr, Lawrence. "Copland's Style." Perspectives of New Music 19 (Fall-Winter 1980-81): 68-89.

Copland's music defies traditional demarcations of style. Rather than being defined by function, genre, or chronology, Copland's style results from unities of compositional procedure in apparently dissimilar works. The subtle rhythmic, harmonic, and motivic techniques in Piano Variation can also be found in Billy the Kid, which uses compositional complexities to create a simple surface into which quoted cowboy tunes fit perfectly. Copland creates the folksong anew in order to demonstrate the aesthetic distance between the American past and contemporary life. His folk borrowings, like Stravinsky's, thus have the affect of musical commentary of one repertoire upon another.

Works: Copland: Vitebsk (71), Billy the Kid (77-81), El salón México (81-82).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman

[+] Whitesell, Lloyd. "Reckless Form, Uncertain Audiences: Responding to Ives." American Music 12 (Fall 1994): 304-19.

Analyses that attempt to uncover formal unity in Ives misinterpret Ives's own formal aesthetic and devalue the heterogeneity in his music. In "The Things Our Fathers Loved" (1917), quotations from "Dixie," "My Old Kentucky Home," "On the Banks of the Wabash," and other tunes project the sense of a casual design--as in a collage, crazy-quilt, or scrapbook. The tune-fragments complicate the role of the listener, who is asked to follow discontinuities and enjoy the broken surface. Ives referred to Emerson in discussing unity and concluded that formal unity is less important than unity of vision. Alternative modes of listening which do not privilege unity enhance the appreciation of Ives's creative freedom.

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman

[+] Zuck, Barbara A. A History of Musical Americanism. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1980.

Two types of musical Americanism can be identified: conceptual Americanism, or the active commitment to American musical culture; and compositional Americanism, which is the borrowing of native musical materials for concert music. The history of compositional Americanism begins with Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781-1861), reaching its peak during the Depression era with Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, and William Schuman, among others. Aesthetic issues and historical contexts motivating the use of American folksong in art music include the influence of Gebrauchsmusik (Chap. 4), Marxism and leftist politics among American artists (Chap. 5), the growing scholarly interest in American folksong (Chap. 6), the support of the Works Progress Administration (Chap. 7), and the rise of patriotism associated with World War II (Chap. 8). References to pieces that borrow and their specific tunes can be found throughout the book. Musical borrowings are discussed in more detail for Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock (1937), Roy Harris's Third Symphony (1939), and Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring (1943-44).

Works: Anthony Philip Heinrich: Pushmatka: A Venerable Chief of a Western Tribe of Indians (28-29), The Hickory, or Last Ideas in America (29); George Frederick Bristow: The Pioneer ("Arcadian"), Op. 49 (32): Louis Moreau Gottschalk: The Union (39), Le Banjo (39), The Last Hope (39), La Bamboula (39); Edward MacDowell: Second (Indian) Suite (59-60); Daniel Gregory Mason: String Quartet on Negro Themes (70); Henry Gilbert: Comedy Overture on Negro Themes (75, 77), Negro Rhapsody 'Shout' (77), The Dance in Place Congo (77-78); William Grant Still: La Guiblesse (97); Virgil Thomson: The Plow That Broke the Plains (100, 149, 263), The River (100, 147-48, 263), Symphony on a Hymn Tune (148, 263); Red Marching Song (125); Soup Song (125); Join the C.I.O. (141); Elie Siegmeister: Western Suite (145, 150), Eight American Folk Songs (150); Henry Cowell: Tales of Our Countryside (146); Sing Out Sweet Land! (musical) (147); Roy Harris: Folksong Symphony (147, 150), When Johnny Comes Marching Home (150), Kentucky Spring (150), March in Time of War (195), American Portrait (224); Douglas Moore: Pageant of P. T. Barnum (148), Overture on an American Tune (148); John Powell: Natchez on the Hill (148), A Set of Three (148); Aaron Copland: John Henry (149), Billy the Kid (149), Rodeo (149), Old American Songs, Sets I and II (150, 271), Lincoln Portrait (150, 191-92), Second Hurricane (264-65), El Salón México (265), Dance Symphony (265), Hear Ye! Hear Ye! (265-66), Appalachian Spring (268-70), The Tender Land (271); Jerome Moross: A Ramble on a Hobo Tune (149); Ruth Crawford Seeger: Rissolty, Rossolty (149); Morton Gould: Cowboy Rhapsody (150), American Salute (150, 188), Yankee Doodle (150), Foster Gallery (150); Ross Lee Finney: Oh Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie (150), Trail to Mexico (150); Paul Bowles: 12 American Folk Songs (150); Bernard Hermann: The Devil and Daniel Webster (film score) (150); Robert Russell Bennett: Early American Ballade (150); William Schuman: William Billings Overture (151), New England Triptych (151), Chester (151); Marc Blitzstein: The Cradle Will Rock (211-12).

Sources: God Save the King (America) (29); Yankee Doodle (29, 150); Ludwig van Beethoven: Ninth Symphony (Finale) (125) Egmont Overture (211); My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean (125); Lay the Lily Low; Home on the Range (150); I Ride an Old Paint (150); Springfield Mountain (The Pesky Sarpent) (150, 192); Patrick Gilmore: When Johnny Comes Marching Home (150, 224); Stephen Foster: Camptown Races (150, 192), My Old Kentucky Home (150); True Love, Don't Weep (195); The Capture of General Burgoyne (264-65); Aaron Copland: Grohg (265); Felix Mendelssohn: Wedding March from Midsummer Night's Dream (266); John Stafford Smith: Star-Spangled Banner (266); Simple Gifts (258-70).

Index Classifications: 1800s, 1900s

Contributed by: Elizabeth Bergman, Felix Cox



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