Musical Borrowing
An Annotated Bibliography

Individual record

[+] Noske, Frits R. "Musical Quotation as a Dramatic Device: The Fourth Act of Le Nozze di Figaro." The Musical Quarterly 54 (April 1968): 185-98.

At six points in Act IV of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, the composer uses musical motives borrowed from earlier in the opera. In each case, the borrowing has a rhetorical significance, referring back to a pertinent circumstance or statement that is newly appropriate or somewhat ironic in its second appearance. This is one more aspect of Mozart's skillful delineation of characters in his operas.

Index Classifications: 1700s

Contributed by: Nancy Kinsey Totten



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