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Title Memory, aesthetics and musical quotation : four casestudies in 20th century music
Author(s) Leung, Tai-wai, David;
Citation
Issue Date 2008
URL http://hdl.handle.net/10722/53143
Rights Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License
Memory, Aesthetics and Musical Quotation: Four Case Studies in 20th Century Music
by
LEUNG Tai-wai David
B.Mus. (Hon) H.K.A.P.A.; M.Phil. C.U.H.K.
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy
at The University of Hong Kong
March 2008
Abstract
Memory, Aesthetics and Musical Quotation:
Four Case Studies in 20th Century Music
Submitted by
LEUNG Tai-wai David
for the Degree of Master of Philosophy
at The University of Hong Kong in March 2008
Throughout Western music history, pre-existing material has long been the
aesthetic core of a new composition. From the parodic masses of Dufays to the
symphonic works of Mahler, incorporating pre-existing music as a compositional
procedure constantly presented itself as a challenge to the composers innovation.
Yet there has never been such an epoch as our time in which using pre-existing
material, quotation in particular, features so extensively in works of many of the
composers. And it is in some of these works that one may discover, perhaps for the
first time in history, some hidden artistry or unrealized potential of a quotation in
music.
While recent scholars have paid great attention to identifying quotations in
relation to their provenance and their role in compositional technique, few regard
quotation as a form of manipulation of time and space. In fact, quotation can be very
evocative. Since quoted materials are usually stylistically diverse and cross-culturally
referential, a collage assemblage of quotes, even a glimpse of appearance, therefore,
is capable to evoke fleetingly a memory of a distant time, create an imaginary space,
or elicit the sense of a particular milieu and historical period in the listeners.
Given this approach, one of the aims of this thesis is to investigate how the use
of pre-existing music operates in an interwoven complex where time and space are of
the essence. A quote is able to oscillate perpetually between ones mental worlds of
the memorable past and the imaginative present when it is highlighted enough to be
recognizable from its surrounding context. Upon interpreting the use of quotation in
various contexts, the aesthetic object, I argue, is not so much the quoted material
itself but the shift from original to quoted music, and vice versa. The clash of evoked
styles or genres engendered by these shifts provides a clue as to the content of this
imaginary world. That is why listeners can respond aesthetically to the quotation
itself even without knowledge of its provenance and textual or referential content.
The thesis illustrates this approach to quotation by reference to the works of
Charles Ives, George Crumb, Tan Dun and Tung Lai-shing, exploring how they
skillfully highlight quoted material in some of their most representative works.
Although their ways of manipulating the quoted materials may be quite different, the
aesthetic responses elicited in listeners are equally compelling, making these works
worth considering.
(Exactly 396 Words)
i
Declaration I declare that this thesis represents my own work, except where due acknowledgement is made, and that it has not been previously included in a thesis, dissertation or report submitted to this University or to any other institution for a degree, diploma or other qualifications. Signed . LEUNG Tai-wai David
ii
Acknowledgements
My own experience as a composer for more than twenty years convinced that
even a small, single musical gesture is inextricably linked to an aesthetic experience.
Using pre-existing musical material in the form of quotation in a self-contained piece,
I believe, is a way of manipulating time and space, both essential triggers of a
persons aesthetic response. Musical quotation therefore, is more than just a
compositional procedure. In the present thesis, I referenced to four contemporary
works, all of which contain quotations, and attempted to explore the parallel aesthetic
significance of technique and interpretation.
I am indebted to many people for helping me develop the ideas for the
thesis. I should, first of all, thank Dr. Giorgio Biancorosso, my principal supervisor,
for his relentless supervision. Dr. Biancorosso is a learned scholar with plenty of
experiences in my research area. Despite his heavy workload, Dr. Biancorosso has
made great efforts in reviewing my thesis and providing valuable guidance. His
comments always came at the right moment, releasing me from a tangle of unclear
thoughts, and guiding me to fresher and more imaginative realm. Dr. Chan Hing-yan,
my secondary supervisor, has given me the most needed sympathetic support. His
encouragement never failed to lift me up when I was frustrated with the daunting
task and in the most difficult times. My sincerest gratitude should also go to him.
Special thanks are due to Dr. Tung Lai-shing whose work is one of my
investigated samples in the thesis. He has generously shared with me his insightful
iii
views on the contemporary musical scene in Hong Kong, and given me permission to
reproduce excerpts from his score in the present thesis.
Many friends and colleagues as well as my students, whom I am not able to
thank one by one here, also deserve mentioning. One of them, Dr. Mak Su-yin of the
Hong Kong Academy For Performing Arts has zealously encouraged me to insist on
my research. His ideas have inspired me in many ways. Mark King, a colleague in
The University of Hong Kong, and Jean Bunton, an English ethnomusicologist and
composer working in Australia, helped edit my writing. Their high efficiency proved
to be a great help in the final stage of my work.
Last but not least, I owe the greatest thanks to my wife, Freda. Without the
peaceful and comfortable environment, and the never-ending patience and emotional
support that she has so selflessly provided, I would not have accomplished this
project. Hence, with my deepest gratitude, I dedicate the dissertation to her.
iv
Contents
Declaration . i
Acknowledgements ...................... ii
Contents .......................................................................................... iv
List of Examples ............. v Introduction .......
1
Chapter 1 History of Using Pre-existing Music ..........
12
Chapter 2 The Imaginary Worlds of Charles Ives and George Crumb .......
67
Chapter 3 The Recollected Worlds of Tan Dun and Tung Lai-shing ......
103
Conclusion .. 131
Bibliography ... 134
v
List of Musical Examples
Example 1.1
The Antiphonal Sections of Resurrexi, Posuisti, Alleluia 13
Example 1.2 The Ending of the First Trope in Quem queritis in sepulchro.
14
Example 1.3a The Ending of the First Trope in Ecce pater cunctis.
15
Example 1.3b The Ending of the Second Trope in Ecce pater cunctis.
15
Example 1.3c The Ending of the Third Trope in Ecce pater cunctis
16
Example 1.4 The Original Alleluia Plainchant...
19
Example 1.5 Lonins Duplum Setting of Alleluia Organum.
19
Example 1.6 The Original Plainchant of Pascha Nostrum.
24
Example 1.7 Lonins Duplum Setting of Pascha Nostrum Organum..
24
Example 1.8 Gaudeat devtio fidelium Motet and Nostrum Clausula
24
Example 1.9 The Opening Passage of Dufays L homme arm Kyrie..
30
Example 1.10 The Opening Passage of Hadyns Symphony no. 103, mov. 4..
41
Example 1.11 Postlude of Widmung Quotation from Schuberts Ave Maria.
46
Example 1.12 Fantasies Alluded Theme in Bars 15-18 and Bars 19-50.
48
Example 1.13 Beethovens An die ferne Geliebte Quoted in Schumanns Fantasie
49
Example 1.14 Dies Irae Quotation in Berliozs Symphonie Fantastique..
51
vi
Example 2.1 The Beginning Phrase of The Things Our Father Loved..
72
Example 2.2 My Old Kentucky Home (the first phrase).
74
Example 2.3 The Real Face of Ives
77
Example 2.4 An Imagined World of Street Parade.
81
Example 2.5 The Climatic Moment and the Sonic Flashbacks..
83
Example 2.6 The Things Our Father Loved
84
Example 2.7 Wandering off from the Reality to the Imaginary World...
94
Example 2.8 Nightbirds Warbling The Pianists Whistle...
95
Example 2.9 Distinct Sonic Layers Form a Spatial-Temporal Complex
100
Example 3.1 The Multifarious Timbres of the Native Instruments
116
Example 3.2 First Proclamation of a Tragic Life
118
Example 3.3 The Operatic Quoted Tune in Exaggerated Melismas...
120
Example 3.4 The Second Intrusion of the Operatic Quotation...
124
Example 3.5 The Ending Passage Recalling the First Movement...
127
1
Introduction
The use of pre-existing music in a new composition is an old practice. For
centuries, composers have incorporated into newly composed music pre-existing
material, ranging from short motives to entire themes. From the Renaissance parody
masses by Dufay and Josquin, to the collage of quotations of street waltzes, so-called
art music and indigenous folk songs in the late nineteenth-century symphonic works
by Mahler, the use of pre-existing music has contributed in a fundamental way to the
development of compositional practice in the West.
In a new composition, pre-existing music manifests itself in various forms, such
as a quodlibet, modeling, variations, medley, cantus firmus, parody, paraphrase,
collage, programmatic quotation or allusion.1 This diversity of manifestations not
only reflects the compositional habits of each period but also a whole gamut of
referential meanings. For example, using pre-existing material serves the expression
of national character, cultural identity or ones personal cosmological and
philosophical ideas. As I will show in Chapter 2 and 3, among different ways of
using pre-existing material, quotation holds an especially significant place in
twentieth-century music.
While recent scholars have paid considerable attention to the development of a
typology of borrowing practices, identifying them in relation to their provenance and
their role in compositional technique, few of them view quotation in terms of the
aesthetic response it engenders. In this thesis, I will attempt to show in which ways
memory may be used as a valuable conceptual framework upon considering some of
these responses. By its very nature, memory refers to the past. Yet it is an active
1 The different types of borrowing technique used in this thesis are taken from Peter Burkholders
typology of musical borrowing. See Burkholder, Borrowing: Types of Borrowing, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (accessed on 2006/5/1),
2
process taking place wholly in the present. Upon recalling, the mind stretches back
into the remote past and makes it seem as though the present has come to a halt. A
memory has the power to take over ones heart and mind and never seems to leave
one indifferent and idle. The act of recall, whether voluntary or involuntary, is a
medium through which to gain a sense of time past, the distance between the then
and now, the experience as it was and it is. It challenges the moving force of time,
inducing a temporary shift of time and space between ones present reality and a
known or imagined past.
The present study places memory not in the sphere of psychology, cognitive or
medical sciences, but aesthetics. Susanne Langer regards memory as a special kind
of experience, because it is composed of selected impressions, physical strains,
expectations, and minute, undeveloped reactions. 2 Memory sifts all these
interrelated materials and seems to represent them in the form of moving images
within a multidimensional series of events. Sometimes these mental events occur in a
logical order, but very often they do not. To Langer, recollection thus is a personal
way to reconstruct aesthetically and emotionally the past in terms of the present.
However, like shards of an ancient relic, a glimpse of the fleeting images of memory
is enough to evoke an aesthetic response, transporting ones mind into another world
of the remote past of a particular milieu, even without capacity for one to thoroughly
recognize it. It is this process I hear in musical quotation. Since much quoted
material in twentieth-century music is stylistically diverse and cross-culturally
referential, a collage assemblage of quotes, even just a glimpse of their appearance,
is able to elicit, however fleetingly, a feeling of a distant past and create in the
listeners an imaginary space of a particular milieu and style.
2 Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key
(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1953), 263.
3
Our sense of the past is derived from memories mixed with extraneous elements,
assumptions and speculations, which makes life seems like a chain of unrelated
events rather than as a single progressive movement. In music that features
quotations, our sense of the past is derived from recognizing the appearance of
pre-existing music which, too, appears as an extraneous element, a sudden concept or
leisurely speculation. In such music, time is essentially represented as a chain of
more or less related musical events rather than the metrical count of the metronome.
A quote grants us access to the imagined world of the recollected past and, when
highlighted enough to be recognizable as such, stands in contrast to the real world of
the present as expressed by the surrounding music. Upon interpreting the use of
pre-existing music, the aesthetic object, as I will argue in Chapter 2 and 3, is the shift
from original to quoted music, and vice versa. The clash of evoked styles or genres
produced by a quote as well as the quotes baggage of associations provides a clue as
to the content of this imaginary world. That is why listeners can respond
aesthetically to a quotation even without knowledge of its exact provenance and
textual or referential content.
In order to narrow down the broad range of possibilities covered by the term
musical borrowing, in this thesis I will focus on quotation. Peter Burkholder has
defined quotation as the incorporation of a relatively brief segment of existing
music in another work, in a manner akin to quotation in speech or literature, or a
segment of existing music so incorporated in a later work. 3 Similarly, my
understanding of quotation is confined to melodic quotation. The melodic quotation
usually appears as an isolated fragment, incomplete and brief yet cogent, creating the
impression of a collage or incongruous juxtaposition with other textural layers of the
3 Peter Burkholder, Borrowing: Quotation, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (accessed on 2006/5/1),
4
piece in which it is embedded. This particular form of pre-existing music is
significantly distinctive from other forms of musical borrowing, such as cantus
firmus, variation, arrangement, quodlibet, modeling, medley, paraphrasing or parody.
This is because a quote is not the constitutive element of a piece nor does it function
as a pre-existing compositional model. In most of the examples examined in this
thesis, quotation is explicitly identified and meant to be recognized as music from a
specific period of a particular style, and as such easily distinguishable from the
surrounding musical context. Its use may not be due to the specific melodic qualities
of the quoted tune but rather to its effectiveness as a reminder of a certain type of
affect or the constellation of ideas and meanings that emerge from its associations to
a program, literary tradition or socio-cultural context.
I will divide my discussion into three main sections. In the remainder of this
introduction, I will review the musicological literature on musical borrowing or
quotation. Then, in Chapter 1, I will give a brief account on the use of pre-existing
music from medieval to postmodern time. In Chapter 2, I will illustrate my argument
with reference to the works of Charles Ives and George Crumbs. Finally, in Chapter 3,
I will examine the use of quotation in the late twentieth-century works by Chinese
composers Tung Lai-shing and Tan Dun. Given the size and scope of Tans and
Tungs symphonic works, I will focus exclusively on the use of quotation in the first
section, Heaven, of Tans Symphony 1997: Heaven, Earth Mankind and the second
movement, The Angel, of Tungs orchestral piece, The Book Of Laughter and
Forgetting.
Literature Review
One of the thorniest challenges facing those who study pre-existing music is an
5
accurate, exact definition of quotation. How do we identify a musical passage as a
quotation? Jeanette Bicknell has discussed the crux of the matter in her article The
Problem of Reference in Musical Quotation: A Phenomenological Approach.4 As
Bicknell points out, a musical quotation is a deliberate evocation and it should be
distinguished from the coincidental similarities between works or plagiarism.5 Often
audiences can easily identify a quotation as the result of the composers intention to
take from others for various purposes. But the problem remains of how one can mark
aurally a quoted passage as being different from the original music.
Musical quotation differs from linguistic quotation in that it hardly features a
clear and assertive mark to set off the quote from the rest of the music in a piece. In
writing, a quotation mark can set off a group of words as a direct citation distinct
from other passages in a text. And the word, that, in language or an appropriate
footnote, can act as an indicator for indirect quotation. But in the case of music, a
quotation is altered or transformed in such a way that there is no strict criterion
matching that of syntactic replication in language. In addition, music has no semantic
structure in that the indicating word that is absent. Bicknell therefore claims that
there is no way to single the quote out of the surrounding musical context.6 She
attempts to lessen the problem by considering the listeners experience. She suggests
that the presence of auditory clues, familiarity with the quoted passage, and the larger
compositional context in which these quotes appear are helpful to recognize the
presence of a quotation. But they are often a symptom of musical denotation only,
rather than an absolute, must-use criterion.7
Bicknell also deals with two more aspects of the problem of defining quotation:
4 Jeanette Bicknell, The Problem of Reference in Musical Quotation: A Phenomenological
Approach, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59, no. 5 (Spring 2001): 185-91. 5 Ibid., 185. 6 Ibid.,185. 7 Bicknell, The Problem of Reference in Musical Quotation, 186.
6
methodological considerations and relevance to aesthetic understanding.8 Regarding
the first aspect, she refers to analogues with spoken language in real communication.
Listeners should examine how language users actually communicate in order to
identify a musical quotes appearance. All speech acts, as well as the dramatic,
rhetorical and narrative forms of communicative discourse are encompassed by the
listeners experience. With regard to the second aspect, Bicknell emphasizes style as
an aesthetic issue.9 Even when the exact source of the quoted material is unknown,
recognizing its presence can involve identifying the stylistic differences between the
original music and the quoted material. Listeners should take style recognition as a
way of indicating quotation within an aesthetic context.
I strongly agree with several of Bicknells suggestions. As I have already argued,
the fact of quotation itself, rather than the programmatic content of the quote, can be
a salient aesthetic object. Of course, the aesthetic effectiveness of a quotation
depends in part on the composers intention, as well as his or her ability to place the
quotation within the horizon of expectations of the listeners. It goes without saying
that an unrecognized quotation cannot be aesthetically effective.
As used in contemporary scholarship, musical quotation still remains an unclear,
even somewhat ambiguous term. Peter Burkholder, for instance, has defined
programmatic quotation in terms of compositional technique rather than its aesthetic
dimension. In his article The Uses of Existing music: Musical Borrowing as a
Field, he argues that musical borrowing can be treated as an independent field of
scholarship.10 Borrowing is an important compositional strategy for composers
throughout the history of Western music. In fact, Western music history is the history
8 Bicknell, The Problem of Reference in Musical Quotation, 189. 9 Ibid., 189. 10 Peter Burkholder, The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a Field, Notes, 50, no. 3
(March 1994): 851-70.
7
of borrowing. In the article, Burkholder attempts to classify fourteen forms of
borrowing as follows: modeling, variation, paraphrasing, setting a tune with new
accompaniment, cantus firmus, medley, quodlibet, stylistic allusion, transcribing,
cumulative setting, collage, patchwork, extended paraphrase and programmatic
quotation.11 This catalogue is a valuable taxonomy. However, Burkholder admits
that broad categories such as borrowing or quotation are not precise enough to
allow for nuanced distinctions. Quotation, for instance, is classified according to
its programmatic content. A valuable aspect of Burkholders article is his tentative
chronology across different historical periods. Through a careful chronological
arrangement, he traces the various ways in which pre-existing music have been used
identifying important changes that have taken place in the process. For example,
Burkholder suggests that in the fourteenth-century, the cantus firmus modeling was
based on competition with previous masters. He also rightly stresses the significance
of intabulations as an extraordinarily common form of borrowing.12
Burkholder also wrote a monograph on Charles Ives uses of musical
borrowing.13 In it, Burkholder elaborates on his previous classification and applies it
to Ives entire oeuvre. Irrespective of whether it is sufficient or appropriate to view
Ives use of borrowing in such a way, Burkholder has offered a meticulous study
worthy of reference.14 In his articles for the New Grove Dictionary, too, Burkholder
classifies musical borrowing along similar lines with ample reference to examples
and traces each form of borrowing through different historical periods.15 It is fair to
say that Burkholders ambition to treat borrowing as an independent research field
has been fulfilled in the New Grove Dictionary articles.
11 Burkholder, The Uses of Existing Music, 854. 12 Ibid., 869. 13 Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes, (London: Yale University Press, 1995), 3-5. 14 Ibid., 1-11. 15 Burkholder, Quotation, New Grove Online.
8
Burkholders view of borrowing is formalistic. In a formal analysis, exploring
borrowing techniques is used as a way to understand the compositional strategy and
working habits of a composer, as well as the style of his music. Since Charles Ives is
well known for using pre-existing materials, Burkholder identifies each kind of
borrowing in Ives music, exploring the complex musical, aesthetic and
psychological motivations behind such borrowings, and shows their purposes,
techniques and effects in the music. However, his view mainly falls on the
composers side. In Chapter 2, I will try to show that it is not sufficient for us to
understand borrowing without reference to the quoted materials sonic effect, its
phenomenology.
David Metzer has explored the cultural meaning of quotation in
twentieth-century music in his volume Quotation and Cultural Meaning in
Twentieth-Century Music. Metzer contends that when twentieth-century composers
incorporate quotations from others into their own music they are not only drawing
upon a melody but also the cultural associations of the original piece. By working
with and altering a melody, composers also transform these associations, thereby
bringing a new meaning to it.16 This new meaning is a derivation of the composers
view of his own socio-cultural surroundings, which Metzer sees as the main aesthetic
source of a quotation. In the chapter Childhood and Nostalgia in the Works of
Charles Ives, for instance, Metzer points out that Ives incorporation of folk tunes
into his own music aims at re-inventing a representation of his childhood as a means
of redeeming the feeling of nostalgia and sense of loss. To Ives, childhood is
innocence, pure, wholesome and healthy, and this view colors in a new way the
folk materials he uses.17 Through references to several examples, Mezter discusses 16 David Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1-14. 17 Metzer, Quotation, 18.
9
Ives personal view of his childhood as well as the socio-cultural milieu of the place
where he grew up.
While David Metzer attempts to explain a twentieth-century composers
socio-cultural view by way of musical quotation, Walter Frisch adopts a broader
perspective by referring to fin de sicle German culture in order to elucidate musical
borrowing practices in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century German
music. In his book German Modernism, Frisch refers to many newspapers, journals,
and critical writings to discuss the so-called regeneration in the historicist modernism
of the German music.18 It is in this period that Bachs music becomes a symbol of
what is healthy and wholesome in the German tradition. Lead by Wilibald Nagel, a
critic-historian from Darmstadt, many German critics, philosophers and scholars,
such as Max von Schillings, Alexandre Guilmant and others, claimed that Bachs
style and music was the only cure that would allow German music to recover from
its morbid, decadent Romanticism.19 This second revival of Bach nurtured the
music of Max Reger, Ferruccio Busioni, and many others. These composers
incorporated into their works not only Bachs musical themes but also his style and
contrapuntal techniques. According to Frisch, then, borrowing practices in this period
can then be explained by referring to the socio-cultural situation of German culture in
general. When writing the history of the music of fin de sicle Germany, Frisch
successfully combines socio-cultural trends and music together, displaying a new and
novel aspect through which to examine the practice of borrowing in music.
Both Metzer and Frischs approaches rely on the knowledge of the source and
the programmatic content of the quoted tune. Given this, the stress unavoidably falls
on the quotes original meaning and how this meaning interacts with the new musical 18 Walter Frisch, German Modernism: Music and the Arts, (Los Angeles, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2005), 139-140. 19 Ibid., 141-42.
10
context in which it is embedded. However, as I have suggested, recognizing a
quotation may itself be the focus of legitimate inquiry. This premise relies mainly on
the significance of the stylistic traits of the quoted material. Leonard Meyer has
discussed the stylistic traits of borrowed tunes and asserted that borrowing can elicit
meanings for listeners in reference to the borrowed tunes stylistic constraints. He
agrees that paraphrase, modeling and borrowing can reflect the fundamental habits
and disposition of a composer (or a group).20 He employs Haydns fugal passage in
the Finale movement of the string quartet in F minor, op. 20, no. 5 to point out that
Haydns use of Bachs contrapuntal style tends to sound classical, rather than
Baroque, reflecting his highly personal approach to writing counterpoint.21 In
addition, Meyer claims that if a paraphrased or borrowed tune disguises its
appearance under various forms for example, lacking the support of the
conventional harmonies its stylistic world turns out to be fictional, rather than
real.22 He uses Stravinskys The Rakes Progress, Act 2, Scene 2 to illustrate this
point. In this piece, the closing classical gesture is preceded by and harmonized
with non-functional chords, and it repeats many times in cadences. It is treated in
such a piquant way that its classical traits are stressed. The more the quoted
melodic material is divorced from its normally supporting harmonic context, the
greater the prominence of its role in the music. Decontextualizing the quoted material
thus serves as a means of highlighting its presence.
The mere appearance of a quote can also signify the impression of a temporal
shift. This perspective brings us to the ideas of Karol Berger, regarding Beethovens
manipulation of thematic materials in the recapitulation of a piece and how it affects
20 Leonard Meyer, Style and Music, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 56. 21 Ibid., 56. 22 Ibid., 348-49.
11
the aesthetic state of the listeners.23 Bergers premise is based on the assumption that
music represents two ontological levels, one real (the present time) and the other
imagined or remembered (past). When music deviates from its normal orbit without
following normal practice through, for example, an unexpected interpolation of
materials heard before, the effect may be that the listeners mind wanders off from
its present concerns into a imaginary recollected world that can tear itself away from
this other world only with effort.24 To Berger, the aesthetic object falls on the
vacillation between these two metaphorical levels of the mental world.
This intuition is key to understanding the unexplainable and unexpected miss or
return of the thematic material in the recapitulation section in many of Beethovens
pieces. Although Berger carries out detailed score analysis, his focus is the impact
that such gestures can exert upon the listeners. If materials heard in the beginning of
a piece and reoccurring in later sections of the same piece have the power to create a
shift in the listeners mental world, then the question becomes: is Beethoven
quoting himself? And if so, can a pre-existing tune appearing in a new composition
exert a similar impact to the listeners? In chapters 2 and 3, I will attempt to show in
what ways these questions may be answered in the affirmative.
23 Karol Berger, Beethoven and the Aesthetic State, Beethoven Forum, 7, no. 1 (1999): 17-28. 24 Berger, Beethoven, 21.
12
Chapter 1 Use of Pre-existing Music in History
Medieval Monophonic Chant
Sacred music involving use of pre-existing music can be traced back to trope
composition in early medieval times. Following the standardization of the chant
repertory in the 8th and 9th centuries, church musicians developed a new and
authorized type of chant, the trope, for Mass in liturgical services. Tropes were newly
composed additions, which served to expand the existing chants in one of three ways:
(1) by adding new text and music before the chant or between phrases, (2) by adding
new music to extend melismas or by adding new ones, or (3) by adding text to
existing melismas.
The Introit Resurrexi used in the Easter proper and ordinary mass is one
example of trope composition. This chant takes its name from its processional
function, marking the entrance of the clergy and choir ensemble performing services.
It consists of an antiphon and a psalm tone. The antiphon of Resurrexi frames the
psalm verse and the Gloria Patri (Doxology). The procedure of the performance is as
follows: antiphon psalm verse antiphon Gloria Patri antiphon. Although the
beginning note in the antiphon of Resurrexi is D (example 2.1), it ends on E (the
final). Hence, the whole Introit movement is classified in mode 4, the plagal form of
phrygian mode, ranging no higher than the fourth above E.
Around the 10th to the 11th century, the Introit trope Quem queritis in sepulchro
was a prefatory component to the Easter Introit Resurrexi in the southwestern
13
Frankish Kingdom.25 This trope consists of five text lines. According to some
sources, the first three lines are spoken by the angels, the women, and the angels
respectively. 26 This three-line dialogue between the angels and the women at
Christs tomb is well-known as the cradle of liturgical drama. The newly written
trope melody begins and ends on D (example 2.2). It proceeds forward until the last
line of the text, anticipating the first note of the antiphon. The seamless connection is
so smooth that the trope section seems to be part of the antiphon itself, rather than an
additional portion. Before the rise of polyphonic music, the trope was often placed
before the pre-existing chant or between phrases. Quem queritis in sepulchro is an
example consisting of a whole trope section preceding the pre-existing chant. Ecce
pater cunctis, on the other hand, is an example of placing the trope melody
in-between phrases of the pre-existing chant.
Example 1.1: The Antiphonal Sections of Resurrexi, Posuisti, Alleluia
25 Sarah Fuller, The European Musical Heritage: 800-1750, rev. ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006),
21. 26 Ibid., 21.
14
Example 1.2: The Ending of the First Trope in Quem queritis in sepulchro
Ecce pater cunctis comprises three trope phrases. Each phrase prefaces with
pre-existing materials the antiphon melodic segment of the Introit. The
conjunctions between the first two tropes and their following antiphon phrases are
skillfully dovetailed in the joining points with the notes D and E, respectively
(example 2.3a and 2.3b). However, in the third trope, the dovetail is abandoned with
a move of a third downward from E to C, which is the beginning note of the
succeeding antiphon melody (at mirabilis). Despite this, the skip of a third does not
interrupt the smoothness of the melodic flow (example 2.3c). Regarding the
pre-existing chant material, Quem queritis in sepulchro uses the entire Resurrexi
antiphon melody to respond the newly added trope section, functioning as a
conclusion. By contrast, Ecce pater cunctis only preserves several melodic segments
of the Introit as an interpolative statement to separate each newly added trope melody.
A full performance of the Easter Introit with tropes would be quite long, and would
proceed as follows: Quem queritis antiphon psalm verse antiphon with trope
Ecce pater cunctis Gloria Patri antiphon.27 The trope lines would have been
sung by soloists, and the antiphon and verses by a choir. This Introit was part of the
Frankish chant repertory for a long stretch of time. The preservation of the
pre-existing chant in trope composition is something significant in and of itself.
Throughout the medieval period, Christian liturgy played an extraordinarily 27 Fuller, Musical Heritage, 21.
etc.
15
important role in the development of artistic practices. As Burkholder asserts,
commonalities among chants within and across these [medieval] repertories testify
to ongoing processes of re-using and re-working melodic materials that probably go
back to the Christian observances and their Jewish predecessors.28 In the early
Middle Ages, some chants sharing the same mode and liturgical function suggest that
they were elaborated from an existing reciting formula [reciting tone] or at least
some melismas were drawn from one chant to another, others existing melodies were
adapted for new texts, such as for antiphons and hymns, and the different chant
repertories have unique variants of melodies for certain texts, indicating adapting
either one from another or both from a common source. 29 Granted, adding
something new onto a familiar chant tune could have been an efficient and
convenient way to produce more pieces to have met the increasing demand for music
in liturgical services.
Example 1.3a: The Ending of the First Trope in Ecce pater cunctis
Example 1.3b: The Ending of the Second Trope in Ecce pater cunctis
28 Peter Burkholder, Borrowing: Medieval Monophony, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy
(Accessed 2006/5/1 ), 29 Burkholder, Medieval Monophony, Grove Music Online.
16
Example 1.3c: The Ending of the Third Trope in Ecce pater cunctis
Plainchant, in fact, is an essential aspect of the representation of Christianity.
Beside their religious function, trope sections combined with already-existing
materials to satisfy the need for new auditory experience for the ecclesiastics and
churchgoers. The effect is one in which the existing train of thought (induced by the
newly written trope) is interrupted to create space and time for the recollection of a
past instant (induced by the pre-existing chant). It is a moment of letting the past
being actualized in the present, removing the boundary of time between what was
called past and present.
Furthermore, a familiar chant tune must have been an aid for memorization in
performance. It is widely known that all music was sung from memory, before the
invention of the staff and notation. Life in early western monasteries centered on the
Divine Office. According to Anna Maria Busse Berger, the invention of writing does
not automatically put an end to memorization. 30 All writing serves exact
memorization, opening up new ways of committing material to memory. To let music
be visualized does not replace performance from memory, however, but actually aids
it.31 Nearly all the singing performances were carried out through memorization,
because the use of candles to provide the light source for reading manuscripts was
30 Anna Maria Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Los Angeles, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005), 47. 31 Ibid., 45.
17
rare in many service occasions.32 Memorization continued to be practiced in Notre
Dame of Paris singers till the sevetheenth-century, that is until the invention of
comparable more systematic pitch notation on the staff, more precise measured and
rhythmic notation, and altogether with the change in performing context.
The Easter Introit Resurrexi is not just a simple application of text with melody,
but a creative reworking of a pre-existing melody with newly written materials. The
development of medieval Christianity left a mark on the development of Western
music through this pervasive compositional process. For centuries, this pre-existing
material became the entire basis of artistic elaboration.
Notre Dame Organum
When Western music reached its first peak with so-called Notre Dame
Polyphony in the thirteenth-century, the attitude towards using pre-existing music
still showed no obvious differences from trope composition. The major forms of the
new polyphonic settings, including all kinds of organum, the discant style clausula,
and the sacred or secular motet later, were also based on pre-existing chant melodies
as a taken-for-granted compositional procedure. The only difference between them
was that the newly composed melodies were now set vertically above the chant,
instead of linearly before or in-between it. Perhaps, the only exception was the
Conductus, a new musical genre consisting of a fully composed polyphonic setting
without any pre-existing material. However, the use of pre-existing chant in Notre
Dame Polyphony served more than a mere memorizing aid for singers or as a
representation of Christianity in medieval society. Several polyphonic versions of the
Easter Mass Alleluia Pasha nostrum by Lonin (c. 1135-c. 1201) indicate the extent 32 Maria Berger provides evidences to support this findings. See Berger, Medieval Music, 48.
18
to which Notre-Dame Polyphony marks a new stage in the history of the use of
pre-existing material.33
Consider, for example, Lonins organum duplum and discant clausula
(1163-1190) for Alleluia Pascha nostrum.34 It is a rare case, among surviving
settings, of a piece showing a clear succession of layers of polyphonic
embellishments. According to Gordon A. Anderson, the date of this plainchants
manuscript was about 1099. It was collected in The Latin Compositions in Fasciules
VII and VIII of the Notre Dame Manuscript Wolfenbttel Helmstedt Part II.35
However, the date of Lonins different polyphonic versions of this plainchant was
around seventy to eighty years later. It is quite strange that the manuscript collections
contain music composed several decades later. Perhaps, this collection is an
expanding volume of manuscripts representing a period of time.
When the Alleluia section is performed as plainchant, it is sung by a solo priest
and joined at certain points by a unison choir sung monophonically (example 2.4).
Lonin set only the solo sections polyphonically, because he expected the sections
sung by the chorus to remain simple plainchant. The polyphonic sections are in two
parts. Lonin set the opening intonation Alleluia in an older melismatic and florid
style of organum. The pre-existing plainchant intonation transposes down a fifth
beginning on the final C, rather than in the original tune in G (example 2.5). The
melody stretches out into unmeasured long notes of indefinite duration in the lower
tenor part of the organum. The setting suggests that Lonin was not concerned with
the perceivability of the pre-existing material. Above and against this inaudible
tenor is the solo chorus singing textless melismatic passages, broken at irregular 33 Donald J. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music, 5th ed. (New York: W.W.
Norton and Company, 1996), 81-86. 34 Peter Burkholder, Norton Anthology of Western Music, vol. 1, 4th ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, 2001), 54. 35 By referencing to Gordon A. Andersons record, Burkholder states the source and date of this
plainchants manuscript, as well as its later polyphonic versions. Ibid., 54.
19
intervals by cadences and rests. Its original notation suggests a free, unmeasured
rhythm. The fluid upper melody, non-periodic and loosely segmented, strongly
suggests an improvisatory effect, creating a great contrast to the stable tenor
background.
Example 1.4: The Original Alleluia Plainchant
Example 1.5: Lonins Duplum Setting of Alleluia Organum
This type of polyphonic texture was an unprecedented design that arose in
parallel with the advancement of a supreme medieval architecture. In the late 12th
century, a new monumental Gothic cathedral in Paris represented the model for
worshipping the biblical monotheistic God. In parallel with this new, awe-inspiring
splendor, was the Notre Dame polyphonic music. Its earliest stages were dated
around 1170, similar to the time when Alleluia Pascha nostrum was dated. While the
Gothic cathedral contains several skyscraper-like towers and buttresses pointing
towards the heaven, seeming to bridge the earthly sinned to the salvation and mercy
of God, the interior of the cathedral was designed grand enough for performing many
20
kinds of liturgical services. In Gothic design, the nave is the main part of cathedral,
extending from the entrance (the narthex) to the transept or chancel (area around the
altar).36 Such Gothic designs are generally divided into many bays, producing the
optical effect of having great length from the narthex to the transept.
During the Renaissance, the nave format became more flexible, and the nave
was divided into fewer compartments, giving a feeling of spaciousness and balanced
proportion between the height, length, and width. Therefore, unlike the earlier abbey
church in monasteries, the newly enlarged physical space demanded a greater
sonority, which should not be confused with increased volume, rather, more textured
sound in order to generate richer reverberation in order to fulfill the vacuum-like
interior body of the edifice.
There is little doubt that the polyphonic musical textures could have met the
special requirements of this new architectural design. As medieval polyphony
encouraged the addition of voices and voice parts, the choir areas of the Gothic
cathedral, compared with the monastery church, were enlarged to accommodate more
people. The acoustic body of the nave resonates in thicker and denser sonority, which
indubitably created, in the medieval minds or worshippers, a Christian mood of
godly solemnity and awe-inspiring devotion. If the nave was an ideal sacred place to
nurture the development of polyphonic settings in music, then the shrines inside the
cathedrals could have been a holy place for retrieving the memory of Christianity in
the pilgrims minds. In this sense, the pre-existing chant is analogous to the shrine. In
fact, the Latin word of shrine is scrinium, and it means box.37 A shrine refers
originally to a container, usually in precious materials, created especially to house a
relic, or oftentimes, a cult image. It can also be a holy or sacred place, often 36 Gloria K. Fiero, The Humanistic Tradition: Medieval Europe and the World Beyond, 3rd ed.
(London: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 123-27. 37 Fiero, Medieval Europe, 123.
21
containing the same, dedicated towardss a certain deity, saint, or similar religious
figure which was the object of worship or veneration, as opposed to being placed for
the convenience of worshippers. Thus, the pre-existing plainchant resembles a shrine
in such a way that both objects link bystanders with the collective memory of holy
Christianity for the pilgrims. However, aside from the musical material itself, the
tenor part of a polyphonic texture, in particular, reminds us of the aura of sacred
devotion, resembling the practice depicted in many medieval religious paintings.
Taking Alleluia Pascha nostrum as an example, the pre-existing chant in the
tenor now acted as the basis of the polyphonic texture, which governs the formation
of the upper newly composed melody. It functions as a structural prop, likened to a
niche in medieval painting. The niche is a hollow place in a wall that usually is made
to hold a piece of art, such as statue or tempera. Inside the Cathedral, religious
subjects, for example, Lady Madonna Enthroned, Annunciation or other
deceased Saint figures, are usually portrayed on tempera on woods or panels for
interior decoration.38 The entire picture, with its sacred figures, is usually framed by
a triangular-shaped arched niche or sometimes decorated with golden flowers. This
artistic practice could help to cystallise the figures in awe-inspiring form, creating the
solemn, sanctified aura through which spiritual messages could easily be transmitted
to worshippers. Similarly, using a pre-existing plainchant for a new piece reminds
one of the sacred natures of Christianity and its central place in medieval social and
artistic life.
Then again, besides acting as a niche-like prop, the pre-existing chant also
presented itself as an isolated sonic layer, with the upper voices moving in a different
spatial-temporal layer. The underlying essence of polyphonic music centers on its
38 William Fleming, Arts and Ideas, 9th ed. (Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1995),
199-208.
22
power to articulate time and space in an interwoven conjuncture. The Notre Dame
polyphonic music might be said represent the first instance of different musical
events moving simultaneously in different tempos. Take, for example, the moving
melismatic upper voices or the nearly motionless tenor low voice. This brings us near
the essence of what musical time is. How is time sensed in music? Susan Langer, in
Feeling and Form, has attempted to illustrate musical time in two ways. One is the
scientifically-measured clock time in terms of metronomic tempo, and the other is
psychologically-perceived time in terms of duration.39 Her concept relates time to
music in terms of duration. She stresses that music actually makes time audible, and
its form and continuity sensible.40 By making the distinction between clock time
and psychological time, listeners are expected to sense music in form of duration,
rather than using a counting machine to measure. This time is sensed by a series of
unrelated sonic images. It spreads out for listeners direct and complete apprehension,
letting their senses monopolize it, to organize it and to fill and shape it.41 As such,
duration becomes lived or experienced time. Music becomes the living, dynamic,
artistic embodiment of time. Its stunning power over all listeners is fundamentally
derived from how the listeners engage with the sense of duration, and perceive this
duration as motion, as movement, as the occurrence of successive [musical] events,
which culminates in a sense of fullness of experience, of a sonorous content whose
passage in time is rich and meaningful.42
Regarding Lonins case, two distinct musical times can be sensed through
listening. While the transposed pre-existing chant in C of Allelluia sung in the
39 Susan Langer, Feeling and Form (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1953). 40 Ibid., 110. 41 Ibid., 110. 42 George Rochberg elaborates Susan Langers idea of musical time. He claimed that musical time
can be sensed in the form of musical duration. See George Rochberg, The Aesthetics of Survival: A Composers View of Twentieth-Century Music, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004), 61.
23
tenor part is stretched into an unreasonably long duration, making it barely
recognizable, it simultaneously creates a timeless layer in the background. It
becomes timeless because of the absence of some explicit and significant audible
musical events or sonic images marking its course. This timeless duration frames the
structure of the entire piece. In contrast, the solo in the upper part is sung in a florid
and melismatic way, which creates a sonic foreground. Listeners are able to clearly
hear, in terms of pitches and melismas, the improvisatory melody in which musical
events appear. The effect is stunning, even though listeners may not be aware of the
pre-existing chant tune, or be able to identify it.
Clausula and Motet
Apart from organum, other components of a mass in the high medieval period,
such as the substitute clausula, and its later developed version, motet, were also
significant instances of use of pre-existing music. In Alleluia Pascha nostrum, after
concluding the organum section, the chorus responds the Alleluia section in unison,
retaining its original, simple style. The soloists then return to continue the
Pas-cha-no melismatic duplum passage of organum (example 2.6 and 2.7). This
passage serves as an introductory passage for the subsequent section the substitute
clausula in discant style. A clausula is a self-contained, but replaceable, section. Like
troping in monophonic chant, composers often wrote different music for this section,
aiming to add something new to the movement, as well as to allow the music to
progress more quickly in terms of tempo. As the pre-existing chant moves at
extremely slow speed, due to its extraordinarily long duration, to complete the entire
movement would require an unbearably long amount of time. Discant style offers a
solution to the problem, because both the tenor and the duplum move in measured
24
rhythms, with similar note values moving at similar speed. This style makes both
parts progress faster than in the organum setting. The change from free ornate style
(organum) to a measured rhythmic setting (discant style) is important in the
development of Notre Dame Polyphony.
Example 1.6: The Original Plainchant of Pascha Nostrum
Example 1.7: Lonins Duplum Setting of Pascha Nostrum Organum
Example 2.8: Gaudeat devtio fidelium Motet and Nostrum Clausula
25
In Alleluia Pascha nostrum, for example, the soloists sings the Nostrum
clausula section in discant style, immediately following the previous organum with
the G note (singing No) as the dovetailed point (example 2.7 and 2.8). This
connection is so smooth that the unpleasant sense of abrupt and extreme contrast
between the two sections is diminished. Apart from speeding up the music, the
self-contained clausula gives rise to a new musical genre the motet, which was an
important genre that prevailed in both the sacred and secular musical terrains. As the
substitute clausula continued to develop, some unknown individual or group of
individuals working in the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-centuries had the idea of
underlying new text to the duplum of a pre-existing clausula and performing the new
work outside the liturgy of the church. This is a new genre, the motet, was born. In
French, motet means word. The introduction of secular words into what had
previously been sacred works is something found repeatedly in the motet repertory.
For example, there are other motets based on the same chant Alleluia Pascha
nostrum. They are Ave Maria, Fons letitie, on the same tenor la, Gaudeat devotion
fidelium, which is based on the texted duplum of the clausula over the nostrum tenor,
and Salve, salus hominum/O radians stella/ nostrum, which is a double-texted motet
based on the tenor nostrum respectively.43
The use of pre-existing chant in medieval polyphony continued to be a
compositional habit for the next few hundreds years, just like the practice of troping
was in earlier medieval music. Separated from its liturgical context, the tenor of a
motet was no longer a sacred object, and usually simply a portion of a larger
plainchant. Music written in the secular realm using pre-existing music normally
used in the church gradually became important. Composers were quick to take
43 Burkholder has given a detailed analysis of the substitute clausula and motets. See Burkholder,
Norton Anthology 4th ed., 54-71.
26
advantage of the expressive potential of the new practice. They began to manipulate
the musical content of the tenor in various ways.44 If the pre-existing chant was a
representation of the heavenly world, and a vernacular text of the earthly world, then,
the breaking of the boundary between these two worlds seems to be a utopian aspect
of the motet.
Isorhythmic Mass
Polyphonic music written around the 14th to sixteenth-century developed new
ways of using pre-existing material. In many masses and motets composed by
Machaut, instead of setting the pre-existing chant verbatim, this was embellished and
elaborated. Although disguised, they were now used as both coherent and creative
elements of the entire piece. For instance, in Aucune gent/Qui plkus aimme/ Fiat
voluntas tua, Machaut borrowed the talea, color and structural elements of Vitrys
Douce playsence/Garison/Neuma.45 In another piece, La Messe de Nostre Dame
(Mass of Our Lady), for Mass Ordinary cycle (1360), Machaut used the isorhythmic
device for the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and Ite missa est sections, which were
based on the pre-existing plainchant, Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor.46 The remaining
non-chant based sections of Gloria and Credo were written in syllabic and
homophonic style. It is a wonderful example of a mixture of styles.
The secret of isorhythmic composition falls on the rhythmic pattern and
repetition. In fact, the root of the word Iso- in Greek means equal. Isorhythmic
music is based on repetitions of the same (equal) rhythm of the pre-existing tune. The 44 Mark Evan Bonds, A History of Music in Western Culture (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
2003), 59. 45 Burkholder, Borrowing: 14th Century, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 2006/5/1),
46 For detailed analysis of the Kyrie section of this piece, refer to Peter Burkholder, Norton Anthology
of Western Music, vol. 1, 5th ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006), 127-32.
27
isorhythmic technique contains talea and color as two repeated elements. While
the talea (cutting) is an extended rhythmic pattern repeated one or more times in the
tenor, the color is a repeated melodic pattern, as opposed to the repeating talea. In the
first section of Machauts Kyrie, from his setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, the
twenty-eight notes of the chant are divided into seven statements of a four-note
rhythmic patter (talea) in the tenor. While the contra-tenor (the bass) is also mostly
isorhythmic with a talea of twelve bars, the upper parts are quasi-isorhythmic setting
over the same span.
Besides isorhythmic composition, Renaissance composers continued to use
pre-existing materials as cantus firmi, or by reworking them in the form of quodlibet,
paraphrasing and variation. They strove to embellish such pre-existing tunes as
hymns, chansons, chants in both motets and masses. They also liked to rework a
polyphonic model in mass composition and to combine fragments or contrapuntal of
tunes linearly in form of quodlibet.47 Adapting tunes from other contemporary
composers into ones own work was also much favored. This reflected the idea that
composers had come to view of specific works as models. They intended to emulate
them, yet show that their own compositions were equally individual and independent
of the models. One remarkable example of using a secular tune in form of cantus
firmus was Dufays L homme arm mass/ Kyrie.48
Dufays Secularism
One of the masters of polyphonic music, Dufay seems to be among the first to
47 Peter Burkholder, The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a Field, Notes, 50, no. 3
(March 1994): 869-70. 48 The score is collected in Norton Score. See Kristine Forney, ed., The Norton Scores: A Study
Anthology, vol. 1, 8th ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999), 16-21.
28
pay attention to the organic structure of a piece and manipulate texture as a device to
create climatic point.49 According to Stanley Boorman, an isorhythmic tenor always
acts as a unifying device for the whole piece.50 With its repetitions, the tenor melody
serves to bind together the various parts of a composition and gives guidance to
listeners to comprehend how the music is progressing. However, it is no more than a
skeleton to hold the rest of the music as flesh and blood. Thus, isorhythmic technique
is not sufficient to provide an organic structure, growing, and leading to and from
musical climaxes. In addition, the effect of the isorhythmic music can be flat and
static, in that it seems incapable in and of itself of creating the impression of
movement towardss a goal.51 However, under the ingenuous design of Dufay, none
of the sections of a piece comes across as static. Each voice is meticulously
elaborated to shape a coherent organism to form each section, albeit at different
levels from the others. Dufays technique is largely based on two skillful methods:
one is the gradually greater use of faster note values to enhance various rhythms, and
the other is the changes of texture within and across section(s) to build climaxes. An
instance of Dufays ability to manipulate texture for achievein a climax, while using
a secular pre-existing tune as a foundation, can be found in L homme arm Kyrie.
Because of his interest in creating various textures to serve personal artistic
aims, Dufay favors the four-voice, instead of the standard three-voice, format. A
four-voice setting is an ideal texture in polyphony to create sufficient contrasts within
different lines. Throughout his career, Dufay wrote four-voice polyphonic music in
all the available genres. Some of his masses are built on a cantus firmus taken from a
Gregorian chant, others on melodies from a popular song. In the L homme arm
49 Stanley Boorman states that it is Dufay who wrote one of the first musical compositions with an
organic shape. See Stanley Boorman, The Early Renaissance and Dufay, The Musical Times, 115, no. 1577 (July, 1974): 561.
50 Ibid., 561. 51 Ibid., 561.
29
Kyrie Mass, Dufay borrows a catchy popular tune as its basis. This popular tune is an
anonymous military folk song. Dufay sets the music in the typical A B A form,
where the two A sections are in triple meter and the contrasting B section is in
duple meter. Being concealed in a web of polyphonic lines, the pre-existing melody
provides the structural framework for each section of the Mass, just as was done in
the earlier practices. The tenor melody sustains in an extraordinary long duration.
The opening movement of the Kyrie is divided into three sections according to its
text. Instead of using all four voices to begin the music, Dufay saves the color of
tenor, just reducing the texture to three lines (example 2.9). After the three voices
conclude singing the text, Kyrie, the military tune enters in the tenor. This time the
pre-existing tune L homme arm Kyrie is no longer located at the bass to support
newly composed lines above (example 2.9). However, its prop-like role is not lost.
Melodies in all voices are derived from this cantus firmus. Although there are now
four voices in the texture, the music is not too heavy or ponderous. Dufay carefully
and skillfully manipulates the upper melodies and lower melodies in two distinct
moving sonic layers. While the pre-existing tune and the bass are cast in rather long
duration, the upper voices sing in long melismas with quicker speed. The effect is as
astonishing as the florid organum by Leonin. Dufay plays the magic of texture once
more near the end of the first Kyrie section. He combines all four voices with similar
note values and rhythms in a single polyphonic fabric, not only creating a tutti climax,
but also enhancing a dramatic contrast between this and the previous passage.
30
Example 1.9: The Opening Passage of Dufays L homme arm Kyrie
The Christe is the middle section of the piece. Dufay reduces the texture of
this section to the two upper voices only, displaying a texture of thin, a little
transparent, to support the long melismatic passage. Not until the angelic upper
voices reach half of the section do the lower voices enter. The tune L homme arm
Kyrie continues to act as the cantus firmus, which is the corner stone for filling out
the harmonies, sometimes the hollow-sounding octave and fifth, and at other times
the sonorous sixth and third proceeding parallel with the rest of the voices. Since the
voices are moving in similar note values and styles, just as in the previous setting, the
music also provides contrast, as well as climax for the section.
The returning last Kyrie section is set similar to its first appearance, but the
tempo is faster. The tenor part is held for half of the section to impart contrast to the
textures and tone colors. When approaching the end, the music arrives at the climax
with all voices combined in a large audible space, creating a solemn and appealing
effect for listeners. While the sonorities of Dufays polyphonic design are shocking
and moving, the significance of a secular tune in the vernacular should not be
31
overlooked. This is true of the other arts as well. For example, Renaissance writers
continued to create entertaining secular works in the vernacular, and artists such as
Giotto and Van Eyck explored perspective and human emotions in painting. Artists
such as these showed the turning of their focus from the memorable past of
Christianity onto the present lived reality, commencing a new epoch that stressed
humanity and enlightenment as the epitome that a mature society should possess.
Transcription as Emulation
The tradition of transcribing a vocal piece for an instrument can be exemplified
by William Byrds version of John Dowlands song, Pavana Lachrymae, which was
written around 1600. The piece can be regarded as one of the typical examples of
reworking music as an emulative model. This model song was a secular lute song
called Flow, my tears. In fact, other than Byrd, several composers had reworked or
rewritten variations on Dowlands song. In this piece, Byrd did not merely transcribe
but in the process changed the genre from song to a pavane for the keyboard.
The form of this piece is set in AABBCC form, reflecting the original form of
the pavane, but with an additional variation to each strain, marked Rep. Basically,
Byrd varied each verse of the original song and retained the outline of the tune in the
right hand. He also added short, accompanimental motives and embellished figures
for both hands, keeping the structure of pavana in six variation-like sections to suit
an instrumental style.52 Not only did Byrd retain the melancholic mood of the song
by using text-painting and subtle harmonies, he also employed many virtuosic
running figures to express the idiomatic style of keyboard music. For example, in the
second strain, at the words And tears and sighs and groans, where Dowland 52 Burkholder, Norton Anthology, 4th ed., 360.
32
imitated the melody in his bass line, Byrd followed Dowlands creative idea and
embellished the melody to the pattern to create an intense feeling. Undoubtedly, by
transcribing someone elses music and turning it into his own instrumental creation,
Byrd not only paid his homage to John Dowland but also expressed his intention to
emulate his contemporary.
Le Goff once commented on this new attitude of Renaissance social life by
saying that: The Renaissancethe primary stress is on the present, while from
the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the ideology of progress turns the
valorization of time towardss the future.53 H. W. Janson further asserted that the
aim of the Renaissance was not to duplicate the works of antiquity but to equal and,
if possible, to surpass them.54 Thus, the artists and composers of the Renaissance
easily found themselves in the position of the legendary sorcerers apprentice who set
out to emulate his masters achievements. However, did they feel that they should
give far greater effort than the masters had experienced in the process? Since the
masters were dead, rather than being merely absent, they had to cope with these
unfamiliar powers the best they could, until they became masters in their own right.
In practice, writers strove to express themselves with eloquent vernacular languages,
instead of Latin. Architects continued to build churches demanded by Christian
rituals, not to duplicate pagan temples, but their churches were designed all
antica, in the manner of the ancients, using an architectural vocabulary based on
the study of classical structures.55 In the development of art music, more composers
continued Dufays manner by drawing on current composers music as an emulative
model, expressing them in terms of paraphrasing, reworking, variations or other
53 Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman (New York:
Columbia University, 1992), 11. 54 H. W. Janson, History of Art, 5th ed. (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1995), 405. 55 Ibid., 405.
33
ways of using pre-existing music.
As such, many Renaissance composers strove to hold up their own individual
accomplishments by focusing on the contemporary models, despite the fact that this
process of forced growth was replete with crisis and tensions. Using pre-existing
music in the form of transcription seems to reflect an awareness of the pre-existing
material as pre-existing in a way that is difficult to gauge in the practice of
monophonic chant and even Notre-Dame polyphony. The issue of perceivability
remains important, however, especially when a pre-existing tune is buried in a thick
polyphonic texture.
Josquin routinely used secular music as a basis for some Masses, and even
Palestrina in his earlier years composed half a dozen imitation Masses on secular
madrigals or chansons.56 Martin Luther once remarked Josquin Des Prez as the
master of the notes, which must do as he wills.57 Luthers comments may be
indicative of the emulative attitudes and intentions of the Renaissance composers
using pre-existing materials. Sometimes, the emulative model might include the
composers own music. In Missa, Se la face ay pale, Dufay drew on his own secular
chansons tenor melody to form the tenor voice of the mass near the end of the
Gloria, Credo and Sanctus.58 This showed how widespread borrowing practices
were, how often new composition depended on reworking pre-existing material, how
habitual borrowing was for composers, and how varied and often masterly were their
methods of adaptation.
56 Janson, History of Art, 159. 57 Burkholder, Borrowing: Renaissance, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 2006/5/1),
58 Ibid.
34
Bachs Catholic Practice in Lutheran Chorale
The demand for new and individual compositions was characteristic of the
sixteenth-century. The conventional practices of using pre-existing material in a new
work gradually faded out.59 Parody, paraphrasing and cantus firmus were no longer
the composers favorites, clearly showing that using past plainchant as the basis of a
composition had declined. Burkholder further supports this trend by stating Settings
of Latin liturgical texts such as hymns and the Magnificent were less likely to
incorporate the original chant, partly because the modern style differed radically
from the old modal tunes and from earlier styles of elaborating them.60 Furthermore,
plenty of pieces were composed in an original manner in order to serve the
aristocratic patrons, or to entertain a newly rising social class the wealthy
bourgeoisie.
This new compositional practice could be traced back to the Reformation and
the Counter-reformation, which in fact was not only a religious movement, but also a
social movement that influenced all artistic creations. After excommunicating Luther
for heresy in 1521, the Roman Catholic Church began to reassess its position towards
the Protestant Reformation. The music of the counter-reformation largely followed
the guidance by the Council of Trent in between 1545-1563. 61 The Council
eliminated a number of plainchants that had been added to the liturgy since medieval
times, such as the Sequence on which Josquin had based the opening of his Ave
Mariavirgo serena.62 This authorized removal of past materials brought an effect
equivalent to recognizing that the past antiquity was a period distinctive from the
59 Bonds, Music in Western Culture, 181. 60 Burkholder, Borrowing: The Baroque Era, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed
2006/5/1 ), 61 Bonds, Music in Western Culture, 158-59. 62 Ibid., 159.
35
so-called modern in the present. However, it is quite interesting to find that the old
practice of retaining an already-existed hymn tune continued as the foundation of a
new piece in the areas affected by the Lutheran reformation.
Bach often adapted materials from music of the sacred past to construct a new
piece for liturgical purpose, in a manner similar to the one observed for a medieval
Mass or Motet. For instance, Bach set Luthers chorale A Might Fortress Is Our God
in his Cantata no. 80, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, named after the chorale, for the
Feast of the Reformation. He borrowed Luthers texts and chorale melody in the
first, second, fifth, and last movements, while the rest of the text was by Bachs
favorite librettist, Salomo Frank. Using a chorale tune for a cantata in the services of
Lutheran Church is not unlike the old conventional practice of using plainchant for a
movement in the Catholic mass. Bach knew that the pious congregation could
remember Luthers inspiring melody, a majestic chorale, by heart. In Ein feste Burg
ist unser Gott, except for a few occasional leaps, the nine phrases of the embellished
borrowed melody always move stepwise downward in the scale of original D major,
paralleling the nine lines of each stanza of Luthers poem.63
In the opening movement, where the chorus sings a fugue under the orchestral
accompaniment, the adapted hymn tune is used in an embellished way, something
like a melodic variation. While the soprano line of the aria duet in the second
movement also uses the chorale tune in the same decorated way, the orchestral
opening in the fifth movement is like a paraphrase of the chorale melody. Not until
the orchestral tutti and the chorus singing the opening hymn-like chorale in the final
movement does the pre-existing tune clearly manifest its original face. Here, the
implication is obvious. Bach maintains the old practice of casting the pre-existing 63 Machlis and Forney have given a detailed analysis of Bachs Cantata no. 80. Refer to Joseph
Machlis and Kristine Forney, The Enjoyment of Music, 8th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 418-22.
36
monophonic chant into the polyphonic texture as the foundation of a piece. It is a
somewhat Catholic trait embedded in a wholly Protestant service. It seems to
unite these two antagonistic religions in a peaceful platform of shared musical
practices.
Like the other Baroque contemporaries, Bach could also treat pre-existing
material in quite a different way. For example, he recast many of his own secular
cantatas as sacred cantatas and reworked individual cantata movements in new works.
In some passages of Christmas Oratorio and Mass in B minor, for instance, Bach
incorporated several pre-existing materials from his cantatas. In addition, Bach also
adapted some violin and other concertos as harpsichord concertos, just like a
self-reworking of the same piece.64 In the Baroque period, no one considered this as
plagiarism or laziness; rather, it was simply a matter of compositional routine or
legitimized habit. In this sense, Bachs repeated re-workings of his own music just
reflected a phenomenon in Baroque days.
In the Baroque period, many composers who lived to a ripe old age had no
privilege of seeing their own earlier works performed or even a segment to be used in
the other piece. For example, J. S. Bach (1685-1750) did not know the music by
Heinrich Schutz (1585-1650), one of the greatest German composers of scared vocal
music in the sevetheenth-century, even though Schutz had spent the majority of his
career in the same general region of Germany in which Bach lived and worked.65
And when Monteverdi died in 1643, his opera Orfeo of 1607, was all but forgotten;
by 1650, even his later operas like Poppea (1642) had no chance to be performed
again. Thus, Baroque composers tended to write as much music as they could in their
lifetime. The purpose of recycling their own music was largely in order to produce 64 Burkholder, Borrowing: Reworkings and Issues of Originality, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy
(Accessed 2006/5/1), 65 Bonds, Music in Western Culture, 181.
37
more works, which may have resulted in more performances and thereby stable
income.
Johann Mattheson observed this borrowing habit and suggested in Der
volkommene Capellmeister in 1739 that borrowing is permissible; but one must
return the object borrowed with interest; that is, one must so construct and develop
imitations that they are prettier and better than the pieces from which they are
derived.66 Many examples of reworking, whether self-borrowing are used or not,
show the attempt of incorporating some degrees of originality into the music.
Aside from recycling a small passage for a new work, in some cases, almost the
whole theme or the entire pieces from others were incorporated in a similar way. For
example, Monteverdi, reworked the instrumental overture, Toccato, to his
renowned opera Orfeo into the opening chorus of Vespers of 1610. He rewrote his
canzonetta Ciome d oro and presented it as the motet Beatus vir.67 This practice
seemed to be a convenient way of recycling a composers own materials, ostensibly
in order to save time. Handel, in the late Baroque period, was another figure
notorious for recycling his own material to increase his music productions. Purcell,
for his part, frequently recycled earlier music in his plays and often excerpted and
adapted solo songs and duets from larger works, while the Italian composer Antonio
Vivaldi frequently re-used his own arias in his later operas, and shared tunes from his
instrumental and vocal works as ritornello materials.68 Besides using his own
pre-existing material, Monteverdi also reworked music by his contemporaries. For
instance, he reworked Caccinis monodic setting of Sfogava con le stele, as a
five-voice madrigal. Therefore, recycling for ones own purposes became a new way
of treating pre-existing materials for a new piece and continued to be a practice 66 Burkholder, Reworkings and Issues of Originality, Grove Music Online. 67 Bonds, Music in Western Culture, 244-45. 68 Burkholder, Reworkings and Issues of Originality, Grove Music Online.
38
across the centuries.
Adapting Folk Music as a Creative Means
A new attitude towardss the use of pre-existing material for a new piece arose in
the eighteenth-century. Adapting traditional folk songs of certain geographical areas
as thematic materials to construct new pieces came to be a common compositional
process. Of course, it was not a new trend (think, again, of Dufays mass L homme
arm). However, treating folk tunes as a creative source, rather than a mere basis for
adding new polyphonic lines, was first seen in the hands of Classical composers.
Such pre-existing folk materials could be introduced into music as a purely
suggestive extraneous element, a passing reference, or reminder of a well-known
idea, emotion, or aspect of folk mentality. According to Henry F. Gilbert, to express
ones emotion effectively by means of song or vocal utterance of some kind is a most
primitive trait of the human being.69 The most natural cries of joy and sorrow,
triumph and failure are all embedded in folk songs. As such, folk elements have
forever been the fructifying source of all arts. In addition, folk songs are also capable
of evoking an emotional expression for a particular tribe or race-group, possessing
characteristics and general qualities for the development of that particular group or
nation.
At the peak of the Classical period, Joseph Haydn seemed to be the first
important composer to successfully make use of folk tunes and dances as the
thematic germ to develop music.70 After Haydn came Mozart, Beethoven and
Schubert, but not one of them habitually made use of folk tune as thematic material 69 Henry F. Gilbert, Folk-Music in Art-Music: A Discussion and a Theory, The Musical Quarterly, 3,
no. 4 (Oct. 1917): 598. 70 Gilbert, Folk-Music, 583.
39
as much as Haydn did. Gilbert mentioned Haydns use of folk materials in three
different ingenuous manners, specified as follows: 1. verbatim, as a musical germ
from which to develop a composition; 2. verbatim, but having no particular relation
to the musical structure; 3. as suggestion towards the composition of folk tune like
themes expressive of the folk spirit.71 Since Haydn grew up in a small Austrian
town, he must have been familiar with the folk music with which he was surrounded
since childhood. W. H. Hadow talked about Haydns predilection for folk music in
these terms: Haydns music is saturated with Croatian melodySome of his
tunes are folk songs in their simplest form some are folk songs altered and improved,
the vast majority are original, but display the same general characteristicsthe
common employment of folk songs dates from the Symphony in D major (1762) to
the Salomon Symphonies of 1795; they find their way into everything hymns,
quartets, divertimenti; not, of course, because of Haydn had nay need to take them
but because he loved them too well to leave them out.72 Haydn varied the folk
melody The Road Far Away for the theme of the 4th movement of the Symphony no.
104 in D major.73 He also adapted a variant of the Croatian folk song Stal se jisem
into his famous Austrian Hymn in the 2nd movement of String Quartet, op. 76, no.
3, which is now the National Anthem of Germany.74 Furthermore, he used Croatian
folk melodies as the thematic sources in his Symphony no. 103 in Eb major (Drum
Roll). From W. H. Hadow, in the Andante movement of Drum Roll, the two themes,
first minor (mm. 1-8) and the second major (mm. 27-50) are both drawn from two
71 Gilbert, Folk-Music, 582. 72 According to Gilbert, this commentary is written by W. H. Hadow. See A Croatian Composer:
Joseph Haydn. The citation is largely a translation of a pamphlet by Dr. Kuha*. See Gilbert, Folk-Music, 583-84 and William Henry Hadow, A Croatian Composer: Notes Towards the Study of Joseph Haydn, in Haydn Symphony No.103 in E-flat Major, Norton Critical Score, Karl Geiringer ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974), 100-101.
73 Ralph G. Heidsiek, Folk Quotations in the Concert Repertoire, Music Educators Journal, 56, no. 1 (Sept. 1969): 52.
74 Gil
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