Musical quotation is the practice of directly quoting another work in a new composition. The quotation may be from the same composer's work (self-referential), or from a different composer's work (appropriation).
Sometimes the quotation is done for the purposes of characterization, as in Puccini's use of The Star-Spangled Banner in reference to the American character Lieutenant Pinkerton in his opera Madama Butterfly, or in Tchaikovsky's use of the Russian and French national anthems in the 1812 Overture, which depicted a battle between the Russian and French armies.
Musical quotation is to be distinguished from variation, where a composer takes a theme (their own or another's) and writes variations on it. In that case, the origin of the theme is usually acknowledged in the title (e.g., Johannes Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Haydn).
In the case of quotations, however, an explicit acknowledgment does not generally appear in the score. Some exceptions are found in Robert Schumann's Carnaval:
in the section "Florestan" he quotes a theme from his earlier work Papillons, Op. 2, and the inscription "(Papillon?)" is written underneath the notes (he quotes the same theme in the final section "Marche des Davidsbündler contre les Philistins", but without acknowledgement)
in the final section, he also quotes another theme first used in Papillons, the traditional Grossvater Tanz (Grandfather Dance), but this time the inscription is "Thème du XVIIème siècle".
Examples
Examples of musical quotations in classical music include:
The third movement of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia (1968) is full of quotations that drift in an out of the orchestral and vocal textures. Mahler's scherzo from his Symphony No. 2 is central to the structure of the movement and provides the narrative thread, with further quotations ranging from Bach to Beethoven to Ravel, Richard Strauss and Boulez. At the same time there are many literary quotations in the text. Alex Ross described it as "a surreal collage".[2]
Georges Bizet used a song "El Arreglito" by Sebastián Iradier as the basis for the "Habanera" (L'amour est un oiseau rebelle) in his opera Carmen, believing it to be an anonymous folk song. When he discovered its true author, who had died only ten years earlier, he made an acknowledgment in the vocal score.
Brett Dean's work for violin and orchestra, The Lost Art of Letter Writing (2006), includes two quotations from Johannes Brahms: the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony and the Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann.[3]
Alberto Franchetti quoted widely from German popular songs and from the work of several German composers in his opera Germania, in order to lend the score a German color
Sir Arthur Sullivan did quote actual melodies by Franz Schubert and Johann Sebastian Bach, but he was more adept at deliberately imitating the styles of other composers without actually quoting their works. The styles of Bellini, Bizet, Donizetti, Dvořák, Gounod, Handel, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner and others can all be found in his works.
Ernest Tomlinson's orchestral Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne (1976) is a quodlibet which introduces at least 129 well-known tunes from classical and folk sources, often overlapping, as counter melodies to Auld Lang Syne, which is present throughout the 20 minute piece.[6]
Quotation is also a tradition in jazz performance, especially of the bebop era. Charlie Parker, for instance, quoted Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in his solo on "Repetition", and "Country Gardens" on his Verve recording of "Lover Man"; Dizzy Gillespie quotes David Raksin's "Laura" on "Hot House" during the Massey Hall concert. Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins are especially famed among jazz fans for their addiction to quotation. Often the use of musical quotation has an ironic edge, whether the musician is aiming for an amusing juxtaposition or is making a more pointed commentary (as when a youthful Rollins, playing alongside Charlie Parker on Miles Davis's Collector's Items, throws in a snippet of "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better,"[8] or when the avant-garde saxophonist Ornette Coleman rebuffs a skeptical heckler at the Croydon Hall concert with a snippet of the jazz standard "Cherokee").[9]
Although less common, musical quotations can be found in rock music, for example Barenaked Ladies "Hello City" quotes a stanza from The Housemartins' "Happy Hour". Sampling, a foundation of hip hop music, is the reuse of a portion (or sample) of a sound recording in another recording.[10]
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