HOW TO STEAL: AN ONTOLOGY OF MUSICAL BORROWING
An Upper-level Undergraduate Course Syllabus
designed by Kevin Mendoza
Stanford University, 2012
In Partial Fulfillment of the Special Area Exam
Contact: [email protected]
Oﬃce hours: NA
is syllabus is designed for an upper-level undergraduate course that meets for 2 hours, twice a
week, for the duration of a fifteen-week semester. It may be modified for a ten-week quarter or for
holidays, vacations, and/or student presentations/analyses, as needed. Several of the included topics
may be adapted as separate courses.
Course Description: Composers who borrow from others’ music have been called
unoriginal, derivative, or, worse, thieves and plagiarists. But how just are these accusations?
is course will attempt explore the ontology of “musical borrowing” from Aristotle and
Cicero up to modern thinkers like Bloom, Deleuze, Lacan, and Foucault. We will re-imagine
the field of musical borrowing and discuss its terminology, focusing on the enigmatic
“recomposition.” Along the way, we will look at and examine relevant music from the middle
ages, the renaissance, and composers like Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Liszt, Busoni,
Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, Cage, Boulez, Kagel, Schnebel, Castaldi, and others.
PART I: CONTEXTS
WEEK 1
1. Introduction I: An Attempt to Locate Musical Plagiarism
• Course introduction and disclaimer (DON’T PLAGIARIZE!)
• Now, what is plagiarism?
• e curious case of George Frideric Handel (ongoing accusations of
plagiarism)
• What does the law have to say?
◦ Labor, intellectual property, and…Marx?
2. Introduction II: Fun with Musical Copyright and Social Attitudes
• A survey of several prominent court cases
• Premonitions (Contextualizing attitudes towards ownership): Josquin and
Ockeghem, Liszt and Schubert, Schoenberg and Brahms, Guns & Roses
and Paul McCartney
WEEK II
1. Borrowing from Rhetoric, Part I
• What do the ancients say?
◦ Aristotle’s Rhetoric
◦ Cicero’s De Oratore
◦ Quintillian’s Institutes of Oratory
2. Borrowing from Rhetoric, Part II
• Imitatio and music education
◦ Fux ad Parnassum
◦ Matthesson
• Imitatio in composition
WEEK III
1. Growing historical consciousness and artistic autonomy
• What shifting attitudes meant for plagiarists and borrowers (Bach and the
French Suites?)
• Handel: an unimaginative thief?
• e conditions for a work-concept, briefly (Lydia Goehr)
PART II: BORROWING AS A FIELD
2. Taxonomy of Borrowing, Part I: Oldies but Goodies
• Imitation
• “Parody”
• Paraphrase
• Quotation
• Modeling
• Allusion
• Transcription/Translation
• Quodlibet
WEEK IV
1. Taxonomy of Borrowing, Part II: More Goodies, from J. Peter Burkholder, “All
Made of Tunes”
• Medley
• Stylistic Allusion
• Programmatic Quotation
• Cumulative Setting
• Collage
• Patchwork
• Extended Paraphrase
• “Parody II”
2. Taxonomy III: Problematics
• Transcription/Translation vs. Arrangement
◦ Burkholder: ‘Setting’ and/or arrangement
• What about Jazz? Oral traditions?
• Problems of agency
WEEK V
1. A Deleuzian Interruption: Diﬀerence & Repetition
• Outline of repetition, resemblance, and diﬀerence (passive/active)
◦ Can we escape resemblance? Creatio ex nihilo?
• Introduction to intertexuality
2. Re-imagining the Field of Musical Borrowing, Part I
• What does the term “borrowing” tell us?
• Further criticisms of borrowing
• Borrowing as the norm rather than the exception
WEEK VI
1. Re-imagining the Field of Musical Borrowing, Part II
• Composition as passive and active diﬀerence (recomposition?)
• What would passive or active diﬀerence tell us? What wouldn’t passive or
active diﬀerence it tell us?
• Passive and active diﬀerence in music (ree thought experiments as
examples)
2. At the Precipice of Plagiarism: Introduction to Recomposition
• More thought experiments: What is the opposite of a simulacrum or Xerox
copy?
◦ What would it look like?
◦ How close can we get to plagiarism without plagiarizing?
◦ What would it look like? What would it tell us?
PART III: RECOMPOSITION
WEEK VII
1. Recomposition, Part I
• Current (mis)uses of the term “recomposition”: interchangeability of terms
◦ Similarity and dissimilarity between uses
• A new definition of recomposition (closest to plagiarism)
◦ Recompositional properties
2. Recomposition, Part II: “Really, Structuralism?”
• A proposal of the plagiarism scale and recomposition
• Why focus on recomposition?
WEEK VIII
1. Recomposition: Part III
• A brief survey of recompositional stratagems before ca. March 26, 1827
• A more detailed survey of recompositional stratagems thereafter
2. An abbreviated history of the nineteenth-century piano “transcription” (e fall of
aristocracy, rise of the bourgeoisie, industry, and the dissemination of music)
• Composers who transcribed (Everyone. Including: Mendelssohn,
Schumann, Brahms, Godowsky, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Reger, etc.)
• Compositional issues concerning piano transcriptions
◦ Liszt-Beethoven
◦ Liszt: Opera Fantasies
◦ Liszt-Schubert
◦ Liszt-Bach
WEEK IX
1. Ferruccio Busoni
• Bach-Busoni or Busoni-Bach?
• Ideen, Einfalle, Bearbeitungen, Ubertragungen, Nachdictungen
• Busoni: Bach Chaconne
• Busoni (Fantasia Contrappuntistica) and Bach (Die Kunst der Fuge)
PART IV: EXTENSION AND SPECULATION
2. Introduction to Harold Bloom & Belatedness
• e anxiety of originality (historical awareness, artistic autonomy, and the
emergence/solidification of the canon)
• e Anxiety of Influence
◦ Romantic belatedness
◦ Misreading (misprision)
◦ Intertextuality
WEEK X
1. Harold Bloom & Belatedness: e Six Stages of Misprision
• Clinamen
• Tessera
• Kenosis
• Daemonization
• Askesis
• Apophrades
2. Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence: e Brahms-Chopin Connection as
Described by Kevin Korsyn, Part I (Clinamen to Kenosis)
• Chopin, Berceuse, Op. 57
• Brahms, Romanze, Op. 118, No. 5
• Korsyn on Korsyn
WEEK XI
1. Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence: e Brahms-Chopin Connection as
Described by Kevin Korsyn, Part II (Daemonization to Apophrades)
• Taruskin on Korsyn
2. Joseph N. Straus, Remaking the Past, Part I: Anxiety in Schoenberg and Webern
• Schoeneberg, Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra
• Handel, Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 7
WEEK XII
1 & 2. Joseph N. Straus, Remaking the Past, Part II: Anxiety in Schoenberg and
Webern
• Webern, Ricercare
• Bach, Das Musikalisch Opfer, BWV 1079
• Taruskin on Straus
WEEK XIII
1 & 2. Freud: the Oedipus Complex in a Nutshell
• e triangle of identity formation
◦ Ego, Id, and Superego
• e Oedipus Complex
◦ For boys
◦ For girls
◦ Criticisms (esp. sexism, primordial father)
WEEK XIV
1. Lacan & the Sinthome
• Re-imagined Oedipus (the early years)
◦ e Big O and the Missing PIece (Shel Silverstein)
• Fabrication of a new problem, which just happens to be the solution: the
Sinthome
2. Foucault: What Is an Author? Stravinsky Makes an Appearance
• What is an author?
• Duchamp and the readymade
• Stravinsky, Choral-Variationen
WEEK XV
1. (Cont. from previous) Kagel, Cage, Castaldi, Schnebel, John Oswald: Authors
• Kagel, Sankte Bach Passion, Ludwig Van
• Cage, 4’33
• Castaldi, Elisa
• Schnebel, Re-Visionen Cycle
• Oswald: Plunderphonics
2. Reflections
• Johannes Kreidler, et al.
◦ Making music with music
◦ Compression sound art
• Business as usual
GRADING
Grading is based on several aspects: attendance* (20%), preparedness for (20%), and
participation in (20%), each discussion/class (for which there is often required reading), and
a written analysis (40%) of two related works (the latter of which must borrow in some
significant way from the former).
Topics for the written analysis must be approved by Friday of Week VI. 12-15 pages
maximum (not including bibliography and supplementary materials). It is is due two weeks
before the last class (Friday, Week XIII).
*Note: since preparedness and participation is dependent upon attendance, do not miss class.
STUDENTS WITH DOCUMENTED DISABILITIES [will vary from institution to
institution]
Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability
must initiate the request with the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC) located within
the Oﬃce of Accessible Education (OAE). SDRC staﬀ will evaluate the request with required
documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation
Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Students
should contact the SDRC as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate
accommodations. e OAE is located at XXXXXX (phone: XXX-XXXX).
REQUIRED READING
Bloom, Harold. e Anxiety of Influence: A eory of Poetry, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford,
1997.
Burkholder, J. Peter. "e Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a Field," Notes,
Second Series, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Mar., 1994): 851-870.
Foucault, Michel. What Is an Author? in Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, edited by James
D. Faubion, from Essential works of Michel Foucault, edited by Paul Rabinow, pp
205-222. New York: New Press. English translation from Michel Foucault,
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, edited by
Donald F. Bouchard, Cornell University Press, 1977.
Keyt, Aaron. "An Improved Framework for Music Plagiarism Litigation." California Law
Review, Vol. 76, No. 2 (March, 1988): 421-464.
Korsyn, Kevin. "Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence." Music Analysis, Vol. 10, No.
1/2 (March-July, 1981): 3-72.
Straus, Joseph N. "Recompositions by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern." e Musical
Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 3 (2008): 301-328.
––––. "e 'Anxiety of Influence' in Twentieth-Century Music." e Journal of Musicology,
Vol. 9, No. 4 (Autumn, 1991): 430-447.
Taruskin, Richard. Review of Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence by Kevin Korsyn;
Remaking the Past: Musical Modernism and the Influence of the Tonal Tradition by
Joseph N. Straus. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 46, No. 1
(Spring, 1993): 114-138.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY/SUGGESTED READING
Adorno, eodore W. Kitsch, in Essays on Music, translated by Susan H. Gillespe, edited by
Richard Leppert, 501-505. Berkeley: California, 2002. Originally published in Rolf
Tiedemann et al. Gesammelte Schriften, 20 vols. in 23. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1970-1986.
Aristotle. Rhetoric. Translated by W. Rhys Roberts. New York: Dover, 2004.
Auner, Joseph H. "Schoenberg's Handel Concerto and the Ruins of Tradition." Journal of the
American Musicological Society, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Summer, 1996): 264-313.
Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford, 2003.
––––. e Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life. New Haven: Yale, 2011.
––––. e Western Canon: e Books and School of the Ages. New York: Riverhead, 1994.
Brent-Smith, Alexander. "Translation and Transcription." e Musical Times, Vol. 63, No.
949 (March, 1922): 169.
Brown, Harold Mayer. "Emulation, Competition, and Homage: Imitation and eories of
Imitation in the Renaissance." Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 35,
No. 1 (Spring, 1982): 1-48.
Burkholder, J. Peter. "Brahms and Twentieth-Century Classical Music." 19th-Century Music,
Vol. 8, No. 1 (Summer, 1984): 75-83.
––––. "Museum Pieces: e Historicist Mainstream in Music of the Last Hundred Years."
e Journal of Musicology, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring, 1983): 115-134.
––––. "Musical Time and Continuity as a Reflection of the Historical Situation of Modern
Composers." e Journal of Musicology, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Autumn, 1991): 411-429.
––––. All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing. New Haven: Yale,
1995.
Burstein, L. Poundie. "Recomposition and Retransition in Beethoven's String Quintet, op.
4." e Journal of Musicology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Winter 2006): 62-96.
Busoni, Ferruccio. Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music. Translated by . Baker. New York: G.
Schirmer, 1911.
Carroll, Charles Michael. "Musical Borrowing-Grand Larceny or Great Art?" College Music
Symposium, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring, 1978): 11-18.
Christensen, omas. "Four-Hand Piano Transcription and Geographies of NineteenthCentury Musical Reception." e Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol.
52, No. 2 (Summer, 1999): 255-298.
Colton, Glenn David. "e Art of Piano Transcription as Critical Commentary." Master's
esis, McMaster University, 1992. Open Access Dissertations and eses. Paper
6483. http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/6483
Cone, Edward T. "e Uses of Convention: Stravinsky and His Models." e Musical
Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3 (July, 1962): 287-299.
Deleuze, Gilles. Diﬀerence & Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia,
1994.
Dennison, Peter. "Reminiscence and Recomposition in Tippett." e Musical Times, Vol.
126, No. 1703 (Jan., 1985): 13-18.
Everist, Mark. "Reception and Recomposition in the Polyphonic 'Conductus cum caudis':
e Metz Fragment." Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 125, No. 2 (2000):
135-163.
Feder, Stuart. Charles Ives: "My Father's Song": A Psychoanalytic Biography. New Haven: Yale,
1992.
Goehr, Lydia. e Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music,
2nd ed. New York: Oxford, 2007.
Harris, Ellen T. "Integrity and Improvisation in the Music of Handel." e Journal of
Musicology, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Summer, 1990): 301-315.
Holm-Hudson, Kevin. "Quotation and Context: Sampling and John Oswald's
Plunderphonics." Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 7 (1997): 17-25.
Hyde, Martha M. "Neoclassic and Anachronistic Impulses in Twentieth-Century Music."
Music eory Spectrum, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn, 1996): 200-235.
Keller, Hans. "Arrangement for or against?" e Musical Times, Vol. 110, No. 1511 (January,
1969): 22-25.
Kepler, Jr, Philip . "Some Comments on Musical Quotation." e Musical Quarterly, Vol. 42,
No. 4 (Oct., 1956): 473-485.
Knyt, Erinn Elizabeth. "Ferruccio Busoni and the Ontology of the Musical Work:
Permutations and Possibilities." PhD. diss., Stanford University, 2010. http://
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Lacan, Jacques. e Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New
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––––. e Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: e Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Edited by
Jacques-Alain Miller. Translated by Russell Grigg. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.
Maconi, Honey. "Does Imitatio Exist?" e Journal of Musicology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Spring,
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Metzer, David. Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music. Cambridge:
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Moncayo, Raul. e Emptiness of Oedipus: Identification and Non-Identification in Lacanian
Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 2010.
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Pettigrew and Francois Raﬀoul. New York: SUNY, 2010.
Netanel, Neil Weinstock. Copyright's Paradox. Oxford: Oxford, 2008.
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Roberge, Marc-Andre. "Ferruccio Busoni, His Chicago Friends, and Frederick Stock's
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