Does Imitatio Exist?

Meconi, Honey

doi:10.2307/763986

Cited by 21 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In fact, one finds so many exoteric cases of borrowing in pre-modern music, let alone of its more esoteric modes such as imitation, emulation and homage (cf. Brown 1982;Meconi 1994), that it soon appears impossible to disentangle what is 'original' from what is 'derivative' therein.…”

Section: Compositional Originalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Phenomenology of Musical Borrowing

Hallowell

2019

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In discourse on the topic, the question of what constitutes a musical ‘borrowing’, if raised at all, is usually restricted in scope and framed as one of terminology – that is, of determining the right term to characterise a particular borrowing act. In this way has arisen a welter of terms that, however expressive of nuance, have precluded evaluation of the phenomenon as such. This is in part a consequence of general disregard for the fact that to conceive of musical borrowing entails correlative concepts, all of which precondition it, yet none self-evidently. Further preclusive of clarity, the musico-analytic lens of borrowing is typically invoked only in counterpoint to a quintessentially Western aesthetic category of composition ex nihilo. As a consequence, the fundamental role played by borrowing in musical domains situated at the periphery of the Western art music tradition, specifically pre-modern polyphony and twentieth-century musique concrète, has been overlooked. This article seeks to bridge such lacunae in our understanding of musical borrowing via phenomenological investigation into its conceptual and historical foundations. A more comprehensive evaluation of musical borrowing, one capable of accounting for its diverse instantiations while simultaneously disclosing what makes all of them ‘borrowings’ in the first place, is thereby attainable.

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Section: Compositional Originalitymentioning

confidence: 99%