Towards a Phenomenology of Musical Borrowing

Abstract

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.

Récit Music: Musical community in the information age

“…(Blanchot 1988: 3) When using the term 'musical community', the intent is to move away from the notion of a musical society as employed by Cage, which is inevitably subordinate to greater society outside it. 18 Musical community is defined as a community not due to a wonted optimism as regards social exchange (Botstein too refers to communities on normative terms), or to compensate retroactively for an isolated instance of intertextuality, such as quotation (Ives), pastiche (Pärt), borrowing (see Russell Hallowell 2019), but strictly to situate it outside calculations of the real world and its laws, to distinguish its reciprocity as inherently metaphysical exchange irreducible to everyday histories and relationsand this is what principally defines récit music, which is a decidedly mythical endeavour. Here, reciprocity has an always already unsettled, enigmatic character, as Maurice Blanchot's passage indicates.…”