You're There and You're Not There: Musical Borrowing and Cavell's “Way”

“Repeated borrowing” refers to the incorporation of elements of a preexisting work in several new compositions. While various studies have focused on songs that have been frequently borrowed, such as “L'homme armé” and “Apache,” they have not considered what the numerous uses of those songs say about the practice of borrowing. This article discusses quotations of the chorale “Es ist genug” in Alban Berg's Violin Concerto (1935), Bernd Alois Zimmermann's “Ich wandte mich und sah an alles Unrecht, das geschah unter der Sonne”: Ekklesiastische Aktion (1970), David Del Tredici's Pop-Pourri (1968), and Christopher Rouse's Iscariot (1989). As these works illustrate, repeated borrowing enhances aspects of borrowing. In repeated borrowing, borrowing becomes prolific and increasingly referential. Works not only borrow the same melody but also borrow from the ways in which other works use that melody. The works by Zimmermann, Del Tredici, and Rouse, for example, refer to the way Berg's concerto connects a chorale to a twelve-tone row or a secret program. They also expand upon various aspects of borrowing that are emphasized by the concerto: the importance of the cultural meanings of a borrowed work (in the case of “Es ist genug,” associations of death); the internal and external dimensions of borrowing (whether it operates at a deep structural level or appears as an outside element); and the declamatory power of borrowing, which emerges when a borrowing disrupts a work with such force that it seems to be announcing a particular image or idea.

show abstract

The Human Still Lives? Technology, Borrowing and Agency in the Music of Nicolas Collins

Dyer

2020

INSAM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper considers aspects of late 20th Century experimental music in a post-digital era, where DIY approaches of hacking now outdated digital technology have enabled new forms of artistic expression – namely, glitch and aesthetics of failure. More specifically, it will examine American composer Nicolas Collins’ approach to hacking portable CD players as a means to imitate sound production methods of turntable artists from the 1980s, in such works as Still Lives (1992). The paper will then explore Collins’ attempt to orchestrate this work for acoustic instruments using open musical notation in Still (After) Lives (1997). This discussion is viewed through the lens of musical borrowing, tracing Collins’ material – a canzone by Giuseppe Guami – through its varying mediums and guises, highlighting the limitations of technology and notation as a means to rearticulate a musical fragment and the fruitful artistic avenues this opens. Through the examination of a musical material, the paper goes on to scrutinize the entanglement between human, material and machine agents. I propose that understandings of such practices might be extended from the post-digital to the post-human: a collaborative network of agentic ‘things’.

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

hi@scite.ai

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

You're There and You're Not There: Musical Borrowing and Cavell's “Way”

Cited by 5 publications

References 5 publications

Settling the score: music and the performer-creator approach in Nicola Elliott’sRun!

Settling the score: music and the performer-creator approach in Nicola Elliott’sRun!

Repeated Borrowing: The Case of “Es ist genug”

The Human Still Lives? Technology, Borrowing and Agency in the Music of Nicolas Collins

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About