Translating Music Intelligibly:

Musical Paraphrase in the Long 20th Century

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
BY

Jeremy White Orosz

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Advised by Matthew P. Bribitzer-Stull

December 2013
 UMI Number: 3607927

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Copyright © 2013 Jeremy White Orosz
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 Table of Contents

List of Tables ii
List of Examples iii

Chapter 0: What is Paraphrase? 1

Chapter 1: On the Musically Translatable 19

Chapter 2: On the Musically Forge(t)able: 56

Television Cartoons and the Paraphrase of Popular Music

Chapter 3: On the Musically Caricaturable 97

Chapter 4: John Williams: Paraphraser or Plagiarist? 141

Chapter 5: Berg the Wagnerian: Tristan and Lulu 185

Bibliography 215

i
 List of Tables

Table 1.1: MOD-9 Pentachords (in Prime Form) 44

Table 2.1: The “Mapple” logo vs. the Apple Computers logo 56
Table 3.1: Techniques of Caricature (1) 112
Table 3.2: Techniques of Caricature (2) 121
Table 3.3: Techniques of Caricature (3) 124
Table 3.4: Caricature and its counterparts 135

ii
 List of Examples

EXAMPLE 1-1: The Simpsons Theme 32

EXAMPLE 1-2: Tristan und Isolde, mm. 1-4 33
EXAMPLE 1-3: “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk,” Children’s Corner (excerpt) 33
EXAMPLE 1-4: Last Tango at Bayreuth (excerpt) 33
EXAMPLE 1-5: Comparison of the diatonic collection to Messiaen’s modes 38
EXAMPLE 1-6: Hypothetical Mode 3 Scalar Subset 39
EXAMPLE 1-7: Lee’s “Theme” (top line, transposed to C major) compared 40
to the first sixteen measures of the “Messiaen” variation
EXAMPLE 1-8: The resultant WT+1 Scale (with “chromatic” B-natural) 40
when the diatonic collection is mapped onto Mode 3
EXAMPLE 1-9: Pitch classes correspondences between the diatonic theme 41
melody and the Mode 6 portion of “Messiaen.”
EXAMPLE 1-10: Mode 3 portion of “Messiaen” Variation (mm. 1-16) 42
EXAMPLE 1-11: Axes of Symmetry in mm.17-20 of “Messiaen” 47
EXAMPLE 1-12: Minitudes, “√B5” (excerpt) 50
EXAMPLE 1-13: Minitudes, “BachX2=Debussy” (complete) 50
EXAMPLE 1-14: Mapping of diatonic step classes onto whole-tone 51
EXAMPLE 1-15: Hypothetical interval doubling performed on the Theme 51
EXAMPLE 1-16: Comparison of “Ach, du lieber” and Slonimsky’s Parody 54
EXAMPLE 1-17: Comparison of “Happy Birthday” and Slonimsky’s Parody 54
EXAMPLE 2-1: “Be Our Guest” and “See My Vest” 65
EXAMPLE 2-2: “Under the Sea” and Clausen’s Parody 66
EXAMPLE 2-3: “Rock Me Amadeus” and “Dr. Zaius” 67
EXAMPLE 2-4: Morricone’s Theme and Clausen’s Signifier 69
EXAMPLE 2-5: “I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here” and “This House is Freakin’ 71
Sweet”
EXAMPLE 2-6: “Force” Theme, “Imperial March,” and signifiers for them 72
EXAMPLE 2-7: “U Can’t Touch This” and “Can’t Touch Me” 73
EXAMPLE 2-8: “It’s A Small World After All” and “It’s A Tiny Tiny World” 75
EXAMPLE 2-9: “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “I Need A Jew” 78
iii
EXAMPLE 2-10: Carol Burnett’s Television Theme and Signifier Used on 80
Family Guy
EXAMPLE 2-11: “Heigh Ho” and “Ho Hi” 82
EXAMPLE 2-12: “Rape Me,” “Shave Me,” “Brain Freeze” 85
EXAMPLE 2-13: “Glycerine” and “Margerine” 86
EXAMPLE 2-14: Jeopardy Theme and signifier for it 95
EXAMPLE 2-15: “How Harry Potter Should Have Ended” 96
EXAMPLE 3-1: Chagrin’s Expansion of The Marriage of Figaro (first phrase) 116
EXAMPLE 3-2: “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and Chagrin’s Caricature 118
EXAMPLE 3-3: Caricature of “In the Hall of Mountain King” 120
EXAMPLE 3-4: “Blue Danube” Caricature 123
EXAMPLE 4-1: Jaws and its potential source 153
EXAMPLE 4-2: Star Wars “Rebel Motive” and its potential source 154
EXAMPLE 4-3: Octatonic Brass in The Rite of Spring 155
EXAMPLE 4-4: Peter Pan’s Theme and its potential source 156
EXAMPLE 4-5: Copland, Fanfare for a Common Man, mm. 13-18 157
EXAMPLE 4-6: Always, Versions of the Main Theme 157
EXAMPLE 4-7: Saving Private Ryan, “Hymn to the Fallen” (Credits) 158
EXAMPLE 4-8: Suite from Lincoln 158
EXAMPLE 4-9: Superman “Love Theme” and its apparent source 160
EXAMPLE 4-10: “Dumky” Trio Motives compared with E.T. Main Theme 161
EXAMPLE 4-11: “Dumky” Trio, VI, mm. 164-175 161
EXAMPLE 4-12: E.T. Main Theme 161
EXAMPLE 4-13: E.T. excerpt and its potential source (1) 163
EXAMPLE 4-14: E.T. excerpt and its potential source (2) 164
EXAMPLE 4-15: King’s Row vs. Star Wars (from Scheurer) 167
EXAMPLE 4-16: Mars/Jawa 171
EXAMPLE 4-17: “Duel of the Fates” and its potential source 176
EXAMPLE 4-18: “Battle of the Heroes” and its potential source 177
EXAMPLE 4-19: The Right Stuff score and Holst’s “Jupiter” 181
EXAMPLE 4-20: The Right Stuff score and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto 184

iv
EXAMPLE 5-1: Berg’s Musical Initials 188
EXAMPLE 5-2a: Opening Motives from Tristan und Isolde 190
EXAMPLE 5-2b: Berg, Op. 2, No. 1, mm. 1-3 190
EXAMPLE 5-3: Berg, Op. 2, No. 3 191
EXAMPLE 5-4: From Berg’s Letter to Fuchs (1925) 193
EXAMPLE 5-5: Tristan Chord in Alwa and Lulu’s duet 195
EXAMPLE 5-6a: Motives from Tristan 197
(presented again for ease of comparison)
EXAMPLE 5-6b: Berg’s adaptation of these motives in Lulu, mm. 160-66 198
EXAMPLE 5-7: Palindrome with Berg and Fuchs’ initials, Der Wein 200

EXAMPLE 5-8: Tristan, m. 17 (a), compared to Lulu, m. 44 (b) 202

EXAMPLE 5-9: Respective versions of Wagner’s “Glance” Motive 203
EXAMPLE 5-10: Four Tristan Chords, Lulu, mm. 56-9 203
EXAMPLE 5-11: Comparable figures in Tristan and Lulu 203
EXAMPLE 5-12: Tristan Material and Initials in Lulu, m. 60 204
EXAMPLE 5-13: Tristan Motives in Schön’s Coda Music 205
EXAMPLE 5-14: Berg’s use of Tristan motives at the close of Lulu, Act I 207
EXAMPLE 5-15: Rhythmic Figures in Tristan and Lulu 208

EXAMPLE 5-16: Lulu, Monoritmica 208

EXAMPLE 5-17: The synthesis of Lulu and Schön’s Themes 208
EXAMPLE 5-18: The final Tristan Chord in Lulu 211

v
CHAPTER 0: What is Paraphrase?
0.0: Definitions

The Oxford English Dictionary provides three definitions of the verb “to

paraphrase:”

1. "To express the meaning of (a written or spoken passage, or the words of an

author or speaker) using different words, esp. to achieve greater clarity; to
render or translate freely."
2. "To make a paraphrase; to comment or enlarge upon a passage so as to bring
out the sense."
3. "To adapt, appropriate, or alter the wording of (a saying or quotation) or the
words of (an author or speaker) to suit one's own purpose."1

These definitions all refer to paraphrase in language, of course. None maps

onto music perfectly, though the third seems to be the closest: “to adapt,

appropriate or alter” a passage of music, perhaps “to suit [a composer’s] own

purpose.” This definition is quite broad, suggesting that musical paraphrase should

encompass a wide range of practices. Curiously, however, the New Grove online

provides only two definitions, the first of which is "[a] compositional technique,

popular particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries, whereby a pre-existing melody

(usually chant) is used in a polyphonic work."2 The other is "a virtuoso work based

on well-known tunes, usually taken from popular operas" citing examples from Liszt

alone.3 The Oxford Companion to Music offers two similar definitions,4 as does the

Oxford Dictionary, though the latter also mentions Scottish Paraphrase, which is

1 OED.com (Accessed July 2012)

2 Grove Music Online (Accessed July 2012)
3 Ibid
4 Oxford Companion to Music (Accessed July 2012)

1
defined as the use of "metrical versions of scriptural passages sung to psalm tunes in

the Church of Scotland."5

What the authors of these entries include in their definitions is

uncontroversial, but what they omit is bound to raise an eyebrow or two, especially

to scholars of music since 1900. If paraphrase is merely the “adaptation,

appropriation, and alteration” of music, then a list of only three practices is

lamentably short. There are certainly other examples from the period between

Josquin and Liszt that bear inclusion, and it is even more problematic that no 20th-

century practice is listed in the definitions proper;6 it should go without saying that

the long 20th-century has witnessed burgeoning evidence of musical quotation,

paraphrase, and other forms of borrowing.7

To avoid the provinciality of an Anglophone bias, it seems appropriate to

search for definitions of musical paraphrase in some other languages. In German,

Duden provides a perhaps more accurate definition in regards to music than those

found in English-language sources: 1) “to re-write or embellish a melody, to make a

paraphrase of a known (Opera) melody or a song,” or 2) “to compose out [or

develop]” (auskomponieren).8 The author of the first definition clearly had Liszt’s

“opera paraphrases” in mind, which are widely written about in German-language

5 Oxford Dictionary of Music (Accessed July 2012)

6 One of the OED’s listed uses of the term “paraphrase” in print is Burkholder’s 1987
article "‘Quotation’ and Paraphrase in Ives' Second Symphony" in 19th-Century Music, however. It is
unsurprising that one of Burkholder’s uses of the term has made it into the OED, as he has (as far as I
am aware) used it more than anyone else in reference to music of the 20th century. But given all of
the recent scholarly work on Ives, it is dubious that he, along with everyone else born since 1850, is
excluded from the wording of the definitions themselves.
7 I define the "long-20th century" as beginning (more or less) two decades preceding the year 1900

and ending with the present.

8 “eine Melodie frei umspielen, ausschmücken; b) eine bekannte [Opern]melodie, ein Lied zur

Paraphrase (2b) auskomponieren (Mus.).” (Accessed July 2012)

2
scholarship, but the latter reveals a different understanding of the term: the

“composing-out” or development of a theme, which is of course also a type of

paraphrase. Duden’s definition of cadenza (Kadenz) as well includes the term

paraphrase: “improvised or written-out (by the composer) soloistic paraphrase

(Paraphrasierung) of a theme at the close of a concerto, in which the artist is

provided the opportunity to show his [or her] virtuousity.”9 Synthesizing the

content of the English and German dictionary entries enables us to draft a working

definition: Musical paraphrase is defined as the adaptation, alteration, or

embellishment of musical material, often borrowed from another source.

There is no need to cavil about this definition further, yet by now it is clear

that “musical paraphrase” casts a much wider net than what can possibly be

included in a single dissertation. Although “altered quotation” is perhaps too

restrictive for a general definition of musical paraphrase, it more or less describes

the scope of my project. I limit my study to that which falls at the intersection of

musical borrowing and musical paraphrase. Admittedly, this track is but one of at

least three directions one might take such a project. One could explore the notion of

paraphrase as development (or “composing out”), though this in itself would still be

rather broad. One might also focus on practices of paraphrase whose origins lie in

improvisatory traditions. This could include everything from the methods of

melodic paraphrase endemic to jazz to the (structurally, if not culturally) related

practice of virtuoso embellishment in art music. A comparison of the embellishment

9“improvisierte od. [vom Komponisten] ausgeschriebene solistische Paraphrasierung eines Themas

am Schluss [einzelner Sätze] eines Konzerts, die dem Künstler die Möglichkeit bietet, sein virtuoses
Können zu zeigen.” (Accessed July 2012)

3
techniques of jazz saxophonists, blues guitarists, and virtuoso composer-performers

like Liszt, Corelli, or Paganini could make for a fascinating study.10 But rather than

comparing the many ways that one might apply the term paraphrase to music, my

project is built around a single guiding question: If a composer borrows music from

another source and alters it for use in a new context, how is this accomplished, and

what are the motivations for doing so?

0.1: Musical Paraphrase Defined Against Similar Terms

0.1.1: Paraphrase of Music vs. Paraphrase of Language

I take as my starting point for defining paraphrase the OED’s third definition

(to “adapt, alter, appropriate”), but some philosophers explore an understanding of

the term that is closer to the first of the three definitions (“using different words,

esp. to achieve greater clarity”) to music. V. A. Howard, in his essay, “On Musical

Quotation,” says the following about musical paraphrase:

“The usual motive of paraphrase [in language] is to enhance communication by removing

ambiguity. Since music so rarely says anything, semantic paraphrase hardly counts among

the ineluctable devices of composition. But neither is it so rare as to deserve no account.

Programme music, opera, and oratorio are replete with attempts to employ music to name,

describe, or represent things in addition to the more common expressive use of music.

Assuming for argument’s sake that some denotative uses of music are descriptive (as may

happen, for instance, in a system of leitmotiven), two musical passages may be rephrasal-

10Zaslaw describes Corelli’s practice of ornamentation as “through-composed melodic paraphrase,”

some types of which, he notes, resemble “some practices in jazz, where almost anything that works
with the set chord progressions can be substituted.” (1996, p. 95)

4
 pairs if they denote the same thing or event… Clearly, paraphrase is impossible in

nondescriptive music.”11

Howard is correct that if we use such a definition, then musical paraphrase is

quite rare; it becomes unthinkable in “absolute,” or what Howard calls

“nondescriptive” music. Ultimately, though, Howard does not insist on such a literal,

restrictive definition of musical paraphrase (nor do I), accepting a more

metaphorical application of the term. In a footnote, he allows that “[t]he musician’s

special use of the term ‘paraphrase’ as a rough synonym for ‘thematic variation,’ like

his special uses of the terms ‘phrase’ and ‘statement,’ refers to auditory rather than

grammatical or semantic properties of musical events” (emphasis mine). Bicknell, in

a similar essay, accepts Howard’s extension of the metaphor, and argues that “[a]

musical paraphrase is, then, not one that contains the same meaning as the original

(as does a paraphrase in language), but a recurrent, deviant theme.”

Katie Wales, in the most recent Dictionary of Stylistics, offers contrasting

definitions of paraphrase in various disciplines. In translation studies, she, citing

Steiner, describes paraphrase as a “faithful but autonomous restatement.” 12 In

linguistics and stylistics, paraphrase is defined as a means “to describe such

alternatives of expression within one and the same language”— the notion “that the

same content can be expressed in different forms.”13 But in literary studies, she

offers a radical understatement in suggesting that “the notion of paraphrase has not

gone unchallenged.”14 Cleanth Brooks argues in his essay “The Heresy of

11 Howard (1974), pp. 313-314

12 Quoted in Wales (2011, p. 302)
13 Ibid, pp. 302-3
14 Ibid, p. 303

5
Paraphrase” that “any good poem sets up against all attempts to paraphrase it…. We

can very properly use paraphrases as pointers and as short-hand references… [b]ut

it is highly important that we know what we are doing and that we see plainly that

the paraphrase is not the real core of meaning which constitutes the essence of the

poem.”15

Few would argue with Brooks on this matter; it is clear that one cannot

paraphrase a poem and retain the irony, the rhyme and assonance, and the

ambiguity of the language. And arguably, the same is true of music; expressing the

“essence” of a piece with different musical material seems a tall order. Therefore,

musical paraphrase should only very rarely, if ever be viewed as an endeavor to

preserve “the real core of meaning” of a work. The goals of musical paraphrase vary

widely, as we shall see in the chapters to come.

0.1.2: Paraphrase vs. Quotation

A simple definition of paraphrase, as mentioned above, might be “altered,”

“indirect,” or “non-literal” quotation. Indeed, most paraphrase is quotation, and

most quotation is paraphrase, but the two sets do not overlap exhaustively. The

definition of paraphrase as “composing-out” is a practice of paraphrase that is not

also quotation, though it is one I do not address. Conversely, if a composer quotes

another “verbatim,” preserving the notes, rhythms, and general affect of the original

material, then this is a type of quotation that is not also paraphrase. Metzer says

much the same, suggesting that “the use of actual material from a piece separates

15 Brooks (1968), p 160

6
quotation from allusion and paraphrase, which broadly evoke works, styles, or

textures” (emphasis mine).16 The challenge comes in defining “actual.” When Berg

borrows the opening bars of Tristan in his Lyric Suite (discussed at greater length in

Chapter 5), can this be called the “actual” material from the piece? Wagner’s theme

is scored for a mix of strings and winds, and Berg’s is for strings alone. This change

of orchestration is mild enough that I am comfortable calling this quotation.

However, had Berg quoted this passage in a piece for kazoo quartet or percussion

ensemble (or, heaven forbid, both together!), even if he had kept the pitches,

rhythms and tempo the same, the affect of such an adaptation would different

enough from that of its source that it may more comfortably be called a paraphrase.

Regardless, there remains a fuzzy boundary between “pure,” “verbatim”

quotation, and paraphrase. Metzer agrees that “lines between these categories are

not fixed.”17 In some practices of musical borrowing, like arranging a piece for a

new ensemble, harmonizing a vernacular tune, or covering a popular song, it is

possible to change very little of the source material. One might question whether it

is appropriate to apply the term paraphrase in such cases. 18 One might also

question the suitability of the term paraphrase for the practices in which such

significant changes are made to the borrowed material that the source is no longer

recognizable. Is it even a paraphrase if we cannot perceive it as such?

16 Metzer (2003), p. 4
17 Ibid
18 This is not to say that all arrangements, settings, and covers change very little. While many covers

involve no change to instrumentation and virtually no change to musical structure, some do alter a
great deal. I will return to this matter in Chapter 3.

7
 To avoid becoming ensnarled in such a debate, most of the examples I choose

fall somewhere between these two extremes. I focus on that which falls closer to the

conceptual center of the category—the proverbial “baby bear’s porridge” of

paraphrase. The pieces I discuss, for the most part, are simply new twists on

familiar tunes, and the vast majority of them are recognizable as such. A few of the

examples I discuss in later chapters (especially those by Berg) are Augenmusik, and

in all probability are not aurally perceivable as paraphrase. When I believe a

paraphrase is likely to escape notice without a score, I say so. Such claims are based

on my own hearing alone, yet I doubt that my judgment is so idiosyncratic that an

empirical study would overturn my verdict on whether or not something is

recognizable. And this is not a perceptual study, though it is my hope that it will

inspire such work in the future to determine how much a composer can change

borrowed material without burying the source entirely.

Paraphrase also differs from quotation in another crucial way, despite the

significant overlap between the two categories. Bicknell suggests that “containment”

is one of the “necessary conditions for direct or indirect quotation.”19 This is to say,

in the case of music, a (fragment of a) quoted piece must be contained within

another. While a paraphrase may be contained within another piece, it need not be.

Composers can include paraphrased fragments of music in their own works, but it is

possible to paraphrase a piece without containing it in another. A paraphrase can

19Bicknell (2001), p. 185

The other criterion she lists is “reference.” She explains, “[t]he quotation must contain a syntactic
replica of the quoted expression (in the case of direct quotation), or its semantic equivalent (indirect
quotation). The quotation must also refer to or denote what is quoted, either by naming it or by
predication.” (Ibid)

8
be a transformation of an entire work; there need not be a frame of “new” musical

material to encapsulate a paraphrase, while by and large, as Metzer suggests,

“[q]uotation is also set apart by the prominence of the borrowing, which is made to

stick out from the surrounding music.”20

0.1.3: Paraphrase vs. Parody

The terms parody and paraphrase are often used contrastively in music

studies, especially in regard to the related (yet distinct) practices of “Renaissance

paraphrase” and “Renaissance parody.” While these two specific practices are

taxonomically differentiable in compositional procedure and resultant syntax, the

terms parody and paraphrase need not always be used contrastively to describe

music of the (long) 20th century. It is my contention that parody is a subset of

paraphrase, or at least a fuzzy subset.21 One could argue that parody is distinct from

paraphrase because of the intention to satire the source, and that paraphrase is

distinct from parody because of the absence of this objective. However, this

argument does not speak to the reality of the situation for a number of reasons:

1. We do not always know if composers intend to satirize the piece from which

they have borrowed. Even the composer’s word is not infallible evidence;

perhaps at the time of composition, the composer borrowed a theme as an

homage, but later in life, she insists that she did so to ridicule it. It is

20Metzer (2003), p. 4
21Style parody may not actually involve paraphrasing a specific piece of music, though it does involve
paraphrasis of the stylistic conventions and norms of a given musical practice, usually highlighting
and exaggerating its most identifiable features—a point to which I will return in Chapter 3.

9
 important to remember that composers’ explanations of their motivations

are subject to trends of aesthetic fashion.

2. Parody and homage are not mutually exclusive. Although some parodies

(whether in music or another art) may be inspired purely out of distaste, I

imagine that many parodists are fond of the object they satire.22 A parodist

may even view their own work (consciously or unconsciously) as both a

satire of, and a salute to, their source.

3. Regardless of a composer’s intentions, something that is designed as homage

might be perceived as parody, and vice versa. As Dentith explains, “parody

has the paradoxical effect of preserving the very text it seeks to destroy…

This can have some odd effects, even running counter to the apparent

intentions of the parodist.”23 He terms this property “the parodic paradox”—

a pithy synopsis.24

To synthesize these points, the poietics and aesthesics of parody are difficult

to parse, and if author intent is our sole criterion to distinguish parody and

paraphrase, then we should have no further cause to suggest that they are mutually

exclusive practices. In Chapters 1, 2, and 3, I use the terms almost interchangeably,

as both are equally applicable to the majority of the music I analyze in these

chapters.

22 While I argue that the act of musical parody is almost necessarily homagic, this may not always be
so in the world of images. A caricaturist drawing an exaggerated portrait of an important political
figure may well lack any fondness for the subject; such a parody of their likeness is not always well
intentioned.
23 Dentith (2000), p. 36
24 Ibid

10
0.2: Brief Chapter Overview and Goals of the Project

In my first chapter, I explore the metaphor of musical translation. I argue that

the analogy is productive to describe the process of converting a piece of music into

a new style, provided that we do not use the linguistic definition of translation

uncritically. Generally, the goal of such a style translation is to keep the original

piece identifiable while changing its stylistic associations (and therefore connotative

meaning) to the extent possible. In Chapter 2, I examine the practice of altering

music for use on television, which I will call “copyphrase.” Producers can avoid

buying the rights to the copyrighted works that they want to use on their programs

by hiring a composer to craft a new piece that sounds similar enough to evoke it, but

different enough from the source to avoid legal consequences. Chapter 3 is a study

of musical caricature. Just as an artist can exaggerate the facial features of their

subject to make a realistic portrait into a satirical cartoon, I demonstrate how a

composer can lampoon the work of another by employing the most identifiable

characteristics in a more pronounced manner.

The final two chapters are about musical paraphrase as creative stimulus—

using pre-existing music as the aesthetic point of departure for crafting something

new. In Chapter 4, I focus on the film music of John Williams. Williams’ scores often

remind us of works by other concert and film composers, yet the casual assumption

one often hears that Williams paraphrases (or worse, plagiarizes) familiar works,

has never been properly evaluated—a gap in the literature that I seek to remedy.

Lastly, in Chapter 5, I examine Alban Berg’s habit of paraphrasing passages of

Tristan und Isolde throughout his oeuvre, most thoroughly in Lulu. After pointing

11
out a number of altered quotations that have gone unnoticed, I reconsider the

reasons why Berg seems to have had a near obsession with borrowing from Wagner,

comparing his practice to the methods of paraphrase discussed in the other

chapters.

From the descriptions of the chapters to come, it should be clear that these

five essays are not catch-all categories in which every practice of paraphrase that

fits my definition could find a home. Neither is this text a taxonomic division of all

paraphrase practices; the breadth of scope required for such a project would allow

for little depth of analysis. Rather, I offer but a few windows into the world of

musical paraphrase. A collection of case studies offers a more compelling and

satisfying end-result than does a catalogue, and further, these five essays illustrate

what I believe is a representative (if not comprehensive) sample of the many

practices we might call paraphrase.

0.3: Scholarly Antecedents

A handful of scholars have written about musical quotation and paraphrase

in music of the 20th century, many of whom have had a significant impact on my own

work. J. Peter Burkholder’s 1995 Ives monograph, All Made of Tunes, is the most

extensive survey of the practice of musical paraphrase to date. Each chapter of his

book explores a different practice of borrowing—including modeling, stylistic

allusion, melodic paraphrase, collage, and patchwork, among a number of other

procedures—an organizational schema that I borrow, along with many of the terms

for these practices that he defines so clearly. Like Burkholder, one of my goals is to

12
classify several types of musical paraphrase, but rather than exploring the methods

of a single composer, my objective is to compare the works of several composers

whose motivation for paraphrasing the music they borrow varies enormously. In

range, therefore, my project is more like Howard Metzer’s Quotation and Cultural

Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music, a series of six case studies comparing

quotation in an eclectic array of musical styles. Yet there is remarkably little

overlap between the music that Metzer studies and that which I do; most of the

practices he explores are types of quotation that do not make the best examples of

paraphrase. I regret not being to engage with the practices of collage, covers, and

sampling more than in passing, as Metzer has demonstrated that these are all

fruitful areas of study about which a great deal more should be written.

Much of the scholarship that I have read for this project comes from outside

the field of music studies. In fact, if there is a single study closest to my own, it is

almost certainly Gérard Genette’s 1982 Palimpseste: Literature in the Second Degree.

Genette does with literature what I endeavor to do with music: identify and

distinguish various practices of adaptation, many of which are comic in nature.

While Burkholder and Metzer’s respective projects were significant influences in

determining the shape of my dissertation in the early stages, I learned of Genette’s

work rather late in the process of writing, and I can only imagine how different the

project would be had I read Palimpseste at an earlier date. Nonetheless,

encountering Genette’s work, even so late in the game provided me with a much

needed boost, offering the gift of a number of insightful remarks that I could not

help but quote.

13
 Genette is not as widely read as his fellow structuralist countrymen Barthes

and Levi-Strauss, but some of his terms have come into common use in literary

studies. He coined the widely known term paratext, and more important to present

purposes, the term hypotext. A hypotext is a source upon which a hypertext is based.

He defines the relationship between two such texts as “hypertextuality,” which he

explains, “is any relationship uniting a text B (which I shall call the hypertext) to an

earlier text A (I shall, of course, call it the hypotext), upon which it is grafted in a

manner that is not that of commentary.”25 Every form of musical paraphrase that is

discussed is characterized by this relationship, having a hypotext upon which it is

based, “an earlier text that it imitates and transforms.”26 As such, I adapt these terms

for my own use.

Ultimately, however, I use few of Genette’s terms; despite their appeal, few of

them map onto music as cleanly as hypotext and hypertext do. At times his project

is oversaturated with new terminology, stemming from his zeal to define parody

narrowly, obsessively re-classifying a number of literary practices that are called

“parody” in casual speech. I fear that borrowing more from Genette would cause my

project to suffer from the same unbearable density. (In fairness, I might be accused

of drifting in this direction myself in Chapter 3, and I beg the reader’s indulgence

here; studying new terrain begets a need for new terminology.)

25Genette (1997/1982), p. 5
Genette contrasts the term “hypertextuality” with Kristeva’s “intertextuality” and other similar terms
of his invention. I will return to the distinction between intertextuality and hypertextuality in
Chapter 4.
26 Prince (1997/1982), ix

14
 Another author from outside of the field that I cannot help but acknowledge

here is Kenneth T. Rivers. His insightful book, Transmutations: Understanding

Literary and Pictorial Caricature (1991) was indispensible to getting my third

chapter off of the ground. Without both 1) the solid theoretical grounding on the

genre of caricature that his book so lucidly provides, and 2) a starting point to help

me find some of the best examples of musical caricature, I may well have had to

scrap the chapter. And even if I had been able to complete it, it would have lacked

sophistication for want of a stronger theoretical framework.

0.4: Choices of Repertory

0.4.1: Included Repertory

A majority of the music that I study in this project is not “serious” in any

sense of the term; much of it is explicitly designed for comic use. A few years ago, I

gave a class presentation on some of the music I analyze in Chapter 1, and a fellow

student asked me—without irony—if I was “bored” for having pursed such a project,

unable to fathom why I would even bother to ask the questions that I do about such

music. Although the tone of my classmate’s query was hardly friendly, this is an

experience I am glad to have had in the earliest stages of the project; when I tell

colleagues about my research at conferences, I receive (in nearly equal distribution)

puzzled, even pained looks, or enthusiastic nods, and I know better now how to

respond to those in the former group.

A great deal of the music that forms the focus of Chapters 2 and 3 comes from

television cartoons. Music has always played an important role in animation—after

all, the term “Mickey Mousing” finds its origins in this medium—though to date,

15
such music has received relatively little scholarly attention. Julie Hubbert notes that

“[w]hile music scholars have been slow to recognize the art of film as a venue for

serious musical composition and cultural criticism, they have been even slower to

value music in a film genre that has had a long history of not being taken seriously—

the cartoon.”27

About a decade ago, Daniel Goldmark broke the silence both with The

Cartoon Music Book, (a volume he edited along with Yuval Taylor), 28 and his 2005

monograph Tunes for ‘Toons. In the latter, he laments that cartoons “have typically

been viewed as devoid of any intellectual import whatsoever.”29 I imagine that

many authors (perhaps subconsciously) have been timid to pursue scholarship on

cartoons for exactly this reason.30 Yet, as I will explain in Chapter 2, the producers

of many of these shows take their music quite seriously, and it’s high time that we

do as well. While it is fortunate that many in music studies are warming up to this

repertory, the sub-field of music theory has lagged a few paces farther behind. At

last, the field is getting past its implicit bias towards the canons of concert and

popular music, and many theorists have begun to pursue serious analysis of music

for television and film. This trend is not indicative of a turn away from the

fascination with the creative “genius” that to this day largely defines the field of

27 Hubbert (2003), p. 146

28 In a review of The Cartoon Music Book, Hubbert lauds the “persuasive argument” the authors of the
volume provide “for placing legendary [cartoon] composers Carl Stalling, Raymond Scott, and Scott
Bradley alongside America’s most iconoclastic and inventive composers.” (2003, p. 147)
29 Goldmark (2005), p. 2
30 Some trepidation in taking seriously a virulent satire like Family Guy (one of my central objects of

study) is understandable. This show, according to the packaging on Volume VI of their DVD
collection, has been called “risky [and] rude” by the Los Angeles Daily News, “crude, tasteless, [and]
insenstive” by the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel and “the most appalling show on network television”
by USA Today.

16
music theory, however. Rather, it is testament to the fact that music theorists are

willing to include music for filmic media in the museum of Meisterwerke deemed

worthy of analysis. I just hope that when the new wing is built, room can be made

for the craft of music comedy. So far, the scholarly conversation about such music

has been so quiet that it could be drowned out by the sound of crickets chirping. 31

0.4.2: Excluded Repertory

A number of composers who might seem like prime candidates for a study

like this must unfortunately be excluded. Ives, perhaps the most obvious candidate

of all, evades more than occasional mention—certainly not for lack of interest, but

given Burkholder’s tremendous contributions to the practice of paraphrase in Ives’

music, I could do little more than summarize his arguments. The Neoclassical

adaptations of earlier music from the likes of Stravinsky, Respighi, Prokofiev, and

Busoni might also seem a shoo-in, yet I likewise offer little treatment of this

repertory. Although these composers certainly do alter the notes and rhythms of

the music they borrow, the primary changes are often to orchestration and

accompaniment; the changes to the source material are generally less significant

than in most of the examples of paraphrase I do address more thoroughly.

I feel somewhat more comfortable about omitting this repertory knowing

that it has been the focus of many astute analyses in the scholarly literature

31The same cannot be said of the music I study in my fifth chapter, however. Though the balance of
the music that I approach has been largely neglected, the music of Alban Berg has inspired a great
deal of analysis and criticism. The fact that there is such an extensive Berg bibliography is somewhat
of an anomaly, as there are very few mature works on which his reputation rests.

17
(especially Straus’ 1990 Remaking the Past).32 The same can be said of the practices

of collage, as well Liszt’s “free-transcription” and opera paraphrase; each has

received a great deal of scholarly attention.33 But let me be clear: While most of

repertory that I engage with complements that which has received the fullest

attention in the scholarly literature, with the exception of Ives, I do not neglect any

practice of paraphrase because it is already well-studied. Rather, the work of the

composers who evade mention simply does not fit my definition of paraphrase

closely enough to bear inclusion in my study. I hope the reader will agree after

surveying the chapters to come that what may now seem like glaring omissions

would in fact make peculiar additions.

The practices I do address—in full disclosure, half by-design, and half

fortuitiously—ended up forming a coherent bundle whose striking similarities and

differences complement one another as a cozy, if eclectic family. I do not study the

music that I do for the sake of novelty, nor do I compare low-brow and high-brow

music to be provocative. The examples that both fit my definition of paraphrase and

pique my interest happen to come from a wide range of sources. When George

Gershwin traveled to Vienna in 1928, he was surprised to learn that a “serious”

composer like Berg was fond of his music. Berg shrugged it off, and simply said, “Mr.

Gershwin, music is music.”34 I ask the reader to adopt Berg’s attitude. Sit back, relax,

and let your curiosity get the better of you.

32 See also Watkins (1994) and Pašić (1997)

33 Work on collage includes Watkins (1994), Metzer (2003), and Losada (2009). There is a lengthy
bibliography on Liszt’s paraphrase practice, mostly in German. Notable examples include Döhring
(1982), Keller (1993), and Deaville (2006).
34 Quoted in Ross (2007), p. xi

18
Chapter 1: On the Musically Translatable

1.0: Is music translatable?

It has long been fashionable to describe music as a type of language. This

metaphor is appealing, but it only takes us so far. Music is woefully imprecise as a

system of communication. It lacks syntactic and semantic discreteness. There are

no “native speakers” of music. The list goes on, with some variation, but none is

complete without the assertion that music is untranslatable.

It is also common lore that music need not (as well as may not) be translated.

Lidov reminds us that Debussy, at the 1898 Paris Exhibition “evidently felt a

significance and richness in gamelan music—without translation—that was not

available to [him] in untranslated Indonesian poetry.”1 Indeed, it is often suggested

that music is a universally intelligible language, most recently by Higgins, who in a

book-length study, argues for music’s ability to cross cultures.2 Opinions run hot

about the extent to which music has an unrestricted passport, so to speak. While

many people have some “correct” intuitions about music from traditions to which

they have not been exposed, this is not to say that we all, as humans, intuitively

“understand” everything we hear in an unfamiliar musical culture. And we all may

agree that translating a “foreign” music into our own “native dialect” to better

understand it is both impossible and undesirable.3

1 Lidov (2005), p. 2
Lidov cites this anecdote to argue that the meaning of music is not quite universal, though not
entirely culture-bound either.
2 Higgins (2012)
3 One might argue that music is better likened to a collection of languages rather than to a single

one. Of course this analogy (like all others) has its limits. How many musical languages are
there? What is the difference between a dialect and a language? Is one type of music "intelligible" to
some people and not to others?

19
 Despite the conventional wisdom on music’s relationship to translation, I

will argue that the metaphor of musical translation is salvageable, provided that we

define it appropriately. Since music is not a language, it goes without saying that

music is untranslatable in a linguistic sense, yet somehow, most discussion of

musical translation is—quite problematically—filtered through a linguistic

framework. Lidov cautions us that making any analogy between language and

music “wants a bit of method.” He questions both “start[ing] with the categories of

linguistics and look[ing] for a musical equivalent,” and the reciprocal act, ultimately

suggesting “a more even-handed perspective” when comparing the two domains.4

Heeding Lidov’s advice, instead of imposing a linguistic definition of translation on

music (or vice-versa), in this chapter, I will define musical translation on its own

terms and explore how this metaphor can help us to understand the practice of

musical paraphrase.

1.0.1: Discourse on Translating Music

The origin of the discourse on music and translation (in its current form)

perhaps stems from Eduard Hanslick, who argues that “[i]n music there is both

meaning and logical sequence, but in a musical sense; it is a language we speak and

understand, but which we are unable to translate.”5 Levi-Strauss concurs,

describing music as “a language with some meaning at least for the immense

majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people [is] capable of

4 Lidov (2005), p. 2
5 Hanslick (1986), p 50

20
formulating meaning in it.”6 He continues with the argument that music “is the only

language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and

untranslatable.”7 These points are well taken, but both Hanslick and Levi-Strauss

(more so the latter) might be accused of using the metaphor of music-as-language

too literally. Levi-Strauss is correct that music may evoke images, ideas, or emotions

to most people, but he goes too far in suggesting that “[t]he system of

music…constitutes a language, since we understand it, but whose absolute

originality and distinguishing feature with regard to articulate speech is its

untranslatability.”8

In more recent scholarship, there has been little dissent on this matter. Swain

simply deems music “incapable of translation”,9 and most recently, Patel has argued

that although “it is possible to translate between any two human languages with

reasonably fidelity, it makes little sense to think of translating music into language

(e.g., a Mozart symphony into words), or music into music (e.g., a Beethoven

chamber music piece into a Javanese gamelan work) and expect that the meaning of

the original material would be preserved.”10

6 Levi-Strauss (1969), p. 18
7 Ibid
8 Ibid, p. 26

Levi-Strauss’ analogy about “understanding” music is again somewhat too literal. Kivy makes this
point quite blunty: “If I asked you, Do you understand German? it is clear what kind of question I
would be asking, and that the evidence directly bearing upon an affirmative answer demonstrated
ability to provide paraphrases, in other languages, for German sentences. It is equally clear that
scarcely anyone who has thought seriously about music is prepared to take this as a satisfactory
model for musical understanding.” (1990, p. 93)
9 Swain (1997), p. 4
10 Patel (2008), p. 300

21
1.0.2: New Definitions

Borrowing Patel’s example, let us imagine, for argument’s sake, arranging a

portion of Beethoven’s Op. 18, No. 1 for four gamelans. Would it be possible to

recognize what the gamelans play as Beethoven’s work? Though I am not aware of

any such arrangements of a Beethoven quartet for gamelan ensemble, I contend that

a composer with adequate skill could accomplish this feat; retaining rhythm,

contour, and dynamics may compensate for the mutually incompatible pitch

languages of the two styles.

Of course, the point of this pursuit is not to preserve the work’s “meaning.”

Although Hanslick, Levi-Strauss, Swain, and Patel each approach the topic of musical

translation with a different agenda, all are united in their agreement that music is

untranslatable because of the impossibility of preserving semantic content. Genette

as well deems music untranslatable on these grounds, noting that “[s]ince musical

works … have nothing to do with the plurality of languages, the phenomenon of

versions unified by semantic identity transcending linguistic differences is unknown

in music.”11 Translation, he argues, “is peculiar to literature,” while “transcription

and transposition” are exclusively musical.12 Let us therefore abandon this

condition as we seek to redefine translation in such a way that it may be applied to

music. We know that music is not a language, so we should have no reason to

believe that it has the same semantic properties; suggesting that musical translation

has anything to do with retaining semantic meaning or intelligibility in a linguistic

sense is inherently flawed.

11 Genette (1994/1997), p. 178

12 Ibid, p. 176

22
 Swain takes us remarkably close to a working definition of musical

translation, offering what he argues “is perhaps the most decisive and consistent

break with the [music/language] analogy: music’s preference for sound over

meaning when compared with speech’s preference for meaning over sound.”13 This

is not to say that sound is unimportant to language, nor that “meaning” is

unimportant to music. Of course, we can be distracted by an unusual accent, a lisp,

or the peculiar register of someone’s voice (to name a few things), but the

experience of listening to music clearly involves a greater sensitivity to sonic

character. Accepting this difference between language and music allows us to

(re)define translation accordingly: A successful linguistic translation changes the

meaning of an utterance as little as possible, but necessarily does so with different

sounds (the morphemes of a different language). A successful musical translation

maximizes the change of affect (and therefore meaning) while changing as little of the

musical material as possible to ensure its recognizability. The purpose of musical

style translation is therefore not the preservation of meaning, but something closer

to the opposite.

The use of the term translation to describe the process of changing a piece of

music from one style or genre to another is hardly novel.14 Referring to the style of

a given composer as their “idiolect” or “language” is rather common—in fact, this

metaphor is used with such frequency that this figure of speech seems wholly

13Swain (1997), p. 15
14Another common use of the term translation is to describe ekphrasis, e.g. “translating” music into
language, language into music, art into music, etc. In this chapter, I do not address this use of the
term as ekphrastic works generally have little to with musical paraphrase. A notable exception,
however, is Respighi’s Trittico Botticelliano, which is collection of three musical “depictions” of
Botticelli paintings. The middle of the three pieces, The Adoration of the Magi is both a “translation”
of painting into music, and a translation of “O come, Emmanuel” presented in a more modern style.

23
unproblematic in casual conversation. Steinberg, in his program notes on

Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony describes “a 1917 translation of what 140 years or

so earlier was called a Mannheim skyrocket” that is used as the work’s opening

gesture.15 Martha Hyde exploits this metaphor as well in discussing “translations”

between tonal and atonal music.16 And even Swain, who cites music’s

untranslatability as a factor that distinguishes music from language, uses the term

casually himself, referring both to a Wagnerian leitmotif that is “translated into the

major mode,”17 and madrigals “translate[d] to an instrumental form.”18 Like these

authors, I use the metaphor of translation in a conventional way.

1.0.3: What do we mean by “meaning?”

My definition of musical translation begs a rather significant question: What

exactly do we mean by “musical meaning?” The meaning I refer to here has very

little to do with semantics. Opinions about the semantic content of music are quite

diverse, to say the least; no one can seem to agree. Deryck Cooke’s (in)famous

account of musical semantics falls at one extreme, taking the position that discrete

melodic patterns correspond to remarkably specific emotional expressions.19 At the

opposite ideological pole fall many philosophers of music, Peter Kivy and Roger

15 Steinberg (1995), p. 431

16 Hyde (1980), esp. pp. 132-3
17 Swain (1997), p. 60. He continues, “[t]his transformation, though great, does not affect the identity

of the motive, much as the stress or change of intonation leaves unaffected a word’s root meaning
while changing its immediate meaning.” (Ibid)
18 Ibid, p. 86
19 Cooke (1959)

24
Scruton among them, who argue that music has no semantic content at all.20 Kivy is

rightfully suspicious of applying to music “the sense of ‘meaning’ that people get

from the semantics of natural language where words can be defined, sentences

paraphrased and translated.”21 Discussing the truth-content of music is generally

bland and tautological, and rarely is musical meaning based on predication. Further,

musical events, unlike words, do not often correspond to specific “real-world”

objects, ideas, or actions. Kivy, Scruton and others argue convincingly that the

analogy of musical semantics is perhaps less convincing than those of syntax and

phonology, but denying the presence of any such meaning in music seem a bit

extreme, as does (like Cooke) arguing for fixed, specific meanings.

Most (more recently articulated) views of musical semantics tend to fall

closer to the ideological center. The enterprise of musical “topics” is dependent on

the notion that there are intra-musical signifiers.22 This is to say that we find signs

for many types of music within a single piece, and that by extension these topical

signifiers may be associated with different non-musical objects and ideas. Swain

provides another, perhaps ideologically compatible stance on musical semantics,

arguing that music has a “semantic range,” which is to say that pieces of music do

not correspond to specific emotions isomorphically, but that most listeners familiar

with a musical tradition would chose the same descriptor if presented with an

opposing binary; we are likely to agree about whether a piece is “happy” or “sad,”

20 Kivy states unequivocally that “music does, indeed, present itself… as a quasi-syntactical structure:
a syntax without semantics.” (1990 p. 101) Scruton likewise argues that “[musical] structures can be
assigned no semantic value.” (1997, p. 199)
21 Kivy (1990), p. 64
22 Ratner (1980) was the first to explore the theory of these “musical topics.” Other early work in this

area includes Allanbrook (1983) and Agawu (1991).

25
but getting much more specific is tricky.23 This “semantic range” also accounts,

Swain explains, for why a text can be heard as a good match for a piece of music, or

if the pairing is incongruous or ironic.24

So to summarize the more moderate views on musical semantics, if music in

fact has semantic content, it is expressed indirectly and is not very specific.25 In

light of the limitations of musical semantics, perhaps a pragmatics of music is a more

productive approach to understanding music's ever enigmatic meaning, especially

in regard to translation (and paraphrase more generally). Applying such a flexible

understanding of meaning to music allows us to privilege the connotative over the

denotative, the dynamic over the static, and the associative over the absolute.26 To

be clear, I am not the first to propose a pragmatics of music (though I am one of the

first in music studies). 27 Patel, a cognitive scientist, suggests that “[m]ost

23 Swain rejects the argument that music has no semantic content. In his words, “Defining ‘musical
language’ as void of semantic content, for example, would immediately render quite irrelevant all the
complains about the missing specificity or propositional content in musical passages, the lack of
agreement among listeners, and the inability of music to translate.” (1997, p. 169)
24 Swain’s discussion of musical semantics merits reading in full. He proposes a broad “concept of

musical semantics [that] entails all of the traditional formulations of meaning—reference and sense,
connotation and denotation, indexicality, iconic and symbolic traits—as well as the newer idea that
an essential part of linguistic meaning is its syntactic function.” (1997 p. 55)
25Of note, Bernstein, in his famous Harvard lecture on musical semantics, argues that “music has

intrinsic meanings of its own, which are not to be confused with specific feelings or moods, and
certainly not with pictorial impressions or stories.” (1976, p. 131) When it comes time to explain
what this meaning is (rather than what it is not), he offers perhaps the most unsatisfying account of
musical semantics in history: That “a metaphorical language is created by transformations, all of
which are some kind of a varied repetition.” (Ibid, p. 175) What Bernstein promised to be a
revelatory explanation of musical semantics in fact merely betrays the frustrations of such an
approach.
26 Pragmatics is a relatively new subfield of linguistics, concerned with parsing the meaning of

utterances that are not adequately explained by studying their truth content in reference to non-
linguistic objects. Linguists were inspired by the work of language philosophers J.L. Austin and H.P.
Grice. Grice’s 1975 “Logic and Conversation” is considered the fountainhead of linguistic pragmatics.
27 I suspect that the absence of such scholarship in music studies has in part to do with the fact that

pragmatics is a relatively new discipline of linguistics; during the period when music theorists were
most eager to make use of tools from linguistics (the "long" 1970s—the late 1960s to the early
1980s), pragmatics was yet to become an established field. Most people (in academia or otherwise)
outside of the linguistics community had perhaps not heard the term "pragmatics" as it is currently

26
comparative discussions of linguistic and musical meaning focus on semantics,

though… it may ultimately prove more fruitful to focus on pragmatics.”28 And

Brown, a sociologist, provides the most deliberate support for the cause of musical

pragmatics (if for different purposes), asserting that “all communication—be it

linguistic, musical, gestural—is guided by pragmatic concerns…[B]ecause music has

not traditionally been conceptualized as a communication system but rather as an

art form, pragmatics has rarely been considered an essential part of musicological

analysis… which is dubious both on psychological and sociological grounds.”29

In recent philosophy, we also find (often indirect) support for musical

pragmatics, which is perhaps unsurprising; it was philosophers of language who

provided the intellectual foundations of pragmatics, and it is the area of linguistics

about which many in the humanities are most enthusiastic. Of note, these

philosophers all use music to make a case for linguistic pragmatics—not the other

way around—taking it as a given that music has meaning primarily in a pragmatic

sense. Deleuze and Guatari came close to suggesting the potential of such an

approach to music as early as 1980. One of their major arguments in A Thousand

Plateaus is that linguistics, since Chomsky (and perhaps even Saussure) has

maintained a disingenuous identity as a purely scientific enterprise, and that

pragmatic meaning, prosody, and other less-quantifiable features of language are of

used, let alone had any awareness what the nascent field had to offer. Consequently, discussions of
musical semantics seem to proliferate while musical pragmatics lies largely dormant.
28 Patel (2008), p. 303
29 Brown (2006), p. 24

27
equal importance to syntax, phonology and semantics.30 (They appeal to music to

help them make this point, calling pragmatics a type of “chromatic linguistics.”31) In

a similar vein, Higgins argues that “greater philosophical attention to the ways that

language resembles music… might result in a reconsideration of linguistic

communication, particularly regarding the importance of pragmatics in the

generation of meaning.”32

Regardless of how we toe a party line on pragmatics (or semantics), it is

uncontroversial that the precise meaning—defined broadly—of any sonic structure

in music (or language) is dependent upon the context of its use. With music, we can

discuss the extra-musical context of a piece—the situation in which it is used for

some communicative purpose (picture Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet playing as

the lovers in a movie are about to embrace)—or, the intra-musical context, the

stylistic, syntactic constraints on a particular piece of music. Swain has called genre

the “pragmatic context” of music, suggesting that “[t]he linking of these generic

connotations with the syntax of the work makes music pragmatic in the linguistic

sense.”33

30 They even go so far as to say that "[l]inguistics is nothing without a pragmatics… to define the
effectuation of the condition of possibility of language and the usage of linguistic elements.” Deleuze
and Guatari (1980/2007), p. 85.
31 Ibid, p. 97. They elaborate on this claim: “Linguistics in general is still in a kind of major mode, still

has a sort of diatonic scale and a strange taste for dominants, constants, and universals. All
languages, in the meantime, are in immanent continuous variation: neither synchrony nor diachrony,
but asynchrony, chromaticism as a variable and continuous state of language. For a chromatic
linguistics according pragmatism its intensities and values.” (sic)
32 Higgins (2012), p. 9

She continues, “[t]oo often music is modeled on conceptions of language in which syntax and
semantics are taken as primary, with the consequence that ‘music’ is understood principally in terms
of structures apart from context.”
33 Swain (1997), p 87

He continues, “[t]he difference in musical pragmatics is that the ‘real-world context’ is the genre, and
the link is not usually with the semantics of music, although it can be, but with the syntax.” (Ibid)

28
 So what happens when we take a piece of music, and alter it to fit the

normative syntax of another style? Translation. Translating music from one style to

another should involve a maximal change of pragmatic meaning, but a minimal

change to content so that the original “message”—which is to say, the identity of the

piece—is not lost in the new stylistic conventions. With language, both semantic

and pragmatic meanings are translatable; if I were to note that “the proverbial fecal

matter has had an unfortunate run-in with the overhead cooling device,” a speaker

of English would likely understand this as a paraphrase, or even pragmatic

translation of the well-known expression. With music, pragmatic, contextual

meaning is translatable; semantic meaning is not.

Unfortunately, what I call musical translations are quickly dismissed, even

thought to be impossible in the scholarly literature. Swain suggests that the music

of “Palestrina cannot be transcribed” for a different ensemble (emphasis mine).34

Clearly, changing the genre (or even instrumentation, at times) of a piece of music

changes the affect of the work, but it is possible to take Palestrina’s music out of its

original context, and sometimes such a task is a composer’s goal. Rarely are such

translations created with lofty, “high-art” ambition—often they are parodies of

other works—but they nonetheless deserve our attention; the issue of how

composers translate works into new musical styles is of interest to music theorists,

especially when, as we shall see, a tonal piece is paraphrased into a dodecaphonic

Swain explores certain syntactic ambiguities in a Beethoven piano concerto, explaining how the
context of the surrounding measures ultimately clarifies the syntactic function of certain events. His
analysis is both convincing and satisfying, but it is unfortunate that he only explores the link between
context and syntax in music at the expense of the link between context and semantics. I suspect that
he fails to explore this connection because he is unwilling to consider the cases when a given musical
passage is placed in a different context, taken for use in a new piece of music in a different genre.
34 Swain (1997), p. 175

29
texture or mode with a different cardinality. Swain also asks, “[w]ho wants to hear

the ‘Eroica’ played by an organ, by a wind band, by anything but a symphony

orchestra?”35 His presumption that such a process is both preposterous and

undesirable is unfortunate, because a lot of people do want to hear translations of

Beethoven Symphonies! Walter Murphy’s version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in

a disco style called “A Fifth of Beethoven” was the Billboard number 1 single in the

United States during 1976.36

Murphy’s disco hit presents some fascinating issues. How are we to

understand the process of transferring a piece from one context to another? Is the

semantic content of the two pieces the same? We recognize “A Fifth of Beethoven”

as a version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, so in a sense, the “message” is

identifiable, but the context is radically different. I explore these basic questions

first with a few short examples, followed by examples of some more extensive

translations.

1.1: A Few Didactic Examples

“A Fifth of Beethoven” is perhaps a prototypical case of translated music.

Murphy keeps the piece recognizable, but changes its associative meaning

maximally. Most (if not all) translations alter a given piece on at least one of three

axes: Brow, Time, or Place, and “A Fifth of Beethoven” involves a clear change of all

three. The brow is lowered, converting a “cultivated,” concert symphony to a vulgar,

common dance. The symphony is likewise modernized, updated to a then-

35 Ibid, p 84
36 Wikipedia, “A Fifth of Beethoven” (Accessed December, 2011)

30
contemporary style, wiping clean the associations of curly wigs and frock coats in

favor of bell-bottoms and afros. And, the piece is transported from the (European)

concert hall to the (American) night club—a more familiar setting for the target

audience. The pragmatic context of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is still present, of

course, but it lies under the surface like the previous text on a palimpsest.

While “A Fifth of Beethoven” exhibits clear changes in all three dimensions,

other cases target a particular axis. An example of place translation appears in an

episode of The Simpsons in which several characters travel to Scotland.37 In the

closing credits, a fragment of the familiar Simpsons theme is translated from Lydian

mode into Mixolydian so that it may be played on bagpipes (see below). Of course,

playing this material on bagpipes demands that it be played in Mixolydian (unless

the fragment is short enough that the mode is ambiguous), but even if it were played

on another instrument in this mode, the association with Scottishness may still be

viable. An instructive example is the sitar solo in B-flat Mixolydian (the only key in

which Bagpipes play) near the end of The Beatles “Strawberry Fields,” which does—

to my ear—evoke bagpipes (and by extension, the northern United Kingdom)

despite the association of the sitar with South Asia.38

37“Monty Can’t Buy Me Love,” Season 10, First Aired May 2nd, 1999.
38When playing with Western instruments, Bagpipes will generally tune to the key of Bb, though they
may also tune to play in the key of A as well. In Paul McCartney’s “Mull of Kintire,” bagpipes are used
in both keys as the song modulates from A-major to Bb-major.

31
EXAMPLE 1-1: The Simpsons Theme

We may also find clear examples of brow translation. Claude Debussy, once

devoted Wagnerian turned anti-Romantic, composed one of the best known

parodies of Tristan und Isolde: “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” from his Piano Suite

Children’s Corner is an unmistakable lampoon. The intense drama associated with

the music of Tristan is trivialized by Debussy’s light, playful accompaniment,

rendering a “serious” opera decidedly less highbrow. Similarly, Peter Schickele

(under the nom de plume P.D.Q Bach) composed a bassoon quartet as a parody of the

Tristan prelude called The Last Tango in Bayreuth. The first phrase of Tristan is

presented “verbatim” with only the addition of a more strictly metered, rhythmically

active bass line to evoke an Argentine tango, demoting Tristan from

Gesamtkunstwerk to Gebrauchsmusik. Of course, Schickele’s translation does not

only target brow—it alters place and time associations as well—but I would argue

that the brow is changed the most; while double reeds are often used for great

expressive effect (think of the famous “Alte Weise” English horn solo in Act III of

Tristan), it is rare that a bassoon quartet is used for anything other than comedy.

32
EXAMPLE 1-2: Tristan und Isolde, mm. 1-4

EXAMPLE 1-3: “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk,” Children’s Corner (excerpt)

EXAMPLE 1-4: Last Tango at Bayreuth (excerpt)

An example of a time translation without significant change to other axes is

harder to find. Many composers of the early 20th-Century with antiquarian leanings

(Respighi, Busoni, Stravinsky and Prokofiev come to mind) created “updated”

33
recompositions of works from the 16th, 17th and 18th-Centuries, but these works

change very little of musical material. In most other cases, if time associations are

changed, usually brow and place associations follow. Two uniquely successful

examples of time translation warrant mention, both paraphrases of Beatles’ songs.

One is the parody band Beatallica, who play (mostly) Beatles’ songs in the style of

Metallica, translating one style of Anglo-American popular music into a more recent

one.39 The King’s Singers do the opposite work with their Renaissance madrigal

version of “Can’t Buy Me Love,” taking The Beatles centuries back in time. Time is

the primary transformation in this case, but there is also change of location

(perhaps we picture a choir in gothic cathedral rather than the “fab four” in

Hamburg, Liverpool, or Shea Stadium), as well as a change of brow; in this case, the

brow is raised rather than lowered. Though to be clear, raising a piece of vernacular

music into a higher brow style for the sake of parody does not make the piece

highbrow. The act of parody seems inescapably middle-brow, at best.

Naturally, the purpose of all of these translations is not to render works of

music “intelligible” to different audiences. Debussy certainly did not set out to

rewrite Tristan for children—though it is hard to imagine most children sitting still

for five hours!—and Schickele’s version is not designed for the “comprehension” of

dancers in Buenos Aires. (Like all of his works, it is intended for those who will

appreciate poking fun at well-known classical music.) The King’s Singers do not help

39Beatallica’s “All You Need is Blood,” a translation of The Beatles’ “All You Need is Love” is a case in
point. Rather than the multi-part harmony The Beatles sing on the words “Love, love, love…,”
Beatallica has a mere pair of voices singing the words “Blood, blood blood…” on relentless parallel
fourths, a hallmark of Metallica’s vocal style during the 1990s. Also, instead of beginning with a
phrase of the Marseillaise played by a brass band, Beatallica start their version with the opening of
“The Star Spangled Banner” on electric guitar, à la Jimmy Hendix.

34
music theorists understand the latent counterpoint in popular music of the sixties,

and Walter Murphy does not help disco dancers “get” Beethoven. As I have

demonstrated, these translations involve a change of meaning by association with a

particular time, place, or genre.

1.2: Young-Jo Lee’s Piano Variations: Speaking French with a Korean Accent—

or—Speaking Korean with a French accent?

More examples of musical translation par excellance can be found in Korean

Composer Young-Jo Lee’s Piano Variations.40 The piece begins with a theme,

followed by variations in the style of familiar composers. These variations are

perhaps unavoidably parodic, whether or not he intended them to be, though Lee

claims that their primary purpose was didactic, used in part “to help [Korean] music

students understand some of the basic chronological stylistic development in

Western music.”41

In the variations, Lee primarily develops the theme’s melody—perhaps its

best feature— while leaving behind most of the material in the other voices. Not all

of the variations are clear translations of the theme; in some cases, imitating the

style of the composer seems to have been a priority over preserving the theme’s

melody, forgoing paraphrase in favor of pure pastiche. In the “Bach” variation, the

40 The complete title of the piece is Piano Variations on the “Baugoge” in the Compositional Styles of
Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Bartok, Webern, Messiaen and Y.J. Lee (himself). The theme’s
melody was composed by Lee’s father, though Lee himself provided the harmonic setting.
41 Gu-Jang, 2006, p. 3

Gu-Jang learned this information from a personal interview with Lee. Reid describes a similar piece
by Lee, Variations 3B as “a light-hearted educational aid,” though one that “also parodies actual
works,” making “fleeting reference” to a wide range of pieces by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. (Reid,
2000, p. 3) Lee also composed yet another work in a similar vein: Variations on a Theme of Schubert.

35
theme is turned into a fugal subject, and soon becomes unrecognizable. The

“Beethoven” variation is likewise a significant expansion of the theme, turning it into

a full sonata. And the “Webern” variation is of appropriate scale, but the sparse,

pointillistic texture forbids recognition of the original melody despite almost

identical pitch material. These are fine examples of stylistic imitation, but poor

examples of translation, as most listeners would not recognize them as versions of

the theme. Nonetheless, the variations in the respective styles of Chopin, Debussy,

and Messiaen are cases in point.

1.2.1: “Chopin”

In the “Chopin” variation, the theme is always recognizable. After a two

measure “oom-pa-pa” introduction, the remaining sixteen measures of the variation

clearly correspond to those of the theme. Both the theme and this variation are in

6/8 meter, and in many measures the melody is identical to that of theme (though

transposed down a whole-step to Eb-major). Adding a pattern of accompaniment in

the style of a Chopin nocturne throughout is sufficient to translate the theme into

the 19th-century salon style, but Lee does not stop here; lest there be any doubt

what “language” this variation is in, Lee borrows from two specific works by Chopin

as well: The canonical Nocturne, Op.9 no. 2 in Eb major, and Sonata No. 2.42 In so

doing, Lee makes this translation all the more convincing by combining stylistic

allusion and quotation, weaving in patches from Chopin’s music into the theme.

42Kwon elaborates, “Lee imitates the triplet accompaniment style of Nocturne Op. 9-2 in the left hand
throughout this variation, using arpeggio embellishment in the right hand ([mm]. 3,6 and 8).” (2000,
pp. 28-9) She continues, “The left hand of [mm.] 15-17 illustrates quotations from the left hand
rhythmic pattern of the third movement of Chopin’s Piano Sonata, No. 2.” (Ibid, p. 30) Hwang notes
the allusion to Op. 9 no. 2 as well. (2005, p. 8)

36
1.2.2: “Debussy”

In both the “Debussy” and “Messiaen” variation, Lee was faced with the

problem of recomposing the theme in different scalar collections while keeping the

melody recognizable. The point is not for the melody to sound exactly the same; a

few intervals are supposed to sound “out of place.” Since we can generally recognize

tonal transpositions of a motif without difficulty, it is certainly possible to recognize

a theme even in modes with different intervallic patterns, especially when the

melodies have (near) identical rhythm and contour, but there is still the question of

how to map the notes of one scale on to another.

To evoke the style of Debussy, Lee changes the meter from 6/8 to 4/4, and

translates the theme’s melody into the whole-tone scale with a rich accompaniment

of augmented triads. (Again, see the appendix for a score of the movement.) The

first three measures are exclusively in the collection WT-0. For the remainder of

the variation, however, Lee largely sidesteps the problem of mapping a diatonic

melody into a mode with a lower cardinality. At times, instead of making alterations

to the melody, he accompanies the diatonic tune with augmented triads, alternating

whole-tone collections as necessary to accommodate the notes of the diatonic

melody. And in other parts of the variation, he seems to not bother preserving the

melody at all, abandoning translation in favor of pure pastiche, as well as, according

to Gu-Jang, some borrowing from the prelude of Debussy’s Danseuses de Delphes.43

43 Gu-Jang (2006), pp. 48-51.

37
1.2.3: Melody in Lee’s “Messiaen” Variation (Mode 3)

The “Messiaen” variation, more so than the “Chopin,” or the “Debussy,” is a

“literal,” note-for-note translation of the theme into a new style; it is the most clearly

isomorphic mapping of the theme’s melody onto that of a variation. (The

accompanying voices from the theme are not “translated” as faithfully—more on

this below.) This variation is twenty measures in length, the first sixteen of which

correspond to the theme in its entirety. The final phrase (mm. 17-20, shown below

in Example 1-11) is an altered da capo, which Kwon notes, may reference the “Noel”

of Messian’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jesus,44 again using both stylistic and piece-

specific allusion to make it clear whose idiolect the variation is in.

Perhaps the most straightforward way to translate a diatonic theme into the

style of Messiaen is to use one of his well-known “modes of limited transposition.”

Lee does exactly this, selecting Mode 3 (set class [01245689T]) for the first sixteen

measures, and Mode 6 (set-class [0124678T]), for the da capo.45 Compare the three

scalar collections in Example 1-5 below.

EXAMPLE 1-5: Comparison of the diatonic collection to Messiaen’s modes

44 Kwon (2000), p. 43
In her words, “The last allargando section hints at the final chordal section of Messiaen’s ‘Noel’ from
Vingt regards sur L’Enfant Jesus.”
45 These modes are the respective second and third most common for Messiaen to use. (See Cheong,

2002)

38
 To translate the melody into a Mode 3 texture (at this transposition, the

aggregate minus the augmented triad C#, F, A) we can see that preserving “step

class” is likely not the most felicitous solution.46 If each of the seven diatonic scale

members mapped onto their corresponding step class in Mode 3, the range of the

melody would contract significantly, threatening the recognizability of the theme.

Rather, it seems as though Lee chose to preserve “name-class” over step class.

When mapping the diatonic scale into Mode 3, he first had as many pitch classes

map onto themselves as possible, accounting for C, D, E, G, and B.47 This

transposition of Mode 3 lacks F and A, so these pitch classes are replaced by F# and

Ab respectively; Lee apparently mapped these remaining pitch classes (F and A)

onto the only available member of their respective name-classes that appeared in

the mode. However, the scale that this produces (C, D, E, F#, G, Ab, B) lacks the

exclusively whole-or-half step character of the diatonic scale, having an augmented

second between Ab and B, and perhaps leaves the sound world of the original theme

too much:

EXAMPLE 1-6: Hypothetical Mode 3 Scalar Subset

46 I borrow the term “step class” from Matthew Santa (1999) to avoid referring to the members of
symmetrical modes as “scale degrees.”
47
For PC E, there is more than one choice of note of the same “name-class” to map onto, though Lee
chooses to map E onto itself exclusively; there are no Eb’s in the Mode 3 melody.

39
 I suspect that Lee was not satisfied with the resultant scale, and changed the

mapping from B-natural onto itself to onto Bb (in three out of four cases) 48 to

produce the WT+1 scale in its entirety.49 This scale is “diatonic enough” (having

seven pitch classes and only whole or half steps) but not too diatonic; the displaced

scale degrees make it sound like a whole-tone-esque, vaguely gallicized version of

the theme.

EXAMPLE 1-7: Lee’s “Theme” (top line, transposed to C major) compared to

the first sixteen measures of the “Messiaen” variation

EXAMPLE 1-8: The resultant WT+1 Scale (with “chromatic” B-natural) when
the diatonic collection is mapped onto Mode 3

48Iview the one B-natural used in the Mode-3 version of the melody as something analogous to a
raised leading tone in minor. That said, in the one case in the “Messiaen” variation where we find B-
natural, it does not immediately precede tonic; it is the focal point of the phrase.
49The WT+1 scale is one of only three heptatonic scales that contains two class-1 intervals and five
class-2 intervals between step classes; The other two are the diatonic and the acoustic (or ascending
melodic-minor) scales. The WT+1 is the least “even,” or well-spaced of these scales, as the two
semitones between step classes are adjacent to one another, though—I argue—it is nonetheless the
most productive heptatonic subset of both Mode 3 (and Mode 6) that can be used as a scale.

40
1.2.4: Melody in Lee’s “Messiaen” Variation (Mode 6)

For the da capo in Mode 6, the mapping of the diatonic melody onto this 8-

note scale is much more straightforward. Since the melody of this four-measure

passage only contains scale degrees ^1-^4, Lee was able to select a transposition of

this mode that shares step classes 0-3 (C, D, E, F, F#, G#, A#, B) with the diatonic

melody. This permits a “corrected” version of his father’s tune, sounding exactly as it

appears in the theme, though transposed and recontextualized into Messian’s

modal-harmonic space. Although we never hear the equivalents of scale degrees 5,

6, and 7 in the melody of the Mode 6 portion, Example 9 below displays step classes

simply mapping onto one another. If this mapping is correct, that means that the

diatonic tune, filtered through both Mode 3 and Mode 6 yields the same 7 note set-

class: The WT+1 scale.50

EXAMPLE 1-9: Pitch classes correspondences between the diatonic theme

melody and the Mode 6 portion of “Messiaen.”

50
The fact that a diatonic melody can be mapped onto two different modes—two with different
cardinalites, no less—and yield the same collection reveals an interesting property about Modes 3
and 6. Simpson-Litke (2010) has shown that these two modes are unique in that both contain the
whole-tone scale as a subset. By definition, therefore, both scales must also contain the WT+1 scale;
any set with a cardinality of eight or higher which contains the complete whole-tone scale as a subset
must also contain the complete WT+1 scale—it is the only set with a cardinality of seven that
contains the complete whole-tone scale. The WT+1 scale is the largest common subset of Modes 3
and 6, and it is also the most scalar heptatonic set contained by both of these modes.

41
1.2.5: Harmony in Lee’s “Messaien” Variation (Mode 3)

Having displayed how the melody is filtered into the language of Messiaen,

there is still the question of how to translate diatonic harmony into these

symmetrical modes. Does one perform the same process on the other voices,

keeping similar voice leading wherever possible? Or should one privilege the

verticalities, seeking corresponding set-classes in the new modes? (Or does it

matter at all what the other voices are doing if we can we recognize the melody?)

EXAMPLE 1-10: Mode 3 portion of “Messiaen” Variation (mm. 1-16)

42
 In both the Mode 3 and Mode 6 portions, Lee generates the harmonies

primarily from the melody (rather than from the harmony or voice leading of the

theme) though he performs this process in different ways in the respective sections.

For the portion of the “Messiaen” variation in Mode 3 (see Example 1-10 above), the

harmonies are relentlessly pentachordal; every note in the melody is accompanied

by (at least) four other pitch classes. Almost all of these pentachords (with a few

exceptions, explained below) belong to the same Mode 3 set-class. They are not the

same set-class in Mod12, but within a Mod9 system, they form an equivalence class,

related by transposition and inversion.51 A Mod9 set-theory, though less well-

explored than its diatonic counterpart is not without precedent; Simpson-Litke has

developed a set-theory exactly for this mode in Messiaen’s music, and Neidhöfer has

developed a Mod8 set-theory specifically designed for Messiaen’s use of the

octatonic scale (or “Mode 2”).52 Below is a chart displaying the ten classes of

pentachords in this nine-note system and how they correspond to Mod12 set-

classes.53

51 This is analogous to a diatonic passage—in C major, for simplicity’s sake—comprising exclusively

seventh-chords. Seventh-chords contain four pitch classes, which is one more than half of the
“aggregate” in a diatonic universe; pentachords have the same property in a nine-note scale. All
seventh-chords in diatonic universe are the same set-class, [0135], but they belong to three different
set classes in a Mod12 context.
52See Simpson-Litke (2010) and Neidhöfer (2005).
53 The list of Mod9 set-classes could be applied to any 9-note scale. However, the correspondences to

Mod12 set classes are specific to Messiaen’s Mode 3. Set classes in this symmetrical mode, regardless
of their cardinality, can correspond to as many as (but no more than) three Mod 12 PC sets.

43
Mod 9 PC Set Corresponding PC Sets In Mod 12
Designation54 012… 013… 014… 02…. Other
5-1 <01234> (01245) (02346)
5-2 <01235> (01246) (01347) (02347)
5-3 <01245> (01256) (01357) (01457)
5-4 <01236> (01248) (01348)
5-5 <01246> (01258) (01358) (02368)
5-6 <01346> (01458) (02468)
5-7 <01256> (01268) (01568)
5-8 <01356> (01468)
(01478)
5-9 <02346> (02458) (03458)
5-10 <01357> (01469) (02479)

TABLE 1.1: MOD-9 Pentachords (in Prime Form)

The vast majority of sonorities in the first portion of Lee’s “Messiaen”

variation are of Mod9 set-class 5-9. This includes every sonority with C, E, F#, G or

Bb in the melody, and some with Ab. While these sonorities are all the same set-

class, they are not voiced the same way. There is Mod9 scalar planing only in pitch-

class space, not in pitch space; parallel motion prevails, but there is certainly oblique

and contrary motion as well. The remaining pentachords (all those with D in the

melody and one with Ab) are of Mod9 set class 5-6 (see above).55 However,

54 Note that these pentachords are not listed in the order from most densely packed to least. They
are listed in the order of how they complement the tetrachords in Mod9.
55 I omit two sonorities from my analysis. See the latter half of m. 10 in the appendix. While there is

a pentachord momentarily—which is, by the way, Mod 9 set-class 5-3—there are a total of seven
pitch classes sounding by the end of the measure. This septachord has one extra-modal pitch (C#)
and it is not a possible to construct this sonority using only the notes of a Mode 3 scale. Therefore,
this verticality cannot be labeled with a set-class designed for Messiaen’s Mode 3. Also see the final
sonority of m. 11. I am uncertain about which accidentals Lee intended to use here. The editing of
cautionary accidentals is sloppy in the latter two systems of the Mode 3 texture, and given this
uncertainty, it seems inappropriate to (definitively) label this sonority with a set-class.

44
changing merely the accidental on one note in all of these class 5-6 chords would

make them class 5-9.56 It is tempting to wonder if Lee misspelled these chords,

meaning to have every sonority part of the same class, or if he kept some of the

sonorities different for some aesthetic reason (perhaps he liked the whole-tone

subset that harmonizes D.). Regardless, the entire passage in Mode 3 comprises

exclusively sonorities related by transposition or “fuzzy” transposition—and even

the “fuzzy” relations are nearly crisp.57 In fact, these two set classes (5-6 and 5-9)

are closely related in terms of Mod9 interval-class content. As far as I am aware,

there is no precedent for an interval-class vector in Mod9, but the principles guiding

its use are familiar; the only difference is that in a nine-note scale, there are four

interval classes rather than six. Set-class 5-6 has an IC vector of 2242, while set-

class 5-9’s vector is 2332. These two vectors differ by the minimum amount

possible without being Mod9 Z-sets.

While I have argued that the harmonies in the Mod9 portion of the “Messiaen”

variation are derived from the melody, and move almost exclusively by (fuzzy)

transposition, I believe that Lee nonetheless made a few attempts to incorporate

features of the theme’s harmonic character into the sonorities of Mode 3 section.

The chromaticism of the theme presents an interesting problem: How does one

map the five potential non-diatonic pitches onto the mere three non-enneadic pitch

classes? As it turns out, there are few pitches outside of the enneadic scale in the

56 Each sonority with D in the soprano contains an E. If one were to change the E to an Eb in this
sonority, it would become class 5-9. Likewise, the sonority with Ab in m. 7 (following a suspended G)
is class 5-6, but changing the B to Bb yields class 5-9.
57 As Mod9 set class 5-9 is inversionally symmetrical, all members of the class are related by

transposition alone (and trivially by inversion).

45
Mode 3 portion of the “Messiaen” variation. Two of them, an A-natural in m. 7 and a

C# in m.10, may correspond to chromaticism in the theme. The prior may refer to

the C# in m. 7 of the theme; both pitches are situated between two and three step

classes below their respective tonic. The latter, which appears in the only

septachord of the variation, is a salute to the (incomplete) V9 chord in m. 10 of

theme. The two sonorities have the highest cardinality in their respective variation,

which strengthens the argument for harmonic analogy.

1.2.6: Harmony in Lee’s “Messiaen” Variation (Mode 6)

The harmony of the latter part of the variation in Mode 6 seems further

divorced from that of theme. It is likewise derived from the melody, though quite

differently than in the Mode 3 portion. Each hand is exclusively trichordal, but the

combination of both hands results in sets of various cardinalities ranging from 3

(both hands identical in PC content) to 6 (each hand sounding three distinct pitch

classes from the other). In each hand (examined separately), the trichords are

consistently of the same Mod8 set-class, [025].

This passage is entirely symmetrical, though not around a single point; there

are six different axes of symmetry at play in this four-measure passage. One

interesting feature of all six of these axes is that while they are all symmetrical

within a Mod8 system, none is symmetrical in Mod12, which is to say that the notes

which map onto one another are not always equidistant (in semitones) from the axis

point. (And therefore, the inversional partners would not produce identical sum

numbers in Mod12.) This symmetry is analogous to how B and D are symmetrical

46
around C in C major, as opposed to how B and Db are symmetrical around C in

chromatic space. Of course, in Mod8, it is possible to have Mod12 symmetries (at

this transposition, if the axis is around D and G#, or B and F), but Lee opts not to use

any of symmetries of this type.58

EXAMPLE 1-11: Axes of Symmetry in mm.17-20 of “Messiaen”

58 This is not to say that he should have used a neater symmetry; it seems clear why he chose to make
the melody and bass symmetrical around E/D: As we can see in Example 1-11, the two lines on the
first staff have identical pitch class content with this axis, using only the notes C, D, E and F, which in
effect doubles the melody in the next-most prominent voice.

47
 As we can see in Example 1-11 above, there is one axis between the primary

melody and bass lines on the first staff, and another on the second staff between the

pairs of “inner voices” that complete the [025] trichords accompanying the melody

and bass. We also find a different pair of axes between the countermelody and

contrabass lines on the third staff, and yet another pair around which the inner

voices of the counter-lines on the fourth staff are situated.59

1.2.7: Speaking Korean with a French accent?

The ironic question asked above (“Speaking Korean with a French Accent…?”)

is not meant to be answered, and doing so would veer dangerously close to

essentialism. There is nothing essentially Korean about Lee’s theme, nor is there

anything essentially French about the modes in the Messiaen variation, though

perhaps these scales connote Frenchness by their association with Parisian art

music of the 20th century. I consider Lee’s variation in the style of Messiaen a

prototypic example of musical translation, though not an obvious analog to linguistic

translation.60 When we compare the variations in the styles of these French

(affiliate) composers to the theme—as I hope to have made clear—it is hardly at all

like comparing the same passage of text in two languages; rather, a better metaphor

is listening to one’s own language spoken with a foreign accent. Imagine a

59 While there are two different axes in pitch space for the voices on staves 3 and 4 in Example 11
above, there is in fact only one axis per staff in pitch class space.
60 It may, however, be akin to linguistic translation if the passage of text is a list of loan words. While

working as a TESOL instructor, I “translated” countless words for my Korean speaking students that
were in fact loans from English. The word “sausage” in Korean is borrowed from English, though
pronouncing it as one would in English, [sɔ.səʤ], was not always intelligible to my students. When I
said [so.sa.ʤi], the same word adapted for Korean phonology, I was understood without difficulty.

48
monolingual native-speaker of Mandarin reading aloud a text in German, a language

to which she has no exposure. Whether or not the passage is intelligible to a

German speaker, the changes to the vowels, consonants, and stress patterns affects

the listening process much in the same way that changing the scale of a melody

does.61

1.3: Slonimsky and the 51 Minitudes

Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) is perhaps best known for his scholarship

(especially his Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns), but he has also composed

a great deal of music. His 51 Minitudes for Piano is a collection of aphoristic

parodies in which we find translations of several well-known works, both from the

classical and vernacular literatures.

1.3.1: Interval Operations in Slonimsky’s Minitudes

The Minitudes open with a cleverly titled piece, “√B5,” about which Slonimsky

says the following: “The square root of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the intervals

of which are cut in half. The Fate Motive of a major third becomes a major second;

octaves become tritones…. After a while you will like the square root better; it is

more salty, and acrid.”62 Despite the radical changes to pitch material from halving

the melodic intervals, this piece is still clearly recognizable as Beethoven’s Fifth.

61Levi-Strauss likewise analogizes the notes of a musical scale to the phonemic inventory of a
language: “[L]ike any phonological system, all modal or tonal (or even polytonal or atonal) systems…
selecting some from among the infinite number no doubt available, and exploiting the contrast and
combinations of which they are capable in order to evolve a code that serves to distinguish different
meanings.” (1969, p. 21)
62 See the preface to the Minitudes, p. IV.

49
This motive is arguably the most iconic in the Classical literature, and preserving

contour and rhythm is more than adequate to identify it as a bizarre, modernist

presentation of the canonical symphony.

EXAMPLE 1-12: Minitudes, “√B5” (excerpt)

EXAMPLE 1-13: Minitudes, “BachX2=Debussy” (complete)

Another piece in this vein is “Bach x2= Debussy,” (Example 1-13 above) in

which Slonimsky performs the opposite transformation as he did with Beethoven’s

50
Fifth. In his words, “the intervals of the Bach c-minor fugue [from The Well-

Tempered Clavier] are multiplied by 2. Result: all minor seconds become major, and

it all begins to sound like something written by Debussy.”63 Julian Hook aptly

describes the result of this transformation as “curiously impressionistic

counterpoint.”64 Doubling the intervals is an effective way of simultaneously

gallicizing, modernizing (and perhaps somehow changing the brow) of Bach, but it

certainly is not the only way. Recall that in the “Debussy” Variation, Lee dabbles

with an impressionist’s palette by different means. Rather than doubling the

intervals, for parts of the variation, he simply maps step classes from the diatonic

scale onto those of the whole-tone (see Example 1-14). Had Lee performed the

same transformation that Slonimsky did, his “Debussy” variation would have

appeared as it does in Example 1-15 below.

EXAMPLE 1-14: Mapping of diatonic step classes onto whole-tone

EXAMPLE 1-15: Hypothetical interval doubling performed on the Theme

63 Ibid
64 Hook (2007), p. 19-20

51
 Perhaps “Bach x2=Debussy” may more obviously be called a translation than

“√B5,” insofar as a piece by Bach is converted into Debussy’s “musical language” (in

whose idiolect is Beethoven’s Fifth symphony recomposed?), but “√B5” nonetheless

fits the bill; it is recognizable, yet the associative meaning and affect are altered

significantly.

1.3.2: Slonimsky’s Serial Translations

In Slonimsky’s Minitudes we also find versions of “Happy Birthday” and “Ach,

du lieber Augustin,” translated into serial music, a practice most readily associated

with its pioneer, Arnold Schoenberg.65 Few would question that Slonimsky’s 12-

tone versions are intended to be humorous, but the choice to recompose these two

pieces in particular suggests that they are homages to Schoenberg, as well as

translations into his style. (As I argue in Chapter 0, homage and parody are not

mutually exclusive.) It is well known that Schoenberg imagined a future of

kindergarteners learning to sing 12-tone rows. We might imagine that Slonimsky,

in crafting serial settings of these children’s tunes, is paying tribute to a musical

giant twenty years his senior by (in a manner of speaking) resolving Schoenberg’s

unfinished business, making a kindergarten songbook for a modernist utopia.66

65 Of course, serial music is hardly a uniform style that can be characterized by shared, audible
features; knowing that a piece is serial tells one little about what it will sound like. Comparing the
lush, romantic, tonal evocations of Berg’s Lyric Suite to the cautious restraint of Webern’s op. 21
betrays contrast enough even between the two most celebrated students of Schoenberg himself, and
serial practice only grew more diverse in the latter half of the 20th century. Nonetheless, I argue that
these serial Minitudes are translations into Schoenberg’s style specifically, as they most closely
resemble the sound world of his Op. 25 for Piano, arguably the sonic prototype for serial music.
66 Of note, Milton Babbitt composed a serial piece called Play on Notes (1966), which is designed for

children to perform. It is an unusually consonant piece for Babbitt, but it is nonetheless composed
with the same serial rigor as any of his works designed for professional performers.

52
Further evidence for homage is the fact that Schoenberg has borrowed “Ach, du

lieber” as well, quoting a portion of it in his second string quartet.

Slonimsky’s row treatment, however, is little like Schoenberg’s. His 12-tone

parody of “Ach, du lieber Augustin” is derived from four different rows (two in the

melody, two in the accompaniment) rather than transpositions and inversions of a

single row.67 This is not the result of a lack of familiarity with “classical” serial

method. Both “Happy Birthday” (discussed below) and “Pandiatonic Melodies”

prove that he understood canonical serial procedures; in the latter, we find a

diatonic melody presented in retrograde, inversion, and retrograde-inversion

respectively. In “Ach, du lieber,” I assume that Slonimsky used different rows in

order to create a close resemblance to the original tune to ensure that it is

recognizable with every sequence of twelve pitch classes.

Slonimsky’s serial “Happy Birthday” is likewise designed to resemble the

tune on which it is based, but this time, not at the expense of the abstract unity of

using only different versions of a single row. The first half of the melody is a

presentation of the single row in prime form, while the second half is same

transposition of the row in retrograde.

67That said, we do find invariant segments between all four of the rows; the pitch classes Bb and Eb
always appear next to one another, and sometimes a pair of rows share a trichord, but the four rows
appear to be otherwise unrelated.

53
EXAMPLE 1-16: Comparison of “Ach, du lieber” and Slonimsky’s Parody68

EXAMPLE 1-17: Comparison of “Happy Birthday” and Slonimsky’s Parody

The combined concerns of fidelity to a single row and resemblance to the

original melody of “Happy Birthday” are not easily reconciled. Consequently, the

first half of the paraphrase resembles “Happy Birthday” more closely. In spite of

this, once we are “convinced” that we are hearing a version of the tune we know, the

sharp differences in intervallic content towards the end seem not to pose a problem.

68On this example, identical pitch between the versions is marked with a *, identical pitch
plus/minus one semitone by a +, identical interval by a -, and identical interval plus/minus one
semitone by ~.

54
1.4: Summary and Conclusions:

Above, I have defined the process of translation as a change to musical

structure significant enough to alter the affect, and therefore connotative meaning

of a piece, but not so severe as to render the translated music unrecognizable. My

definition of musical translation differs from those of previous authors as it is not

assumed to be equivalent to the linguistic process. Comparing musical translation to

analogous processes in language can be productive, but assuming equivalence

between the two domains generally accomplishes little in helping to understand

either language or music. Musical translation is not about, as with a novel or poem,

conveying the essence of a literary work to an audience who does not know the

language in which it was conceived. On the contrary, music is translated primarily

for those who are familiar with the original piece—familiarity is an essential part of

the listening process, without which the humor of the intentional misrepresentation

is lost.

The goals of a musical translation, then, are quite different from those of a

linguistic translation. Music is not a language, and we should not expect music to

have all of the semantic properties that language does. Many cite music’s

untranslatability as one of its primary distinguishing features from language,

without stopping to ask exactly what musical translation might entail. When we give

the metaphor a second chance, we learn why we should keep this avenue open.

55
Chapter 2—On the Musically Forge(t)able: Television Cartoons and the
Paraphrase of Popular Music

2.0: Overview

Patents, trademarks, and intellectual property laws present a number of

challenges to television producers. The names of specific brands and products often

must be avoided on television, forcing writers to develop a number of strategies to

refer to them indirectly. Getting around the names of products and services is

simple enough; if we hear a character mention a social media site called “YouFace”

or “FaceConnect,” there is little doubt that Facebook is the referent.1 Taking it a step

further, on some programs we find altered versions of product logos; on The

Simpsons, characters use “Mapple” computer products (like “MyPods”), which come

complete with a clever graphic that signifies Apple computers: an apple with two

bites taken out (shown below). And when television producers want to use a

familiar musical theme on their program, they face a more abstract problem still:

Creating a musical equivalent of the “Mapple” logo.

Table 2.1: The “Mapple” logo vs. the Apple Computers logo

1The former appeared in several episodes from the fourth season of 30 Rock, the clips of which can
be found here at Gawker.com (Accessed March 2012) The latter appeared on a crime/detective
drama, the source of which I cannot recall.

56
 If the network is unable (or unwilling) to obtain the legal rights to a

copyrighted piece, creative teams must ask a composer to craft a similar work that

evokes the piece they had hoped to use. To distinguish this practice of paraphrase

from those I discuss in other chapters, I call this technique copyphrase. In this

chapter, I explore how composers navigate the delicate process of creating new

pieces that unmistakably call to mind a familiar tune without using the piece or

infringing on copyright law, providing a detailed overview of the practice of

copyphrase on two long-running animated sitcoms: The Simpsons and Family Guy.2

I focus on these two programs in particular because 1) they provide a

remarkable range of examples, 2) the two shows serve as an effective

counterbalance to one another, and 3) the composers in their employ are uniquely

skilled at this brand of paraphrase, truly having made an art of it.3 Sometimes the

paraphrased cues on these shows are so canny that they pass as the tune upon

which they are based; it often takes a second listening to even realize we are in fact

hearing a different piece.

2.0.1: Question of identity: How copyphrase differs from translation

On the surface, musical translation and copyphrase seem to be birds of a

feather. Both involve the adaptation of familiar music, and depend upon listener

2The Simpsons is in fact the longest running scripted show in television history. I do not attempt to
write a complete history of copyphrase, though I return to a bird’s-eye view of the practice at the
very end of the chapter (however briefly), to compare how (and why) some other composers have
resorted to this technique.
3 In an interview with Daniel Goldmark, Clausen noted how “tricky” this process is, calling it “an

interesting skill to develop,” despite finding it “kind of scary sometimes that they ask [him] to do
these things.” (Goldmark (2002) p. 246) Clausen is clear in his preference for composing “totally
original music” over being asked to emulate something by producers suffering from “‘temp-itis [his
term],” but despite his ambivalence for the practice of copyphrase, he is nonetheless a skilled
practicioner. (Ibid, pp. 246-7)

57
recognition of the source material. Yet the goals of the processes are otherwise

antithetical. With translation, as I have argued in Chapter 1, the goal is to change a

piece enough to alter its associative meaning, but not so much so that we can no

longer identify it. In other words, the notes and rhythms need to be similar enough

that one could reasonably argue that the hypotext and hypertext are versions of the

same piece, despite the changes to genre, instrumentation, and timbre. It is these

expressive factors, however, that are least likely to change in the construction of a

copyphrase. The instrumentation is, in most cases, not changed at all, or at least not

significantly enough so as to alter the affect. The stylistic feel of the piece cannot,

and must not be changed. So unlike translation, with a copyphrase, the pragmatic,

generic-conventional meanings are necessarily preserved, while the identity of the

piece must not be.

The issue of how to define a piece of music is first and foremost an aesthetic

question, though its import extends well beyond the ivory tower as the stakes

continue to rise in the legal battles over music as intellectual property. How does

one determine whether or not two pieces are “the same,” and thus two versions (or

even different performances) of a single work, or if two pieces are “different”? This

question has grown more difficult to answer, especially considering, say, works in

the fluxus tradition by the likes of John Cage (et al), but even if we speak only of fully

notated (or notatable) music, preserved either through a score (or an iconic

recording in the case of vernacular musics), the identity of a piece is still not easily

defined.

58
 Scruton discusses the issue of musical ontology and identity at great length,

suggesting that “[t]he most convenient way of identifying [pieces of music] is as

temporally ordered patterns of pitched sound.”4 He asserts that “[i]t is precisely

when a work is arranged so as to disrupt or reorder its rhythmic, melodic, or

harmonic organization that we feel inclined to deny its identity with the original—

as with Webern’s orchestration of the six-part ‘Ricercar.’”5 But is an orchestration a

“new” work? Webern’s adaptation is not quantifiably “the same” as its source in

every respect, but it seems to be going a bit far to argue that this is a different piece.

Rather, I would say that this is a translation—primarily a time translation, and one

that involves very little alteration to notes and rhythms at that. Scruton continues,

“[w]e could adopt a stricter criterion, and add color and timbre to the specification

of the relevant sound pattern,” but he ultimately throws up his arms in concluding

that “[i]t is up to us to determine which features of the sound token are features of

the same pattern.” 6

Regardless of where we draw the line on whether or not two pieces are

identical, surely most of us will agree that color and timbre alone cannot sufficiently

determine the identity of a piece. Yet when listening to a copyphrase, it is precisely

these factors that are used to convince us that we are hearing the piece that is meant

to be evoked. Crucially, though, the notes of the copyphrase are different enough

4 Scruton (1997) p. 441

He adds, “[w]ithin limits, tempos can be varied without destroying the pitch pattern of a work… Pitch
relations are also indifferent to instrumentation, so that—again, within limits—the instrumentation
of a work may vary from performance to performance without changing its identity,” but he concedes
that “there is nothing in the concept of a pitch pattern that determines the timbre that will most
perspicuously realize it.” (Ibid, p. 442)
5 Ibid, p. 110
6 Ibid

59
from those of the source that we can no longer argue that the two pieces are the

same. Or put another way, with translation, a version of the same piece is made to

connote something different; with copyphrase, the goal is denote a certain piece of

music by using an entirely different piece.

Nelson Goodman, who in his 1968 book Languages of Art discusses the

difference in aesthetic value of a Rembrandt painting and a perfect copy, one

indistinguishable from the original with the naked eye, argues that the “slightest

perceptual difference… matter[s] most aesthetically,”7 positing that the original is

nonetheless of higher value than the counterfeit. In contrast, he considers music to

be an “unfakable” art, suggesting that “in music, unlike painting, there is no such

thing as a forgery of a known work.” This is because, he explains, painting is an

autographic art, which is to say that there may only be one “authentic” version of

any given painting. Music, rather, like literature, is an allographic art, which may

involve infinite, equally viable realizations of the same piece—perhaps “allographs”

(my term) of the same “grapheme” (again), or notated score.8 Genette, whose 1993

L’Ouvre de l’art: Immanence et Transcendance is largely a critique of Goodman’s

Languages of Art, says much the same: “[I]n certain arts such as painting, the

production of fakes or forgeries… is really an existing practice… It is likewise the

case that in other arts, such as literature and music, forgery is not practiced, because

7Goodman (1968), p. 108

8Goodman refers specifically to scores in a consciously presentist sense in which all notes and
rhythms are fully specified, explicitly omitting figured-bass practice from his discussion.

60
a correct copy of a text or score is simply a new copy…neither more nor less valid

from a literary or musical point of view, than the original.”9

In the case of copyphrase, however, these pieces are constructed through a

near painterly logic, treating music as though it were an autographic art. To the

uncritical ear, a copyphrase should be a convincing forgery, but to those who own

the copyright to the piece upon which it is based (and their rhetorically skilled legal

teams), it must be clear that it is a close copy, whose lack of authenticity becomes

apparent under scrutiny.

2.1: Introducing the Music of The Simpsons and Family Guy

Music is held in high esteem on both The Simpsons and Family Guy. A typical

sitcom includes a theme song played at its episodes’ beginning and end, along with

brief interludes of music to fill in gaps of dialogue and accompany changes of scene,

but these programs add to the mix a great deal of underscoring, musical gags, and

diegetic numbers. Even more striking than the quantity of music on these programs

is the quality, both of which have seasoned professional composers, an array of

talented voice actors, and a full studio orchestra at their disposal.

The composers for both shows are some of the best-known in the business.

They excel not only at the practice of paraphrasing music, but at composing original

numbers as well, gifted at pastiche, creating simulacra of tunes in a remarkable

range of musical styles. Alf Clausen has been the sole composer for The Simpsons for

9Genette (1993/1997), pp. 15-16.

Of note, Genette translated Goodman’s book into French, and was more or less inspired to re-write
the whole project decades later. One of Genette’s primary arguments is that the autographic-
allographic binary is not as clear as Goodman makes it out to be.

61
over 20 years.10 He has won two Emmy awards for his original music on the show,

and has been nominated an astonishing 21 times besides.11 Adams calls Clausen The

Simpsons’ “secret weapon,” noting that the composer “has proved beyond a doubt

that television scoring is not the vast wasteland it is often purported to be and that

an intelligent composer can take even the most demanding shows and elevate them

to new heights.”12 Clausen’s success is enabled in part by an accomplished 35-piece

orchestra of Los Angeles studio musicians, and when vocals are needed, a group of

versatile voice actors who can make their characters sing as gracefully as they talk.13

As for Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the show—who suddenly,

at the time of writing, has become a household name after having hosted the

Academy Awards on February 24th, 2013—writes many of the lyrics and records the

voices for the three characters who do most of the singing: Peter (the referent ‘guy’

of the family), Stewie (Peter’s talking, singing toddler with a mild British accent),

and Brian (the anthropomorphic family dog with a perfect command of the English

language).14 New York Times critic David Itzkoff showered praise on the music for

Family Guy in a 2007 article, describing “orchestrations to make Nelson Riddle

jealous and lyrics to make Dorthy Parker blush,” explaining that there are “just two

men who deserve [our] praise” for the corpus of music on Family Guy: Composers

Walter Murphy and Ron Jones. Murphy and MacFarlane were awarded an Emmy for

10 He was not, however, involved with the show from the very beginning. The theme song for the
show was composed by Danny Elfman. Before Clausen joined The Simpsons’ team in 1990, he was
most known for his work on the television show Alf. (IMDB, “Alf Clausen,” accessed February 2013)
11Emmys.com (Accessed February 2013)
12 Adams (1997), Film Score Monthly (Accessed March 2013)
13 Ibid
14 IMDB, “Family Guy” (Accessed February 2013) He also voices Peter’s next-door neighbor, Glen

Quagmire, and a number of other recurring characters

62
Outstanding Music and Lyrics in 2002 for their original song, “You’ve Got a Lot to

See.” Murphy has been nominated thrice besides,15 and Jones has had four Emmy

nominations for his work on the show as well.16 Itzkoff continues, “[a]t a time when

most television series employ a single composer each, armed with little more than a

computer sequencing program and a synthesizer, Family Guy has two

composers…whose works are played by a live 40-piece orchestra, in scenes that

may call for quick melodic cues or full-scale parodies of scenes from stage and

movie musicals gone by.”17

The mere mention of a 40-piece orchestra in connection with a low-brow

television cartoon is remarkable enough, but this was Family Guy’s practice as of

2007. In the recent (2012) 200th episode (a navel-gazing retrospective of the show’s

history to date), MacFarlane explains how in every episode, they use a 50-to-90(!)

piece orchestra.18 Recording time with a full symphony orchestra, as we all know,

requires an outstanding music budget, and the producers of Family Guy spare no

expense, always both willing and able to foot such a bill. As a matter of course, the

orchestras for both The Simpsons and Family Guy record non-diegetic cues at

tremendous cost, even if they already have one that is virtually identical that could

simply be reused—a testament to the importance of music on these shows.19

15 Emmys.com (Accessed February 2013)

16 Jones has also been awarded two Emmys for his work on ER. (Ibid)
17 Itzkoff (2007)
18 This episode was called “200 Episodes Later,” and aired on 11/11/12.
19 Clausen discusses his reluctance to reuse cues in his interview with Adams. In his words, “Pretty

much everything is started from scratch… Once in a while there'll be a transition cue that seems like
it's repeated. Most of the time it's not repeated verbatim. It's restructured for new timings, maybe a
new twist of something. Once in a while we'll use it exactly as is… I say we can pull one from the first
season and use it in the seventh season and all of a sudden they appear on back-to-back nights in
syndication. [laughs] So, we try not to do that too much.” (Adams, 1997) I learned from a personal

63
2.2: <SUNG> “The Simpsons:” (Proto)typical Examples of Copyphrase

2.2.1: “See My Vest”

One of the most well-known examples of copyphrase from The Simpsons is

found in the episode “Two Dozen and One Greyhounds” (1995) from the show’s

sixth season. In this episode, we hear local curmudgeon Montgomery Burns sing a

song called “See My Vest,” explaining his plans to make a suit from the hides of a

litter of greyhound puppies. This tune is clearly derived from Alan Menken’s “Be

Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast (1991). Goldmark, in an interview with Alf

Clausen, mentioned this song in particular, noting that “it comes so close to [its

source that] you really need to be paying attention to hear the differences.”20

The example below displays the respective first verses of “Be Our Guest” and

“See My Vest.” Generally, copyphrases are summaries of the songs they signify,

reducing their length significantly, and “See My Vest” is no exception. Even a three

minute song on a twenty-two minute episode is quite a significant percentage of the

available broadcast time, so on The Simpsons, songs are rarely much more than a

minute long, and never are they more than two minutes. “See My Vest” lasts about a

minute and twenty seconds (much longer than the average musical cue on the

program), and it’s presumably only as long as it is because it appears in lieu of

dialogue to advance the narrative.

interview with a studio musician who has played in the Family Guy orchestra that they follow a
similar policy of not reusing cues.
20 Goldmark (2002), p. 246

64
EXAMPLE 2-1: “Be Our Guest” and “See My Vest”

“Be Our Guest” and “See My Vest” have identical verse structure, with the

same number of lines and practically the same number of syllables. The two songs

also share a common rhyme, having several lines ending in the “guest-test-rest-best-

vest-chest” scheme, though “See My Vest” has a bit more internal rhyme, perhaps

the writers thumbing their noses at the hokey rhyme scheme in a song for a

children’s movie. The key of “See My Vest” is different, and the contour of the lines

are as well, but the near identical rhythms, comparable range, and (reasonably)

65
accurate imitation of style are more than enough to convince the casual listener that

they are in fact hearing “Be Our Guest.”

2.2.2: “Under the Sea!”

A similar Disney parody is found in the episode “Homer Badman” (1994)

from the same season. Here, Clausen provides a parody of “Under the Sea” (also by

Alan Menken) from The Little Mermaid (1989). The song appears, as Friedwald

explains, in “a fantasy sequence in which Homer is shown frolicking with, and

speedily consuming, dancing shellfish.”21

EXAMPLE 2-2: “Under the Sea” and Clausen’s Parody

The example above presents the complete vocal line of the song, compared to

a single line of the chorus of Menken’s song from The Little Mermaid. As usual,

Clausen’s version is short (well under a minute long); a mere ten measures of

singing serves as a signifier for the sixteen measure chorus, and is more than

adequate to evoke its hypotext. Note that the rhythms of the two melodies are

almost identical, and though the key is the same, the contour of many melodic

fragments is inverted. Most critically, the instrumentation and timbre instantly

recall the sunny, calypso-flavor of the song from The Little Mermaid, despite some

differences in vocal style between Homer Simpson and the Caribbean-sounding crab.

21 Friedwald (2002), p. 258

66
2.2.3: “Dr. Zaius (Dr. Zaius)”

Another clear example of copyphrase appears in an episode from the

following season, “A Fish Named Selma” (1996). The recurring character Troy

McClure, voiced by the late Phil Hartman, is shown in a musical called Stop the

Planet of The Apes: I Want To Get Off, with an opening number called “Dr. Zaius.”

Goldmark asked Clausen in his interview if there “was a particular composer [he

was] trying to emulate” with the music for this scene, Clausen claimed that there

was no such model.22 Yet this is quite clearly not the case—either Clausen has told a

lie, or simply did not remember this cue. Friedwald notes (half correctly) that this

song “is set to the 1986 disco-y hit ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ by somebody or something

named Falco”—his words.23 Of course, it’s not quite “set to” the same tune, but it’s a

careful copy, an obvious signifier for “Rock Me Amadeus.”

EXAMPLE 2-3: “Rock Me Amadeus” and “Dr. Zaius”

The two vocal lines have similar melodies with a minor pentatonic flair, and

the last five notes of each are the same, ending with the words “Oh Amadeus/Dr.

22 Goldmark (2002), p. 247

Clausen’s response to the question was, “No, that was simply Troy McClure at his best.” (Ibid)
23 Friedwald (2002), p. 255

Friedwald also notes that the title of this musical, Stop the Planet of the Apes: I Want to Get Off, is a
reference to “the hit British show Stop the World: I Want to Get Off, which opened on Broadway in
1962.” (Ibid)

67
Zauis.”24 The synth lines as well have much in common; both noodle around in

natural minor, each figure reaching its peak early in the measure and subsequently

falling. The balance of each song is quite different, though each features some

spoke-sung lines of verse between the statements of the refrain. In “Rock Me

Amadeus,” the lines are almost rapped, while in “Dr. Zaius” there is a spoken call and

response between Troy McClure and the apes. The result: Clausen succeeds in

making an already campy song even sillier.

2.2.4: The Good, the Bad, and the Wagon

An episode called “All Singing All Dancing” (1998) from The Simpsons’ ninth

season served as a vehicle to rebroadcast several of the most popular music

numbers from the show’s then almost decade-long tenure on prime time, including

“See My Vest.” The episode begins, however, as Friedwald explains, “with Homer

about to enjoy what he presumes is a shoot ‘em up Western starring Clint Eastwood

and Lee Marvin. What he gets instead is Paint Your Wagon, Joshua Logan’s strangely

lifeless 1969 film… which features [the aforementioned actors] singing.”25 To

further ridicule this movie, “Clausen contrives a new song with this title that

positively revels in its own mediocrity”—perhaps one of Clausen’s best originals.26

Though before the wild men of the west burst into diegetic song, we hear music

based upon the well-known theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

24 Note that “Rock Me Amadeus” begins in A minor, but modules to B minor about midway through
the song. The refrain shown in my example is identical to the earlier refrains in everything other
than the key. I present the B minor version for ease of comparison with Clausen’s version in Bb
minor.
25 Friedwald (2002), p. 261
26 Ibid

68
Morricone’s iconic theme is notated below, alongside three motives by Clausen

designed to remind us of it.

EXAMPLE 2-4: Morricone’s Theme and Clausen’s Signifier

Clausen’s figures evoke Morricone’s, as usual, by keeping the rhythm similar,

and even through some inversion, but in a more abstract sense. A majority of the

intervals within each gesture of Morricone’s theme are perfect fourths. Clausen,

however, uses a number of perfect fifths, the pitch-class inversion of Morricone’s

relentless fourths.27

2.3 <SUNG> “Lucky there’s a Family Guy”

2.3.1: Copyphrase in “Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater (1999)”

Family Guy’s second season (1999-2000) has perhaps more examples of

copyphrase per episode than any other season on either program. The first episode

from this season alone contains three examples, two of which I’ll discuss at length.

In the first of which, Itzkoff explains, “Jones composed an elaborate parody of ‘I

Think I’m Gonna Like It Here’ from the musical ‘Annie’ for a scene in which the

protagonist Peter Griffin learns that he’s inherited a mansion from a dead relative.

The song [called “This House is Freakin’ Sweet”] was nominated for an Emmy in

27As for the balance of the intervals, both composers use several major seconds, and each uses a
single minor second. I wonder to what extent Clausen considered the distribution of interval classes
in creating a signifier for Morricone’s theme.

69
2000.”28 Both this song and its model from Annie are sung by a servant chorus, one

set in the 1930s without (much) irony, the other in 1999 Rhode Island, highlighting

the improbability of a house full of servants, one for each task. Jones’ parody of the

well-known tune comprises two cues, together making the song over two minutes

long—a greater duration than the typical musical number on The Simpsons. “I Think

I’m Gonna Like It Here” and “This House is Freakin’ Sweet” have similar structures

with verses of identical length (and comparable rhyme scheme), alternating sung

lines and spoken dialogue between the servants and new houseguest(s). Jones, in

effect, created a line-by-line recomposition of a classic show-tune. A single verse of

each (excluding spoken portions) is shown below.

As we can see, the rhythms of the vocal lines are more or less identical.

While neither the key nor the contours of the lines are the same, the utterances

generally begin and end on the same respective scale degrees; all of the lines of the

verse, in both songs, begin on ^3, and three out of four lines in the two songs end on

the same scale degree, ^5 or ^1 respectively.

28 Itzkoff (2007)

70
EXAMPLE 2-5: “I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here” and “This House is Freakin’
Sweet”

Shortly after this number, Peter mentions diamonds, which leads to a cut-

away gag (one of Family Guy’s most tried and true comic devices) poking fun at the

shadowy 1990s De Beers Diamond commercials, deploying a copyphrase of the

music used in said advertisements, Karl Jenkin’s Palladio.29 And later in the episode,

Brian tries to talk Peter out of pretending to carry on as though he is one of the

29One of these commercials can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vXHm8TzLzE

(Accessed February 2013)
A graphic example of the two pieces side-by-side here would be unsatisfying. Many of the
instrumental copyphrases (sans vocals) either in cut-away gags or non-diegetic music do not make
for convincing side-by-side score comparison.

71
Newport “blue-bloods,” using an allegory from The Empire Strikes Back to make his

point. As Brian pleads his case, we hear copyphrases of two famous themes from

the Star Wars saga in immediate succession: The “Force Theme” and the “Imperial

March.”

EXAMPLE 2-6: “Force” Theme, “Imperial March,” and signifiers for them

The signified “Force” theme is stated in the french horn (as the most iconic

statements in Star Wars are), and reproduces the affect of Williams’ theme

masterfully. Jones’ paraphrased “Force” theme seamlessly transitions into a

fragment representing the “Imperial March,” specifically signifying the version that

we hear as Vader informs Luke Skywalker of their familial relationship. We hear

this as Brian says to Peter, “I created you [having taught you how to behave like a

millionaire]. In a way, I am your father.” (And Peter reacts to this claim with horror,

as Luke Skywalker did, tucking his hand in his shirt to pretend it had been cut off.)

Jones’ take on the “Imperial March,” though it evokes the motive from Star Wars

with perfectly clarity, is even more dissonant that Williams,’ offering a menacing

twist on the familiar theme by outlining an [014] cell rather than a major triad.

72
2.3.2: “U Can’t Touch Me”

In the episode “E. Peterbus Unum” (2000), Peter manages to make a new

country, ‘Petoria,’ comprising only his house and lot. The independent nation of

‘Petroria’ is not subject to the United States’ code of laws, so when a police officer

tries to arrest Peter, he replies, “Ah ah ah, can’t touch me,” and raps an obvious

paraphrase of MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This,” the text of which is shown

below:30

Just like the bad guy from Lethal Weapon 2

I've got diplomatic immunity, so Hammer you can't sue!
I can write graffiti, even jaywalk in the street
I can riot, loot, not give a hoot and touch your sister's teat (Can't touch me)
Stop! Peter-time!
I'm a big shot, there's no doubt, Light a fire and pee it out
Don't like it, kiss my rump, Just for a minute let's all do the Bump
(Can't touch me)
Yeah, do the Peter Griffin bump! (Can't touch me)
I'm Presidential Peter, interns think I'm hot
Don't care if you're handicapped, I'll still park in your spot
I've been around the world, from Hartford to Back Bay
It's Peter, go Peter, I’m sir Peter, Yo Peter, let's see Regis rap this way!

EXAMPLE 2-7: “U Can’t Touch This” and “Can’t Touch Me”

The instrumental ostinato (notated above) accompanying the vocal, though

not identical to MC Hammer’s in pitch content, has exactly the same rhythm. Like

30 Of note, two parodies of this song also appear on The Simpsons, though neither is a copyphrase. In
the episode “Bart Gets Famous” (1994) from the show’s fifth season, the instrumental track from
Hammer’s song is used unaltered, with Bart saying “I Didn’t Do It” instead of “Can’t Touch This.” The
following season, in the episode “A Star is Burns” (1995) a group of “Rapping Rabbis” present two
lines of a re-recorded (but generally unaltered) version of Hammer’s song, reminding their
community that pork is one of the things they “can’t touch.”

73
many of the copyphrases on The Simpsons, the contour of several melodic fragments

is inverted.31 Seth McFarlane delivers the lyrics of “Can’t Touch Me” with the same

rhythms and speech cadences that MC Hammer does in “U Can’t Touch This.” Both

sets of lyrics reference dance, specifically the superior dancing ability of the speaker,

though the irony in McFarlane’s is hardly hidden. Certain lines are altered as well to

ridicule Peter; Hammer brags, “I’ve toured around the world, from London to the

Bay.” Peter instead says “Hartford to Back-Bay,” highlighting his narrow view of the

‘world,’ which stretches from Connecticut to Massachusetts, the two states that

border his native Rhode Island. Other lines are lifted directly from MC Hammer’s

text, replacing the word “Hammer” with “Peter,” including “Stop! Peter Time” and

“I’m Peter, go Peter, I’m sir Peter, Yo Peter.”

A final line that cannot go unmentioned is McFarlane’s direct admission of

the act of borrowing material (and simultaneous citation of his source) in saying,

“Hammer, you can’t sue!” Of course, MC Hammer has not taken legal action, as this

parody presumably caused him neither financial nor emotional harm; if anything, it

even helped him—Family Guy viewers were reminded of Hammer’s hit song, by then

ossified by a decade of post-hit obscurity. And further, there is some doubt as to

whether or not he would be able to press charges, as Hammer himself was sued over

“U Can’t Touch This,” after all, having sampled the beat from Rick James’

“Superfreak.32”

31 Note that in “U Can’t Touch This,” the majority of the song uses only the first two measures of the
bass pattern with occasional statements of the latter two measures. Rather, “Can’t Touch Me” cycles
through the entire four-measure unit throughout the song.
32 The settlement for which was Rick James being listed as a co-writer. See Wikipedia, “U Can’t Touch

This,” (Accessed March 2013)

74
2.3.3: “It’s A Tiny Tiny World”

In the episode “The Courtship of Stewie’s Father” from the fourth season of

Family Guy, in which we find one of the later, and relatively rare cases of copyphrase

in a diegetic song on the show from 2005 or later, Peter takes his one-year-old son,

Stewie to Disneyworld. While Peter is looking at some merchandise in a souvenier

shop, Stewie wanders off, and is caught by security guards who force him to

participate in a ride and sing “It’s a Tiny Tiny World,” lampooning “It’s a Small

World After All.” Stewie and a number of captured children sing a verse of the song,

which is notated alongside its model below.

EXAMPLE 2-8: “It’s A Small World After All” and “It’s A Tiny Tiny World”

The melodies displayed above are sufficiently distinct from one another that

they cannot be considered the same song, though there is no doubt that the tune on

Family Guy evokes the song from the Disneyworld ride. Both involve three

utterances of the same line of text in a row, with the same respective contour; in the

original, each statement of the motto is sequenced a diatonic step higher, while in

the copyphrase, the falling triadic outline moves one step lower each time. Yet

despite these differences, the two melodies could be performed simultaneously (in

the same key) without many harmonic infelicities, in part enabled by the identical

phrase length and rhythm. Although I have argued in Chapter 0 that parody and

homage are not mutually exclusive, and that often parody is a type of homage,
75
regardless of the author’s intentions, if ever there was a case of musical parody

crafted with malice, this is it. The episode is full of jabs at Disney; the dozens of

small children (referred to by Disneyworld security as “multi-cultural slave

children”) held against their will to sing in a ride is only the beginning.33

2.3.4: Pushing the Envelope—Family Guy’s Lawsuits Over Paraphrased Music

For a show that has been cancelled (though later restored) twice due to

provocative material, Family Guy seems to carry a large target on its back.34 As

irreverent as many gags on the show are, it seemed only a matter of time before the

producers of the show would face a lawsuit. Though Disney has not sued over their

depiction in “The Courtship of Stewie’s Father” episode, in 2007, they took legal

action against Family Guy for a song called “I Need A Jew” (in the episode “When You

Wish Upon a Weinstein” from the show’s third season) which is a paraphrase of

33When Peter and Stewie first arrive at the park, a “Disney Stock Slide” is shown in the background,
with children riding the sharp descent on a line graph representing the stock values of the Disney
corporation. Peter later encounters the crows from Dumbo, taking a swipe at the appalling racism of
the “black birds” whose incoherent utterances are an insensitive (to say the least!) take on African
American Vernacular English. And lastly, Peter and Stewie encounter Michael Eisner, acting as the
priest from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, who rips out the hearts of sacrificial victims. This
is part of a sequence of scenes derived from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. As Peter and
Stewie flee the angry guards, they hide in a gift shop, emerge with new outfits, dressed as Indiana
Jones and Short Round, and take part in a mine-shaft chase scene. The music here signifies that of the
action sequence theme from Williams’ score for the film. And, there is yet another copyphrase in the
episode, as part of a cutaway gag mocking the late Michael Jackson, in which he is shown dancing to
signified “Thriller.” In a later episode from season seven, “Tales of a Third Grade Nothing” (2008),
there is another Michael Jackson cutaway featuring a signified “Billie Jean.” Both of these cutaways
can be found on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVQf2Qiks9Q (Accessed Febrauary
2013)
34The show was first broadcast in 1999, and is currently airing its eleventh season. Season 2 was
completed in August 2000, but Season 3 resumed almost a year later, in July 2001, after a brief
cancellation. The show was cancelled again for a longer period of time before Season 3 was complete.
(IMDB, “Family Guy,” accessed May 2012). In May 2005, Family Guy returned to Fox with a new
fourth season, becoming the first show to be “resurrected based on DVD sales,” each of the first two
volumes having sold 1.6 million and 1 million copies respectively. See Levin (2004), USA TODAY.com
(Accessed March 2013)

76
“When You Wish Upon a Star” from Pinocchio. 20th-Century Fox initially withheld

this episode from television, fearing that some of the content might be perceived as

anti-Semitic.35 The text of the song from the episode, “I Need a Jew,” shown in

Example 2-9 below, betrays Peter’s ignorance about Jews, revealing that his

knowledge is limited to stereotypes.

Like much of the satire on Family Guy, this song ruffled a few feathers. The

penultimate line of the song, “I don’t think they killed our lord,” was not the original

text, by the way; it was changed from the especially cringe-worthy “even though

they killed our lord” when Fox first aired the episode in 2004.36 McFarlane has

made clear that no offense was intended towards Jews with the song, or the episode

more generally (for which one of the writers was Jewish), where Peter’s family

spout more stereotypes, proving that they know little more about Judaism or Jews

than Peter does.37

35 The episode was ready to air in 2000 (during the third season of Family Guy), but it did not appear
on television until 2003 on the Cartoon Network. The following year, Fox at last agreed to air the
episode. (Wikipedia, “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein,” Accessed March 2013)
36 Ibid
37 “On the DVD commentary for the episode, Seth MacFarlane mentions that he showed the script of

the episode to two rabbis, both of whom approved of it “because Peter learns the right lesson at the
end.” MacFarlane also points out that the writer, Ricky Blitt, “is Jewish himself, as is Ben Stein, who
plays the Rabbi.” In the opinion of this Jewish author, if a viewer finds most of the content in the
episode offensive (perhaps the line about the Jews killing Jesus aside), they have missed the point.
The writers don’t ridicule Judaism; they portray, quite cannily, some of the ridiculous notions that
some (especially) less-educated Americans have about Jews, often with little exaggeration, ultimately
making it clear that knowledge only of stereotype sells one short.

77
EXAMPLE 2-9: “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “I Need A Jew”38

Whether or not one finds the song offensive, the fact remains that the music

for “I Need a Jew” is, in the words of the copyright owners’ legal team, “a thinly

veiled copy” of “When You Wish Upon a Star.”39 Music publishers Bourne Co. sued

20th-Century Fox in October, 2007, “irate about… an unseemly spoof of the familiar

38The text of one verse is missing from the example above: “Lois makes me take the rap,
‘Cause our checkbook looks like crap, Since I can't give her a slap, I need a Jew...”
39 Associated Press (2007)

78
tune, saying the dreamy classic was twisted into an anti-Semitic ballad and widely

distributed” to millions of viewers.40 It should come as little surprise that Fox won

the suit (which was finally resolved in 2009), as the tunes of the two songs are not

the same, despite a number of short, identical segments. Even though there is no

doubt what song “I Need a Jew” is designed to evoke, as a parody, it is protected by

fair use.41

Carol Burnett has also sued 20th-Century Fox for Family Guy’s depiction of

her character “Charwoman” as a janitor in a porn shop and for their use of “an

‘altered version’ of Burnett’s theme music”.42 The official complaint that Burnett

issued reads,

Before the episode [“Peterotica”] aired, Fox requested Ms. Burnett’s permission to use
“Carol’s Theme” in the episode. On July 27th, 2005, Ms. Burnett’s manager informed Fox that
Ms. Burnett licenses her theme music only in connection with The Carol Burnett Show and
personal appearances of Ms. Burnett. After permission to use Ms. Burnett’s theme music
was denied, Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Fox caused the “Peterotica” episode to
be rewritten to disparage Ms. Burnett using Ms. Burnett’s signature ear tug. As aired on
April 23, 2006, the opening scene of the “Peterotica” episode of “Family Guy” shows Peter
entering a porn shop with several other characters, including a character named Quagmire.
As they enter the porn shop, Peter comments that he expected the porn shop to be dirty.
Quagmire responds that the porn shop is clean because “Carol Burnett works part time as a
janitor.” The camera then shifts to show Ms. Burnett’s “Charwoman” character… while a
slightly altered version of Carol’s theme is playing. One of the other characters then says,
“You know when she tugged her ear at the end of the show, she was really saying goodnight

40Ibid.
41Itzkoff (2009)
In his words, “[a]fter wishing upon a star, and then consulting upon a lawyer or two, the producers of
the animated comedy Family Guy were vindicated Monday when a New York judge dismissed a
lawsuit against them which said they had infringed upon a classic song from the Disney movie… In
dismissing the suit, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts wrote that the original song’s wholesomeness
makes it fair game for “ridicule by parodists seeking to take the wind out of such lofty, magical, or
pure associations,” according to The A.P.”
42Associated Press (2007)

79
 to her mom.” Quagmire then makes a vulgar reference to Ms. Burnett and her father,
responding: “I wonder what she tugged to say goodnight to her dad.” 43

The theme from The Carol Burnett Show is transcribed below next to Ron

Jones’ signifier for it. The timbral resemblance between the two cues is clear, both

characterized by the same trumpet-led big-band/jazz orchestra, but the melodies

really are quite different. Accordingly, US District Judge Dean Pregerson ruled in

favor of the 20th-Century Fox. He expressed some sympathy for Burnett, agreeing

that her depiction on the show was in poor taste, but he ruled that “the parody on

the controversial episode was protected by the freedom of speech rights guaranteed

under the First Amendment.” 44

EXAMPLE 2-10: Carol Burnett’s Television Theme and Signifier Used on

Family Guy

2.4: Interim Evaluation of Copyphrase on The Simpsons and Family Guy

The examples of copyphrase from The Simpsons discussed above come from a

wide range of musical genres, as do those on Family Guy, yet the range of genres

treated on both shows is almost exactly the same. Both “See My Vest” and “This

43Burnett’s Legal Statement, on The Smoking Gun (Accessed March 2013)

44 Grossberg (2008)

80
House is Freakin’ Sweet” poke fun at musical numbers sung by a servant chorus to

welcome a young female guest into their home. “See My Vest,” “Under the Sea,” “I

Need a Jew,” and “Tiny Tiny World” all use well-known Disney songs as their source.

Both “Dr. Zaius” and “Can’t Touch Me” play with cheesy 1980s pop. And lastly,

“Paint Your Wagon” and the non-diegetic use of Williams’ themes from Star Wars

paraphrase some of the most well-known musical motives in film history. During

the long 1990s, the creative teams of both shows clearly enjoyed parodying many of

the same types of music, most of which belongs to what Susan Sontag calls “the

canon of camp.”45 And the composers have practiced copyphrase using comparable

techniques: preserving rhythm, instrumentation, and affect, while altering the lion’s

share of the pitches, often by inverting the direction of melodic intervals. Though

despite the many similarities between the use of music on both shows, their

respective practices would grow apart in the years to come.

2.5: More Recent Simpsons Copyphrase

2.5.1: “Ho Hi!”

On The Simpsons, the practice of copyphrase has remained a common musical

device. In the episode “Four Great Women and Manicure” from 2009, there is yet

another diegetic number using a Disney song as its source. When Lisa tells her

version of the Snow White story (with herself as the protagonist), a recurring

character referred to as the “blue-haired lawyer” warns her that “the story [she is]

about to tell is the copyrighted property of the Disney corportation.” She counters,

45Sontag (2001), p. 54
Sontag explains that “the relation of Camp taste to the past is purely sentimental,” asserting that
“things are campy not when they become old—but when we become less involved with them.” (Ibid)

81
claiming that the dwarves are her “own original creations,” renaming them to fit the

personas of popular Simpsons characters. (Moe is “Grumpy, ”Barney is “Drunky,”

Homer is “Hungry”… you get the picture). Just as Disney’s seven dwarves are

signified by ones with different names, so too is their song, “Heigh Ho.” With a

clever inversion of the title words (and many fragments of the melody), Clausen has

a men’s chorus sing “Ho Hi” to a tune that recalls the Disney classic quite crisply.

EXAMPLE 2-11: “Heigh Ho” and “Ho Hi”

Clausen’s manner of paraphrasing a familiar tune is done in much the same

way as it was in the show’s early seasons. Maintaining (more or less) identical

rhythm (and in this case, key), just enough notes are changed to prevent Disney’s

legal team from swooping in. But two key features of the text are quite different

from their earlier practice, both of which suggest that by this point, The Simpsons’

writers had begun to take some cues from Family Guy. There the three more verses

of “Ho Hi,” the first of which (listed below) appears soon after the one notated above,

and the final two sound during the closing credits of the episode:

Ho hi (2x), it’s time to now get high. We get some ‘shrooms, take them to our rooms...
Goodbye (2x), it’s time to say goodbye. If Disney sues we’ll claim fair use. Ho hi (3x).
Ho hi (2x), there’s nothing we won’t try. We’ll get take out and then make out. We’re bi (3x).

The “admission” of the act of borrowing with the line “this song’s not like any

song you know” is nothing new, but the cynical revelation of their legal strategy in

singing “if Disney sues we’ll claim fair use” is a type of humor rarely found in the

82
early seasons of The Simpsons (recalling the “Hammer, you can’t sue” line on Family

Guy almost a decade earlier). Also, the tone of the satire is somewhat sharper. This

is perhaps a sign of the times, but the fact that this parody is aimed at Disney

likewise suggests the influence of Family Guy.

2.5.2: The Simpsons and “That 90’s Show”

Occasionally, there is a Simpsons’ episode with as many as five short musical

numbers of paraphrased songs. In 1997, there was an episode where many of the

most memorable songs from Mary Poppins are recomposed and sung by a nanny

named “Shary Bobbins.46” And as recently as 2008, there was episode (“That 90’s

Show”) re-telling the love story of Homer and Marge in the early 1990s, in which

Homer and his band “Sadgasm” invent the genre of grunge. 47 Homer begins the

episode as a member of an R&B quartet with familiar Simpsons characters,

borrowing the music (and hairstyles) of Boyz 2 Men. When Marge leaves him for a

college professor, he transforms his musical group into the first ‘grunge’ band as an

outlet for his emotional trauma. Sadgasm play their first show on the campus of

Springfield University, on a picture-perfect quad lined with trees that seem to have

perpetual fall foliage. The first song that they perform, called “Politically Incorrect”

is not a copyphrase of any single grunge tune—rather it seems to be a mix of a few

Nirvana songs, containing hints of “Lithium,” “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Frances

46The episode is called “Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(D'oh!)cious.”

47The narrative of this episode contradicts the earlier tales of Homer and Marge’s courtship.
Continuity of the plot, character histories, and Springfield’s geography are frequently ignored and
revised to suit the needs of individual episodes. The Simpsons characters, or at least the children, are
perpetually the same age. Any references to birth year are updated to reflect the current date.

83
Farmer Gets Her Revenge on Seattle.”48 It’s hard to say which of the three it most

clearly resembles, but it is nonetheless an accurate imitation of their style.

If any doubt remained that this song is meant to signify the music of Nirvana,

the name of the band’s late frontman is mentioned in connection with it. The scene

ends with a man on a payphone saying, “Kurt, Kurt, its Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin

Cobain. You know that new sound you’re looking for? Well listen to this!” This of

course is a nod to Back to the Future, where Michael J. Fox’s character, Marty, sings

“Johnny B Goode” at the “Enchantment under the Sea” dance, during which a man

named Marvin Berry calls his cousin Chuck.49

Sadgasm’s next song is performed at a venue in a “period” version of

downtown Springfield, altered to resemble early 1990s Seattle (whence grunge

hails), with signified Starbucks shops on every block and the Space Needle in the

distance. This song, called “Shave Me” is notated below in its entirety, alongside

both its source (Nirvana’s “Rape Me”), and “Brain Freeze,” a parody of the

copyphrase that appears later in the episode.

48An audio-file of “Politically Incorrect” is found on YouTube (Accessed May, 2008). The comments
on this posting include a debate (without clear consensus) of exactly which Nirvana song “Politically
Incorrect” is based upon. The complete text of the song is presented below:
“Pain is brown, Hate is white, Love is black, Stab the night!
Kingdom of numb, Closet of Hurt, Feelings are Dumb, Kisses are dirt!”

49In the Family Guy episode “Meet the Quagmire’s” (2008), the writers borrow this joke from Back to
the Future as well. As this episode was produced at the same time as “That 90’s Show,” there was
likely no influence of one show on the other—it’s simply a coincidence. In this episode, Peter goes
back in time to his first dance with Lois in 1984, at which Brian (their dog) sings “Never Gonna Give
You Up” by Rick Astley, and—you guessed it—someone named Marvin places a call to their cousin
Rick, and says, “You know that lame, generic sound you’ve been looking for?” Despite the
ungenerous review of Astley’s style, MacFarlane’s performance of the 1987 hit is certainly spirited,
arguably a stronger rendering than Astley’s.

84
EXAMPLE 2-12: “Rape Me,” “Shave Me,” “Brain Freeze”

The Sadgasm version is of course a summary of Nirvana’s, beginning with

the opening verse material and skipping strait to the motto sung an octave higher at

the conclusion of the song. “Shave Me” and “Brain Freeze” (the latter of which

parodies “Shave Me” with a new text) are essentially identical, with the exception of

the loud, declamatory screaming of the songs’ respective title words. Dan

Castellaneta (who voices Homer) does not sing a high B, presumably because it is

out of his vocal range; the high G# is clearly difficult enough for him to reach. Weird

Al is successful in imitating Cobain’s B4 (though his voice cracks), resembling

Nirvana’s original more closely in this respect.

The last of the three Sadgasm songs, “Margarine,” is a transparently

autobiographical number in which Homer laments his loss of Marge, using Bush’s

“Glycerine” as a model. Bush, a British “post-grunge”50 or “grunge-imitation”51 act

led by Gavin Rossdale (now married to No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani) has a style quite

different from Nirvana’s, although both bands belong to the same cultural

movement. Like most of the longer copyphrases on The Simpsons, the song is used

50 Allmusic.com, “Post-grunge” (Accessed March 2013)

Bush and the Seattle-based Candlebox are listed as the two primary examples of post-grunge.
51 Middleton and Beebe (2002), p. 159

85
to advance the narrative in lieu of dialogue.52 Marge watches a music video of it, and

learns that Homer still loves her, which is the cause of their reunion.53

EXAMPLE 2-13: “Glycerine” and “Margerine”

52
There are some instrumental breaks in the song that give Marge an opportunity to react to the song,
symbiotically advancing the narrative along with the song.
53 All three of the Sadgasm songs capture the respective musical idiolects of the most iconic

representatives of the grunge and post-grunge movements from both sides of the Atlantic. I would
argue, however, that the lyrics to “Margerine” (and parts of “Politically Incorrect”) miss the cultural
meaning of grunge. Grunge music is not a collection of tales of love and loss; it is about apathy and
angst, a product of Generation X’s coming of age. Sadgasm captures the ennui in “Shave Me” and in
the first half of “Politically Incorrect,” but with the lyrics of “Margerine,” they anticipate the emotional
rock (or “emo”) that rose to prominence at the close of the nineties after the grunge movement had
lost its inertia. “Emo” music, perhaps the music most closely linked to Generation Y’s coming of age,
necessarily reacts to and reflects upon the musical movements of the last generation, but the two
should not be conflated, despite their undeniable similarities.

86
2.6: Evaluation II—Music on Family Guy and The Simpsons

“That 90’s Show” illustrates three fundamental differences between how

music is used on The Simpsons and Family Guy respectively. First, if a Simpsons’

episode has this many diegetic numbers, the songs always play a part in telling the

story, as the “Margarine” example demonstrates. Sung text necessarily replaces

dialogue when the musical numbers account for several minutes of the episode’s

broadcast time. On Family Guy, diegetic numbers are subject to no such narrative

restriction. In “The Author as Producer,” Benjamin explains that the songs in certain

forms of theater “have their chief function in interrupting the action.”54 But on

Family Guy, the music is sometimes more than a break from the narrative—the story

may even be built around the songs in the episode. This is in part because of

MacFarlane’s musical inclinations; he is a truly gifted vocalist—arguably the most

talented voice actor of our time. We can assume that many of the musical numbers

on Family Guy are there simply because he wanted to sing them in the voice of a

particular character, and an episode is built around them.55

The second key difference between the music on The Simpsons and Family

Guy is that on the former, musical numbers are kept as short as possible. As I have

mentioned above, numbers are never longer than two minutes, and they only ever

exceed a minute if the text contributes to the episode’s narrative. Sometimes the

54Benjamin (1978), p. 234

55Two such examples come to mind. In “The Cleveland Loretta Quagmire” (2005) the character
Cleveland learns that his wife is having an affair, so Peter attempts to comfort him by singing the B-
52’s song “Rock Lobster;” surely, this number is only used to give MacFarlane the opportunity to sing
a B-52’s song in the voice of Peter Griffin. It’s hilarious, but its use is incongruous in this context.
Another is Stewie’s three-minute rendition of Bryan Adams,’ “Everything I Do” (complete with a
music video), which contributes to a sub-plot of the episode “Oceans Three and a Half” (2009) only
tangentially.

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producers will even cut portions of songs in rather unmusical ways. Beats are

cropped from the middle of measures in both “Shave Me,” and “Margarine,”56 giving

the impression that isolated measures in the middle of phrases are in different

meters—an effect that is ungrammatical to the idiolects of both Nirvana and Bush.

On Family Guy, such disrespect to the work of the composer and performers would

never happen. Simpsons composer Alf Clausen has lamented how little the

producers know about music, and how unwilling they are to take it seriously, stating

that “in many series, including this one, the pecking order is dialogue first, sound

effects next, and music third.”57 Music and dialogue are on a more equal footing on

Family Guy, however. In a personal interview with a member of the Family Guy

studio orchestra, my informant called MacFarlane the only producer he had ever

worked with who was “both hands on and never in the way” when it came to

music.58

Lastly, “That 90’s Show” demonstrates The Simpsons’ continued interest in

engaging with more recent musical materials. While both programs are eager to

provide timely political commentary, only on The Simpsons is there an interest in

paraphrasing relatively recent musics. On The Simpsons’ 1994-1995 season, the

copyphrases of “Under the Sea” and “Be Our Guest” both came from Disney movies

that were then only a few years old (1989 and 1991 respectively). This is not to say

56Specifically, in the second measure of my transcription of “Shave Me” above, the final beat is
cropped, making this measure sound as though it is in ¾. Similiarly, in the instrumental introduction
to “Margarine” (not transcribed), a beat and a half are trimmed from a measure, producing the
disorienting effect that one measure in 5/8 appears mid-phrase.

57Goldmark (2002), p. 244

58 To be clear, this is not an argument that one show is superior to the other, but merely an
elaboration of the respective priorities of the creative teams. What is gained by privileging the music
is lost in narrative development, and vice versa.

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that only more recent music is used on The Simpsons. The “Ho Hi” and Morricone

examples speak to this, and there are plenty more from old musicals. 59 On Family

Guy, however, virtually all of the music, original and borrowed, is from a style not

later than that of the 1980s. Most of the music reflects either MacFarlane’s own

nostalgia for the pop culture of his own childhood in 1980s (and to a lesser extent,

late 1970s), or—somewhat surprisingly—an adopted nostalgia for the music of his

parents’ childhood in the 1950s or before. MacFarlane released an album of big-

band and ratpack standards (called Music is Better than Words—it’s worth a listen),

as a sort of love letter to this repertory. Watching a few episodes of Family Guy

makes it clear that MacFarlane is unabashedly, unironically enamored of these

styles.

2.7: Recent Music on Family Guy

In more recent years, as the music budget and orchestra size continue to

grow on Family Guy, the practice of using paraphrased diegetic numbers has been

largely eclipsed by other musical devices. Of late there has been a greater interest in

lengthy original numbers, higher-brow non-diegetic cues, and a great deal of

unaltered borrowed music.60 Many scenes feature a song lifted directly from

59 Friedwald (2002) discusses several such examples, including (1) “The Monorail Song,” treating
“Trouble” from The Music Man in “Marge vs. The Monorail” (1993), (2), “The Garbageman,” modeled
upon “The Candyman” from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from “Trash of the Titans”
(1998), and (3) the signifiers for several songs from Mary Poppins, including “Feed the Birds,” “A
Spoonful of Sugar,” and “The Perfect Nanny,” mentioned briefly above.
60 Of course, a time-honored device that appears on both The Simpsons and Family Guy is the practice

of borrowing music, but providing a new text, a practice of textual parody most readily associated
with Weird Al. In a recent (2013) episode of The Simpsons (“Love is a Many-Splintered thing”) Homer
and Bart sing the “Ode to Joy” tune from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to a new text. As for Family
Guy, in the episode “Petarded” (2005), there is a performance of the song “Telephone Hour” from Bye
Bye Birdie, while people around the town (mostly adult men) gossip with one another about the fact
Peter is mentally challenged, rather than teenage girls giggling about a new couple “going steady.”
Another is a parody of the title song from Brigadoon in the episode “It Takes A Village Idiot and I

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another source, most commonly a musical (from stage or film), that is performed by

one or more of the Family Guy characters. Perhaps the most memorable example is

in the episode “Patriot Games,” where Peter joins the New England Patriots football

team, and after scoring a touchdown leads the fans, players, and cheerleaders in a

fully choreographed rendition of “Shipoopee” from The Music Man.61

Sometimes, both music and video footage are borrowed—a luxury of the

animated medium. In “The Courtship of Stewie’s Father” (discussed above, for the

“Tiny Tiny World” example), we view a dream sequence of an octogenarian named

Herbert, a recurring character and a neighbor of the Griffins, who, imagining himself

as Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors, sings “Somewhere That’s Green.”62 But he

doesn’t just sing the song as though at a recital—he sings it as part of animated re-

creation of video sequence from the movie version of Little Shop of Horrors, which is

an accurate reproduction down the tiniest details; the magazine covers, the toys, the

coloration of the lawn, and the episode of I Love Lucy on the “big, enormous 12-inch

screen.”

Other cases include the borrowing of both a video sequence and music, but

involve no singing from any of the characters on the show. In “Breaking Out Is Hard

to Do” (2005), Chris (Peter’s teenage son, voiced by Seth Green) grabs a mysterious

Married One” (2007). Brian and Stewie go for a walk in the woods, and watch Donny Most (rather
than the lost town of Brigadoon) rise from the mist. An “offstage” choir (as in Brigadoon) sings this a
capella choral number to a new text. Of note, the performance of this music from “Brigadoon” on
Family Guy is perhaps the highest quality recording I have come across of this song. Each voice part
is clearly heard, including the unusually low bass line demanding the pitch C2.
61 Another memorable example is in the episode “Believe it or not, Joe’s walking on air,” Peter’s

parapalegic friend Joe undergoes a risky leg transplant surgery, regains the ability to walk, and
subsequently forces his friends to participate in a song and dance routine of “Good Morning” from
Singing in the Rain.
62 Herbert is voiced by Mike Henry, who speaks and sings entirely in falsetto for Herbert. (Henry

records the voice of a Cleveland, a primary character on Family Guy until 2009, when he became the
star of a Family Guy spinoff, The Cleveland Show).

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white hand while reaching for milk in a grocery store and is dragged into a re-

animation of Aha’s “Take On Me” music video—a prime example of decadent (if

well-composed) 1980s pop that is so often featured on the show. And another such

sequence appears in the episode “The Road to Rupert.” Stewie and Brian learn that

they can rent a helicopter with either a large monetary deposit by or singing a

“jaunty tune.” The employee supervising the facility allows them to try their luck

with a song. Stewie is then animated in the place of Jerry the Mouse (of the MGM

Tom and Jerry cartoons) into the footage of tap dance routine with Gene Kelley from

the movie Anchors Away.63

Since 2010, though gags using pre-existing music are still quite common,

there has been a greater focus on non-diegetic music, using orchestral cues

matching the quality of what is found in high-budget Hollywood blockbusters.

Season 9 (2010-2011) began with an hour long parody of Agatha Christie’s And Then

There Were None (called “And Then There Were Fewer”) which set the tone for how

music has been used ever since. An extended orchestral version of the opening

theme is used at the start of the episode, showing off both the larger orchestra, and

the new, crisper HD quality of the recording.

2.8: Conclusion and Summary

Two important questions remain. Why did copyphrase become a default

procedure for the producers of these programs, and what factors have contributed

63A final type of borrowing both the audio and video of a musical number is when a video of Conway
Twitty performing a complete song—entirely unaltered, without participation from any of the
characters—is simply shown in the middle of an episode, treating the narrative television program as
though it were a variety show. This happens first in “Bill [Clinton] and Peter’s Bogus Journey” (2007),
and such gags were included in several subsequent episodes. A complete list of Conway Twitty
footage can be found on the Family Guy Wiki. (Accessed March 2013)

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to the decline of the practice on Family Guy. I believe that three considerations

(each of which I’ll discuss in turn) are responsible for the establishment of

copyphrase during the 1990s: Time, money, and access to the rights. Because of the

tight schedule television composers often face, there simply may not be enough time

to ask for permission to use the desired music. There could hardly have been time

to send a formal letter to ask permission to use every cue before all of this was

accomplished on the web. In the earlier seasons of both shows, money also must

have been a factor, as new shows generally do not have the resources to buy the

rights to copyrighted music. And even if they were willing to pay for the rights, and

had planned ahead to go through the necessary legal steps, sometimes they may

simply have been denied permission. As discussed above, the Family Guy producers

went through the appropriate channels to ask for permission to use Carol Burnett’s

theme, but were denied the rights (despite presumably having been willing to pay

handsomely for them), and thus paraphrased her theme.

So why is copyphrase still quite common on The Simpsons and not on Family

Guy? The answer is simple: The creative team of The Simpsons likes this type of

humor. I believe that the continued practice of copyphrase is motivated as much by

aesthetic concerns as by any other practicality. Both shows are willing and able to

keep professional composers on their payroll, and record cues for every episode with

a large studio orchestra, so it’s clear that cost is no longer a factor. The producers of

The Simpsons could devote more resources to obtain the rights to the music that

they wish to use, but they don’t. They enjoy poking fun of their own plight as a

television show, and have learned to make the best of it. In the early seasons, the

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writers presumably avoided the names of real-world products, logos, and even

familiar music for legal reasons, but the avoidance strategies came to be a favorite

part of the show. After all, they could simply storyboard the images of the

computers they use without a modified Apple logo, but the inclusion of the “Mapple”

decal is a style choice that fits nicely with their program.

Watching The Simpsons is the antidote to product placement; almost nothing

from our reality makes appearance on the show, which is part of their escapist

aesthetic. In a universe of “Krusty-O” and “Krusty-burger” eating, “Duff” beer

drinking characters, why should songs from our reality appear in the uncanny

simulacrum that is The Simpsons’ world? The writers even avoid using the names of

“real”-world places; the setting for The Simpsons is Springfield, USA, the precise

geographical location of which is kept ambiguous. (And The capital of their

unnamed state is simply called “Capital City,” nicknamed the “Windy Apple.”)64

In the early years of Family Guy, when much of their humor was modeled on

that of The Simpsons, the writers clearly relished the irony of using such

paraphrased music, routinely including three or more such cues per episode.

Recently, as they have sought to distinguish themselves from The Simpsons, fewer

copyphrases have appeared on Family Guy. The turn away from paraphrasing the

music they want to use is, I believe, as much symptomatic of their increased budget

64The first time when the Simpson family arrives in Capital City, they hear Tony Bennett singing a
copyphrase of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” The song, called “Capital City” appears in the
episode “Dancin’ Homer” (1990). This is one of the first episodes that Clasuen scored, and therefore
one of the earliest (if not the earliest) example of copyphrase that he provided for the show. It
relates to its model somewhat more distantly than his later copyphrases do. The notes and rhythms
of the melodies have little to do with one another, and there is no attempt at mimicking the iconic
instrumental lick of “New York, New York.” Rather, the connection between “Capital City” and “New
York, New York” relies on the shared association of similar orchestration, phrase length, text, and the
fact that both are sung by Ratpack singers of the same generation.

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and improved competence in obtaining rights to songs as it is of their desire to cast

their own image and not be remembered as a Simpsons offshoot. Just as both shows

face the anxiety of influence of the animated giant that is Disney, the producers of

Family Guy presumably feel such an anxiety (to a lesser degree) towards The

Simpsons, their big brother with whom they have a healthy professional rivalry. I

believe that this desire to define themselves as a brand unique from that of The

Simpsons is the primary cause of their waning interest in copyphrase.

2.9: Zooming Out—Examples of copyphrase from other cartoons

In focusing on The Simpsons and Family Guy, I may have given the false

impression that the practice of copyphrase is unique to these programs. These

shows offer some of the highest profile (and highest quality) examples, but

copyphrases appear on plenty of other cartoon programs as well.65 On The Ren and

Stimpy Show (1991-1996) there are isolated examples. The practice of copyphrase

was never the default for the show’s creative team, however; Joseph Lanza explains

that the majority of the music on the show came from mid-century “‘mood music’

libraries” full of original compositions designed to help television producers side-

step copyright law.66 Yet in a 1992 episode “Out West,” a paraphrased version of the

Jeopardy theme appears when two especially dim-witted characters try to solve a

problem. This copyphrase is presumably the work of Alexander Rannie, who is

65 For one, The Cleveland Show (2009-)— a Family Guy spinoff, and another of MacFarlane’s
projects—features a great deal of original music, and an occasional copyphrase. In “A General
Thanksgiving Episode” (2012), there is a signifier for Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” And two episdoes
later, in “A Vas Deferens Between Men and Women” (2012) there are copyphrases of two songs from
Annie: “It’s a Hard Knock Life” and “Tomorrow.”
66 Lanza (2002), p. 270

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credited as having composed the original music for the episode, which includes a

diegetic number at the episode’s end.67 Rannie, unsurprisingly uses the same

techniques as Clausen, Jones, and Murphy: preserving rhythm and inverting many of

the melodic intervals. This cue is effective, though one might critique it for being too

close to its source. If the producers of Ren and Stimpy did not get permission to use

the Jeopardy theme, the owners of its copyright may very possibly be able to win a

lawsuit against them; while a number of pitches are changed, almost all of the pitch

classes are unaltered. Most of the Cs in the melody are substituted by a C in the

opposite octave.

EXAMPLE 2-14: Jeopardy Theme and signifier for it

There are also a growing number of copyphrases in the web-based animated

series How It Should Have Ended. Created without a television network to broadcast

them, these cartoon shorts offer light-hearted critiques of the well-known films they

parody by revising their endings. (Reader, beware: These shorts are addictive—

watch with care!) Just as the narratives of these films are re-written, so too are the

films’ themes. Composer Brian English paraphrases the familiar music from these

movies—alas, without the help of a studio orchestra, but the amateurish

synthesized sound fits the stiff, quirky, stylized animation aesthetic. One of the best

examples appears in the 2011 short “How Harry Potter Should Have Ended,” in

67 IMBD, “Ren and Stimpy” (Accessed March, 2013)

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which we find a clever paraphrase of the most memorable theme from the Harry

Potter series.

EXAMPLE 2-15: “How Harry Potter Should Have Ended”

English’s theme is an effective signifier for Williams.’ The key of the two

melodies is different, but through near-identical rhythm, and similar chromaticism

(note the analogous b^2 at the end of the third measure in each melody), the wonky,

electronic timbre is no obstacle in recognizing this as the primary theme from Harry

Potter.

◊ ◊ ◊

Regardless of why creative teams use paraphrased music so often in

animated media, I remain fascinated by the process of how these composers signify

a familiar tune by using an entirely different piece. They juggle the legal, financial,

and aesthetic demands of the industry, all the while working under significant

pressures of time. Yet this work, like that of many of those who practice musical

translation, remains underappreciated. Copyphrase is perhaps a low-brow act, but

one that nonetheless requires craftsmanship. And as we’ll soon learn, the same is

true of musical caricature.

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Chapter 3: On the Musically Caricaturable

3.0: Defining Caricature

In the Oxford English Dictionary, caricature is defined as a “grotesque or

ludicrous representation of persons or things by exaggeration of their most

characteristic and striking features.”1 Kenneth T. Rivers, the author of the most

significant scholarly contribution to the understanding of the genre, defines it

similarly as “the artistic use of deformation for satirical purposes.”2 This definition

(by design) applies to both pictorial and literary caricature. Just as one might draw

a distorted portrait, one might provide a written description of a character in

literature with certain exaggerations. So it is possible to create a caricature through

language, but can one caricature the use of language itself, or at another level of

remove, music? Rivers argues that the “[c]aricature of sound has always been

possible,”3 and with music, suggests that “[i]f metaphoricalness and distortion, as

well as humor, are all possible in music, then it follows that caricature (featuring

humorous metaphorical distortion) should be… as well.”4 He reminds us, however,

that this “does not mean that there is any great tradition of serious caricature in

music;”5 it remains “a largely neglected genre.”6 In this chapter, I explore the

concept of sonic caricature, first, briefly, in language, then more extensively in music.

My goal is to provide a basic theoretical account musical caricature, answering the

1 OED.com, (Accessed December, 2012)

2 Rivers (1991), p. 5
3 Ibid, p. 74
4 Ibid, p. 99
5 Ibid
6 Ibid, p. 100

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fundamental questions of how it is accomplished, and how it relates to other forms

of musical paraphrase.

3.1: Preliminaries—Counterfeit vs. Caricature

Caricature is often defined against portraiture. A portrait is an attempt at an

accurate, realistic portrayal; the person (or object) depicted in a caricature must still

be recognizable, but realism and accuracy of proportions is not expected. Rivers

explains, “[t]he main difference between standard portraiture and caricatural

portraiture… is that caricature emphasizes features that deviate from the norm to

an embarrassing degree. All portrait artists highlight individuality, but the

caricaturist delights in going too far. That is to say, the caricatural artist or writer,

when depicting a real person… will generally exaggerate some actual traits and de-

emphasize others, with the intent of creating a mischievously ‘truer than true’ image

of that person.”7

So in the visual arts, there is (or at least there should be) a clear-cut

difference between portraiture and caricature, but with sonic arts, caricature is

somewhat more challenging to define; there is no such thing as linguistic or musical

portraiture (at least not so far as I am aware), yet there is at least metaphorically, an

equivalent to counterfeit with both language and music against which to define

caricature.8 In both written and spoken language, there is a clear difference

between counterfeit (imitation) and caricature (exaggeration). If a famous author

7Rivers (1991), pp. 20-21

8Sonic arts include aestheticized spoken language and music. Visual arts include painting, sculpture
(etc). Literature hangs in a precarious position between the two.

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dies in the middle of writing a novel, a ghost writer might be asked to produce prose

that is a passable substitute—a counterfeit—for the work of the original author. Or

if one wants to imitate someone’s voice over the phone, an accurate reproduction of

lexical choices, syntax, and phonology is essential. The same is true if a voice actor

dies, and more movies are to be made featuring the deceased actor’s character. A

new actor must be hired to imitate their late predecessor.9

The counterfeit/caricature binary applies to music as well. Musical

counterfeit may at times be desirable, such as when a composer’s work is left

unfinished at the time of their death. Mozart left his Requiem incomplete, and

Süssmayr was charged with the task of counterfeiting the balance. Puccini

succumbed to throat cancer before completing Turandot, leaving the final act of the

opera to be completed (based only on sketches) by Franco Alfano initially, and years

later by the late Luciano Berio. (With counterfeits, there is perhaps room for more

than one “authentic” version.) And virtually the same happened with Lulu a decade

later, which was at last completed by Fredrich Cerha more than 40 years after Berg’s

death. This is tricky business, of course, if the goal is to imitate the style of the

composer accurately without resorting to caricature. Arguably, caricature is easier

that passable imitation; there is a thin window of success for musical counterfeit—it

fails if it doesn’t sound enough like the work of the composer it is designed to

emulate, or if it becomes caricature by sounding too much like their work. Finding

an example of a musical counterfeit that fails for devolving into caricature is difficult

to find—after all, in most cases we don’t know if a composer meant to forge the

9The case of Jim Henson comes to mind; since his death in 1990, other actors have been charged with
producing the nigh inimitable voice of Kermit and other Muppets.

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idiolect of another (unless their explicit task is ghost writing), or if caricature was

the goal all along. In language, however, evaluating the success of a counterfeit can

at times be easier than we might expect.

3.1.1: Counterfeit versus (Inadvertent) Caricature

Television series often employ a small army of writers. Even episodes from

the same season of a show are routinely written by different people. One of the

main challenges of creating multi-authored dialog is making sure that the characters

always sound like themselves, not caricatures thereof. (Though, arguably, if a

program remains on the air for enough time, self caricature is inevitable.) Movie

sequels too often have scripts (and, unfortunately, scores) written by a new team.

In such cases, how exactly should one evaluate whether a line is appropriate for a

fictional character? The answers to such questions rarely invite consensus, but in

some cases, we can conclude unequivocally that a writer has made an error.

The most straightforward way to caricature spoken language—whether for

a “real” speaker or fictional character—is through phonology. Highlighting a

noticeable regional accent by exaggerating some combination of unusual vowels,

consonants, and intonational patterns can be a relatively gentle way of doing so;

targeting a foreign accent can be in somewhat poorer taste, and picking on a speech

impediment is perhaps the least generous. But regardless of social acceptability,

anything that is marked about a particular speaker’s idiolect is caricaturable.

However, there is no risk of unintended phonological caricature (resulting from

poor vocal counterfeit) if a character is played by the same person across sequels

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(or seasons of a television show). And further, screenwriters have only so much to

do with how the actors deliver the lines. Rather, writers decide both the lexical

choices and syntax of their characters.

Of course, marked (and therefore mockable) syntax is less common than

marked phonology. While those without native competency in a given language

may routinely speak with consistent, yet “unusual” syntax (not to mention imperfect

phonology), the utterances of a native speaker or sentences of an author writing in

their native language are more rarely characterized by syntactic idiosyncrasies.

Though occasionally, the idiolect of a fictional character can be characterized by

marked syntax.

The character Yoda appears in five out of six of the Star Wars films. In

addition to his distinctive voice, provided by Frank Oz, his words often appear in an

order that is unusual for a speaker of contemporary English. The character first

appeared in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), which was written by Leigh

Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. These two writers (presumably with some

guidance from George Lucas) were charged with the task of creating unusual (yet

consistent) speech patterns for a centuries-old swamp dweller of mysterious

origins.10 The syntactic idiosyncrasies of Yoda’s speech, as imagined by Brackett

and Kasdan for The Empire Strikes Back include the following features:

It is unclear whether Yoda is meant to be a non-native speaker with some grammatical quirks, or
10

merely a speaker of a non-standard dialect that one finds in this fictional galaxy “far, far away.”

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 1. V to T raising (moving the verb to first position instead of inserting
“do”):
a. “Hear you hear nothing that I say?”
b. “Why wish you wish [to] become Jedi?”
2. Copular “be” omission:
a. “Much anger is in him… like his father.”
b. “Not far. Yoda is not far.”
3. Auxiliary “do” omission:
a. “Wars do not make one great.”
b. “How did you get so big, eating food of this kind?”
4. Topicalization:
a. “Ready, are you ready?”
b. “Decide, you must decide, how to serve them best.”
c. “Judge me by my size, do you judge me by my size?”
d. “Found someone, you have found someone.”

Virtually everything Yoda says in this movie is or was grammatical in some

dialect of English. Moving a verb to the first position of a sentence (instead of

inserting a question word like “do”) was grammatical in Middle English, and still

sounds familiar (if vaguely archaic) to English speakers today. Omission of the

copula and auxiliary verb “do” are acceptable in African American Vernacular

English, and should likewise not sound especially exotic. And topicalization (moving

something that normally appears later in the sentence to the subject position) of

course is grammatical (if marked) in any dialect of English, though it is especially

common in Jewish communities in which some members also speak Yiddish. (“An

example of this, you want?”) So whether or not Yoda’s utterances are to the

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standards of a grammar-school prescriptivist with horn-rimmed glasses and angrily

crossed arms, none pose any difficulty to comprehension.

Return of the Jedi (1983), the immediate sequel to The Empire Strikes Back,

was written again by Lawrence Kasdan, along with George Lucas himself, and two of

the subsequently released prequels were written by Lucas alone. In none of these

three films do the writers produce any line that contradicts the established

grammaticality of Yoda’s idiolect. However, in Attack of the Clones (2002), which

was co-written by Lucas and Jonathan Hales, there is one line that is entirely

ungrammatical in English as well as “Yodish,” and is likely to have puzzled viewers:

“Around the survivors a perimeter create.” (Microsoft word, by the way, also

disapproves of this utterance.)

This sentence is an imperative, in fact an order in a military setting. As far as

I am aware, in no dialect of English is it grammatical to have this kind of structure,

where a direct object appears before the verb it complements. Perhaps “around the

survivors create a perimeter” is acceptable, if forced, as though answering the

hypothetical question, “Where should we create a perimeter?” But with both the

direct object and prepositional phrase closer to the head of the sentence, the writers

fail to produce a sufficient counterfeit of the earlier writers’ work with Yoda. This

overextension of Yoda’s frequent topicalization is exactly the way one might go

about creating a caricature of Yoda, and betrays a failure to produce believable

counterfeit.

In fact, one of the more successful Yoda parodies does contain one such

ungrammatical imperative construction. It is found in a 2009 SNL sketch, (called

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“Girlfriend Voice”) in which Seth Rogen imitates Yoda’s characteristic syntax and

phonology. The dialogue of this segment is presented below:11

a. *There hi.
b. ?Having a beer am I, yes.
c. No, come to your party I cannot.
d. *Okay, out peace.”

The sentence “come to your party I cannot” is grammatical for Yoda, perfectly

so, yet its syntax is still marked for most speakers of English. “Having a beer am I” is

a bit dubious as Yodish, but after all, this is not meant to be a realistic portrayal; it’s

meant to be recognizable, but distorted. (Perhaps “having a beer I am” would make a

better counterfeit.) But without question, “there hi” and “out peace” are

ungrammatical, humorous exactly because they exaggerate Yoda’s idiosyncratic

syntax. The imperfections in syntax are intentional, and combined with the irony of

hearing such mundane phrases in the voice of the wizened Yoda (or Seth Rogen’s

attempt at Frank Oz’s Yoda voice), this makes for is a uniquely strong example of

syntactic caricature.

3.1.1: Caricaturing Phonology

The example of Yoda is one of the very rare cases of marked syntax where

the difference between counterfeit and caricature is so clearly demonstrated.

Phonological caricature is much more common, as more speakers have obviously

marked phonology than do they syntax. The voice of President Kennedy, for

instance, is easily identifiable for his rather strong Boston accent (the deletion of Rs
11In generative linguistics, an asterisk preceding a sentence indicates ungrammaticality, and a
question mark indicates questionable grammaticality.

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following vowels, etc.) and occasional emphatic monotony when making a strong

point, as in his (in)famous, “ICH BIN EIN BERLINER,” which is also notable for its

incorrect German syntax. The definite article is not required here; rather, “Ich bin

Berliner” is grammatical, meaning (more or less) “I am of Berlin.”12

The phonology of Kennedy’s unmistakable speaking voice has long been the

subject of comic treatment. A record called “The First Family” was released in 1962

while he was still in office, poking fun at his idiolect, but not to the point that it could

be called caricature.13 This is phonological counterfeit, and a very skilled imitation

of Kennedy at that. But on The Simpsons, there is a character named Joe Quimby

who serves as mayor of the town. He, like Kennedy, is a womanizer, who (ab)uses

his power and fame for his sexual satisfaction. Most importantly for present

purposes, Quimby’s idiolect is a clear caricature of Kennedy’s. His Boston accent is

at times more pronounced than Kennedy’s was—Quimby at least once refers to the

character named Lisa as “Lisar”—and the loud, emphatic monotony (a la “Ich bin ein

Berliner”) is Quimby’s sole manner of intonation. (“Simpson, you moron!”) There

was also a short-lived television cartoon called Clone High, which featured a teenage

clone simply called “JFK,” whose phonology and characteristic womanizing, like

Quimby’s, caricature Kennedy’s voice and person.

Although Kennedy’s pronunciation and intonation are low-hanging fruit for

parodists, there is little unusual about Kennedy’s syntax in his spontaneous

utterances. However, his pre-written speeches are known for a number of

12 As is well-known, Kennedy mistakenly referred to himself as a type of pastry known as a “Berliner.”

13 Portions of this record can be found on YouTube.

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syntactically marked forms. Take as an example his famous inaugural speech,

written by Ted Sorenson. Two characteristic excerpts are included below.

A. “Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though

arms we need, not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to
bear the burden of a long twilight struggle…”

B. “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—
ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask
not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the
freedom of man.”

The use of the words “ask not” in this order is perhaps the most iconic of all

of Kennedy’s public utterances. This style choice is clear—the use of such archaic

syntax may remind listeners of texts of Biblical proportion and authority, and thus

associate the new president with such power. Of note, Kennedy himself parodied

this speech one year later a Democratic-party fundraiser. Compare excerpts of the

two below:

1961 Inauguration: 1962 Partisan Fundraiser:

All this will not be finished in the first one Our deficit will not be paid off in the next one
hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the hundred days, nor will it be paid off in the first
first one thousand days, nor in the life of this one thousand days, nor in the life of this
administration, nor even perhaps in our administration. Nor perhaps even in our lifetime
lifetime on this planet. But let us begin… on this planet, but let us begin—remembering
that generosity is not a sign of weakness and that
Remembering on both sides that civility is not
ambassadors are always subject to Senate
a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always
confirmation, for if the Democratic Party cannot
subject to proof….If a free society cannot help
be helped by the many who are poor, it cannot be
the many who are poor, it cannot save the few
saved by the few who are rich. So let us begin.
who are rich.

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 Several of his utterances here have the same structure as those in his

inaugural speech, but with more mundane, perhaps cynical content. While this

pokes fun at the style of his speech, he does not caricature the marked, poetic,

“elevated” syntax, which is to say that he does not take irregular word order to a

greater extreme. Though I imagine that the use of nonsense lines like (hear this in

JFK’s emphatic tone) “NOT ASK YOUR COUNTRY WHAT DO YOU FOR CAN!” would

work brilliantly as caricature, if voiced by the right person.

3.2 Musical Caricature (vs. Linguistic)

A few points should be made following the discussion of caricature in

language:

1. With sound as well as images, there can be a sharp distinction between

realistic reproduction and caricatural use.

2. The line between the counterfeit and caricature is easier to draw with

language than it is with music.

3. With language, caricaturing phonology is simple, yet caricaturing syntax

requires a special circumstance.

4. With music, however, both “phonology” and “syntax” are equally ripe for

caricature.

Let the objection be heard that there are no precise equivalents of syntax and

phonology in music—despite Bernstein’s best efforts, alas14—though analogical

14The first three of Bernstein’s The Unanswered Question lectures (published 1976) are on the topics
of musical phonology, syntax, and semantics respectively. These lectures, Swain notes, “were

107
applications of these terms are certainly of value.15 The metaphors inevitably

reach their limits, of course, as the domains of musical syntax, phonology, and

semantics are more closely entwined than are those in language. A scale or tuning

system is like the phonemic inventory of a piece, but it is also a part of the syntax of

the music. There is no (non-texted) musical equivalent of Chomsky’s famous

“colorless green ideas” that illustrates the partial independence of syntax and

semantics in language.16 And any change to the sonic character of music entails a

change of meaning as well, as I have made clear in previous chapters. Nevertheless,

I maintain that musical caricature can be classified through the analogies of

phonology and syntax.

Rivers, despite offering only a laconic account of sonic caricature, suggests

two ways that composers have approached the process, noting that “[m]ost of these

works involve distortion of known melodies or the use of peculiar sound effects at

intentionally inappropriate moments.”17 The former, changing the actual notes and

rhythms of a piece is one method, hereafter called syntactic caricature. The latter,

involving a change to the timbre, instrumentation, sound quality, or register will be

called phonological caricature. And I argue that there is yet a third type, contextual

caricature, which itself is a pair of reciprocal processes. Music can be used in a

dramatic context (anything from a ballet to a film) to caricature the actors or actions

scorned so often and so pointedly that their contribution ended up providing only more fodder for
the cannons of the opposition.” (1997, p. 4)
15 Swain (1997) and Patel (2008) organize their comparisons of language in music in exactly this way,

with chapters about phonology, syntax, etc.

16 Scruton offers a pithy, if catty quip about such matters. “Much of Hindemith’s Gebrauchsmusik

sounds like ‘fish eat three ideas’—each bar leading smoothly into its successor, yet the whole thing is
a kind of nonsense.” (1997, p. 179)
17 Rivers (1991), p. 74

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of the narrative; or, it can be presented in connection with images or actions in such

a way that the music is cast in a new, ridiculous light. These three methods of

caricature (examples to follow!) are not mutually exclusive; in fact, many of the

strongest examples of musical caricature employ more than one technique, and in

some cases, all three may be used simultaneously.

The concepts of contextual and phonological caricature are relatively

straight-forward. When we hear Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours” used to

accompany hippos dancing ballet in Disney’s Fantasia (1940), the presentation of

the music in this context is form of caricature. Nothing about the sound of the music

has been altered—only the context of its use. Rather, Spike Jones’ version of the

same piece in his Murdering the Classics collection is a clear example of phonological

caricature.18 The notes and rhythms of this and his other “murdered” tunes are

hardly changed, but open season is declared on just about every other parameter.

His versions of Bizet’s Carmen, Liszt’s Liebesträume No. 3, and Rossini’s William Tell

(et al) are best characterized by their eclectic “orchestrations” making use of any

number of household objects as instruments, and their use and abuse of slapstick

sound effects.

The concept of syntactic caricature requires a bit more unpacking than do the

other two methods. Is the syntax of all music caricaturable, or are there, as Genette

suggests of literature, “inimitable” styles that “the caricaturist is neither able nor

willing to tackle?”19 And what exactly is it about the music that we change in such a

caricature? An artist can play with the shape and size of their subject’s features

18 Rivers lists the work of Spike Jones as one of his only examples of musical caricature. (Ibid)
19 Genette (1997/1982), p. 97

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much more easily than a musician can, as music has neither size nor shape in any

literal sense. Nonetheless, there is a similar logic in the approaches to caricature

between art and music. Drawing a person with an impossibly large nose, according

to Rivers, is a technique “thoroughly emblematic” of pictorial caricature.20 But of

course, it’s not always the nose that is enlarged—it’s whatever feature of a person

lends itself to exaggeration. For President Carter, it was his teeth that were

consistently drawn too large. For George H.W. Bush, it was his whole head. And for

President Obama, large ears are the hallmark feature of his caricatures.21 The point

is that there is no “one size fits all” solution to graphic caricature, and neither is

there in music. The first step of musical caricature is to find a trademark feature,

either of a particular piece or the idiolect of a composer that can be emphasized.

With pictorial caricature, a prominent feature can be shown as taking up

more—or less—space; with music, this can only be accomplished with time. If a

composer is enamored of a particular type of gesture, a caricaturist can make it

appear with either greater duration or frequency. Changing the duration of a

musical figure is an inherently visual approach to caricature; this is like changing

the size of a feature of the music, but again, in time rather than space. Let us call this

procedure expansion. Using a musical figure with greater frequency, however,

betrays a literary logic. Although Rivers discusses a great deal of literary caricature,

all of his examples are about imagistic depictions in literature of what we see in life.

20Rivers (1991), p. 14
21Caricatures of Obama are perhaps less commonly found than those of other presidents, and when
they do appear, they seem rather mild by comparison. The reluctance to draw Obama in such an
unfavorable light may stem from reactions to historical caricatures of African Americans, depicted
with pitch-black skin and absurdly large, light lips, as though in blackface.

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Such caricatures follow a visual logic, but when an author caricatures the style of

another, this is a different matter entirely. Genette discusses such literary

caricature in Palimpseste, and explains that “[e]veryone knows intuitively that comic

imitation always exaggerates the characteristic traits of its model. To designate this

procedure, the Russian Formalists used a more technical but still somewhat crude

and certainly ambiguous term: stylization.”22 Instead, he suggests that a more

“appropriate and accurate term might be saturation.”23

To describe the technique of using a musical feature with greater frequency, I

borrow the term saturation from Genette, which he defines as “the recurrence of a

stylistic or thematic feature characteristic of an author.”24 Saturation, again, I will

contrast with the more pictorial technique of expansion. (See Table 3.1 below for a

preliminary taxonomy of musical caricature; this chart will grow as new techniques

are revealed.) Rarely, does an artist create a caricature of a person by drawing

them with several noses—by saturating the picture with redundant images—and

even more rarely does an author expand the “size” or “shape” of the literature they

caricature. (And how would this be accomplished?) Yet music is capable of adapting

techniques from both domains. Although the practice of musical caricature is

woefully underexplored in both theory and practice, the fact that both literary and

pictorial techniques are available to it suggests that music may truly be the ideal art

for caricature.

22 Genette (1997/1982), p. 87
23 Ibid, pp. 87-88
24 Ibid, p. 88

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 SYNTACTIC PHONOLOGICAL CONTEXTUAL
Expansion: Saturation:
Exaggerating a Exaggerating a Changing the Presenting music
characteristic characteristic timbre, alongside, or in
feature by feature by instrumentation, or connection with
increasing the increasing the range to alter a something that makes it
duration of its frequency of its piece in an seem ridiculous by
appearance appearance unflattering or association.
ridiculous manner.
TABLE 3.1: Techniques of Caricature (1)

3.3: Caricaturing Music in the Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra

The clearest examples of musical caricature that I have found appear in a

single animated short: The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra, from a seven-part BBC

series called the Tales of Hoffnung25. A few words are in order on the genesis of

these cartoons. They are based primarily on the artwork of Gerard Hoffnung

(1925-1959, born Gerhard), a British artist of German-Jewish origins.26 Hoffnung

was also a musician (primarily a tubist), a comedian, and a concert organizer. Wells

describes him as “the master of the graphic pun, allying German tradition with

English Whimsy.”27

Hoffnung’s best known artistic work is his collection of musical books, which

comprise drawings of musicians that caricature both the player and the instrument.

The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra (hereafter HSO) cartoon is based upon a 1955

book of the same title. Some of the simpler caricatures in the book include a double-

chinned man using his saxophone as smoking pipe, an obese Valkyrie who has put

down her spear and shield to play a “Wagner” tuba (complete with a bust of the

25 The title of this series is of course a reference to Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffman.
26 He, like the other two men I’ll introduce in the following pages, was an émigré from continental
Europe.
27 Wells (2006), p. 173

112
eponymous conductor on the bell), and a large eared English-horn player who

surprises the double reed section when a egg falls from the base of his instrument.

Other drawings exemplify Rivers’ concept of transmutation, which he defines as

“any artistic act through which two different things (that would not normally change

into each other) are perceived as explicitly becoming one another, or as implicitly

exchanging identities or traits.”28 Examples include a man who plays his enormous

belly (called a “Tum Drum”) with timpani mallets, and a concertmaster who plays

his goatee as a violin; both of these caricatures feature a player and their instrument

transmutationally conflated. In other cases, an instrument is merged with a real-

world object. A cartoonish woman plays the spokes of an old-timey bicycle as a harp,

and a player seated like a cellist plays a yo-yo with a bow (called a “yo-bow”).

Hoffnung, who died at the tragically young age of 34, never got to see his

collections of caricatures brought to life in cartoon form by Halas and Batchelor

animation. Said studio, which was the largest of its kind in Britain from 1940 to

1995, was started by a husband and wife team, John Halas (a Hungarian-British

cartoonist) and Joy Batchelor, whom Halas met upon moving to England in 1936.

Their daughter Vivien recalls, “[t]hey pioneered many of the techniques and genres

that laid the foundation of the animation industry we know today, and in making

Animal Farm [(1954)], the first animated entertainment feature in Britain, they

secured themselves a place in British film history.”29 As Wells explains, “Halas and

Batchelor undertook the [Tales of Hoffnung] series of films with long-time associate

Francis Chagrin, who had collaborated with Hoffnung in his interplanetary music

28 Rivers (1991), p. 6
29 Halas (2006), p. 7

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festivals described as ‘extravagant evenings of symphonic caricature.’ Chagrin was

to write specific scores for the series… each characterized by pieces from a range of

composers in a variety of idioms.”30

The HSO cartoon contains hardly any linguistic content. Music and sound

effects fill the sonic space, without any dialogue. With the exception of a single

“hello” from the Basset Horn player (whose instrument doubles as a telephone,

which he answers during the concert), no character speaks, and minimal written

text is used. Of course, not much language is necessary, as the cartoon is simply an

orchestra concert, caricaturing the musicians, the audience, and English symphonic

culture as a whole. As Wells explains, while “the orchestra improvise as they await

their very late conductor, the music functions as a key determining element of the

narrative and, crucially, a major element in redefining the codes and conventions of

the cartoon.”31 At last, the conductor arrives, and we hear a mischievous mélange of

music by composers from Mozart to Mussorgsky. However, almost all of this

borrowed music has undergone some alteration, either to instrumentation, texture,

or the notes and rhythms themselves.

30Wells (2006), p. 173

Francis Chagrin (1905-1972), born Alexander Paucker, was a composer of Romanian Jewish origin.
He adopted the French name upon moving to Paris in 1928, ultimately settling in England in 1934.
(See Scowcroft, 2009)
31 Wells 2006, p. 173. Holliss describes Chagrin’s musical contributions to the history of British

animation: “While the hugely inventive and sometimes complex scores of Carl Stalling and Scott
Bradley for Disney, Warner Brothers and MGM cartoons have been highly instrumental in creating a
distinctiveness in American cartoon art, the specific relationship between sound and image—known
as ‘Mickey Mousing’ in the way it especially ‘narrativised’ chase sequences and comic effects—was
inappropriate for the approach Halas and Batchelor wished to take. Seiber [another composer in the
studio’s employ] and Chagrin offered a much more specifically ‘musical’ relationship of contrast and
counterpoint to the imagery as well as illustrative motifs and themes. Chagrin valued the idea that
the creation of music to evoke and suggest a mood or atmosphere was a fundamental part of Halas
and Batchelor’s aesthetic intentions, and was intrinsically related to other art forms, most notably
ballet.” (2006, p. 132)

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 In the opening credits to the cartoon, we learn that the music was “composed,

arranged, re-composed, dis-arranged, and conducted by Francis Chagrin, with

acknowledgment and apologies to Mozart, Liszt, Bizet, Grieg, Delibes, Tchaikovsky,

Auber, [Johann] Strauss [II], Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, [and] Schubert”—a

remarkably candid confession. Indeed Chagrin’s very “re-composition” and “dis-

arrangement” of these familiar tunes makes The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra a

veritable instruction manual in how to caricature music.

3.3.1: Syntactic Caricatures in The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra:

3.3.1.1: Fun with Figaro: “A monstrous many notes”

When the conductor of the HSO arrives, the first piece of the collage that the

orchestra plays is The Marriage of Figaro overture.32 Apparently—although this

may be, in Gurewitsch’s words “apocryphal piffle”—Emperor Joseph II once said to

Mozart that this piece suffered from having “too many notes.”33 Jan Swafford of The

Guardian notes that although the Emperor’s complaint “is generally perceived to be

a gaffe by a blockhead,” that “[i]n fact, Joseph was echoing what nearly everybody,

including his admirers, said about Mozart: he was so imaginative that he couldn't

turn it off, and that made his music at times intense, even demonic.”34 Whether or

not Chagrin was aware of this anecdote, he surely believed that this very trait

defines Mozart’s idiolect. In his caricature of the Marriage of Figaro overture, he

exaggerates the familiar theme making it even busier.

32 Another fragment of the piece appears in the bombastic conclusion, weaving together patches of
Figaro, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and the Schubert March militaire in D major (op. 51, no. 1).
33 Gurewitsch (2002)
34 Swafford (2004)

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 The opening gesture of Mozart’s opera is hardly a laconic utterance—as a

seven measure phrase, it already feels extended, uneven, and perhaps too “verbose.”

Yet Chagrin adds five additional measures to the phrase, extending both the length

and the range of the phrase to a ridiculous degree. This is a clear example of

syntactic caricature through expansion. In strictly musical terms, we might also call

it an expansion, that of the dominant. Mozart rests on a local dominant for an

already long four measures, but Chagrin stretches the dominant for an extra five

measures making it a deliciously uneven nine. Just as an artist, in Rivers’ words,

“uses the weapons of distortion and exaggeration to depict the individual in as un-

Apollonian a way as possible,” Chagrin subverts the neoclassical balance and gentle

wit that characterizes much of the music of Haydn and Mozart, abandoning it here in

favor wild Dionysian expanse.35

EXAMPLE 3-1: Chagrin’s Expansion of The Marriage of Figaro (first phrase)

And there is yet another aspect of caricature in this excerpt, this time of a

phonological nature. This rapid-fire passage is most unforgiving to amateur string

players, and it is easy enough to imagine a student performance where the

performers are not quite in time with one another, riddled with wrong notes

besides. Although it is possible that the few imperfections in the performance of the

players in the HSO are the result of recording on a tight-schedule and tighter budget,

35 Rivers (1991), pp. 37-38

116
I am inclined to believe that these minor infelicities are intentional, designed to

caricature an amateur orchestra (if not also the passage of music itself).

3.3.1.2: “Dance of the Floating Celesta”

The next clear example of caricature appears in a sequence based upon one

of Hoffnung’s drawings. In this image, a charmingly aloof celesta player with an

absurdly large chin is shown floating above the orchestra, restained by an anchor to

prevent him from drifting out over the Thames. “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” is

used to bring this drawing to life, which is an unsuprising choice, as this excerpt is,

by far, the most famous celesta solo in the classical literature. Even today this

passage is only rivaled in cultural ubiquity by the opening theme from the Harry

Potter films. Of course, Chagrin does not merely cut and paste this theme directly

into the collage; through some clever modifications, he exaggerates Tchaikovsky’s

idiolect with comic precision.

In describing the “occidental” perception of Russian music, Taruskin notes

that many “are likely to fasten on its suspiciously decorative packaging and what

can seem an unacceptably high (but characteristically Slavic) level of ritualized

repetition or sequence.”36 Although Taruskin’s claim specifically refers to the music

of Rimsky-Korsakov (as part of a hagiographic—and gratuitous—plea to take his

music seriously) it no less applies to Tchaikovsky; these are his stylistic hallmarks

as much they are Rimsky’s. And as we might expect, these are exactly the traits that

Chagrin chose to exaggerate.

36 Taruskin (2009), p. 177

117
EXAMPLE 3-2: “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and Chagrin’s Caricature

As we can see, Chagrin caricatures a composer known for his use of

sequences by repeating a model several times. There is a noticeable Gestalt of the

falling minor second (harmonized by diminished-seventh chords, each with a

rhythm of two sixteenths and an eighth) that is repeated here, and as such, we can

call this caricature through saturation. However, as this phrase is almost double the

length of Tchaikovsky’s, this is simultaneously an example of expansion.37

Tchaikovsky uses a mere five successive diminished-seventh chords in the middle

two measures of this phrase, but Chagrin increases this number to an outrageous

sixteen.

Just as Chagrin extended the range of the Figaro excerpt, making it reach a

much lower Tiefpunkt, Chagrin shifts the range of the “Sugar Plum Fairy” up here,

Mickey-mousing the celesta player who floats steadily higher in the cartoon while

37Saturation is possible sans expansion, and I will discuss examples of this below.

118
he plays this passage; as the register reaches the stratosphere, so does the physical

height of the player. This, of course, adds an element of contextual caricature as

well. Further, presenting the melody at such a tessitura may also poke fun at the

“suspiciously decorative packaging” of this music. An already delicate passage is

made all the more twee, rendering the fairy as a peddler of a more saccharine treat

than sugar plums.

3.3.1.3 “In the Hall of Serpent King”

The “orchestra” in Hoffnung’s book includes some pecular instruments.

Some, like the aformentioned “yo-bow” are figments of his imagination. Others, like

the alphorn simply do not belong in a symphony orchestra, and others still are

obsolete instruments like the serpent, the ancestral protoform of Hoffnung’s

beloved tuba. The serpent drawing is one of the few in the book with a caption—an

honor he apparently reserves for tuba-like instruments—which reads, “[f]or

security reasons this instrument is no longer in use,” as it appears to have come to

life like a literal snake and swallowed its player whole. Rather than chose an arcane

serpent excerpt from literature to animate this image, Chagrin adapts a portion of

Grieg’s “In the Hall of Mountain King From” from Peer Gynt for bassoon. Like the

Tchaikovsky example above, this music is part of a contextual caricature; the music

increases in intesity as the serpent slowly awakens and consumes the unfortunate

player.

The act of caricaturing the musical syntax here presents some challenges,

because Grieg’s theme is characterized by an almost comic degree of repetition, and

an expressive quality so menacing that it can hardly be taken seriously. It is already

119
oversaturated with the same motive, and itself grows so overwrought that there is

hardly room left to caricature it. Grieg himself described this theme as “something

that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and 'to-thyself-be-enough-ness' that I

can't bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt."38

Nonetheless, Chagrin manages to provide a caricature of the theme by intensifying

its maniacal, frenetic character. His version begins slowly, and like Grieg’s, the

tempo quickly increases and the texture thickens. Chagrin adds a great deal more

chromaticism to the melody, so much so that it undermines the tonal stability of

“Mountain King,” and he makes it all the more cacophonous besides by juxtaposing

the opening of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides overture atop the final line of this cue.

EXAMPLE 3-3: Caricature of “In the Hall of Mountain King”

38 Watts (1996), p. 17

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 This is neither an expansion of a fragment of its hypotext, nor is it a

saturation thereof, as Grieg’s theme is based entirely upon variants of a single

motive; the only way to further saturate it would be to have competing, overlapping

statements. Rather, we might call this technique amplification, or a hyperbolic

exaggeration of affect. In other words, whatever adjective we might use to describe

Grieg’s “Mountain King” theme, we could now modify with molto, très, sehr, or

another adverb in the language of our choice. And let us extend our chart of

caricature techniques accordingly.

SYNTACTIC PHONOLOGICAL CONTEXTUAL

Expansion: Saturation: Amplification:
Exaggeration Exaggeration Hyperbolic Presenting music
Changing the alongside, or in
of a of a exaggeration of
timbre, connection with
characteristi characteristic the affect of a
instrumentation, something that
c feature by feature by piece (e.g. If it’s
or range to alter a makes it seem
increasing increasing dark, make it
piece in an ridiculous by
the duration the frequency darker, etc.).
unflattering or association.
of its of its
ridiculous .
appearance appearance
manner.

TABLE 3.2: Techniques of Caricature (2)

3.3.1.4: The Very Blue Danube

A common device of pictorial caricature that I have not yet addressed is the

rendering of a likeness in an “ugly” way. Rivers explains that neo-Classical art “had

as its touchstone the concept of harmony” as “the antithesis of everything found in

caricature: exaggeration, distortion, excess, and nonconformity.”39 He likewise calls

caricature “the natural enemy of Classicism” arguing that “the perfect standard for

39 Rivers (1991), p. 35

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caricature to rebel against would be one that insists that measure, balance, and

reasonableness are the foundation of good art,”40 suggesting that “[t]he caricaturist,

even today to some extent, largely relies on the prejudice in favor of Classical

standards [of beauty] in order to make his point.”41 If this is also true of music, then

perhaps a modernist re-composition of music from the common-practice period

(especially, but not exclusively music of the Viennese neoclassical variety) can

perhaps be considered a form of caricature. Rather than using a value laden term

like “uglification,” let us call this technique distortion; this is perhaps still not value

neutral, but less problematic and polemical than one that invokes beauty and its

opposite.42

Chagrin provides us with a textbook-quality example of musical caricature in

the HSO through such distortion. We hear a tubist (with a barrel in the bell of his

instrument, presumably a keg) playing what sounds like the start of a deranged

waltz.43 Surely enough, the “trinkler” (or trumpet with a watering can spout for a

bell) enters with the melody of the Blue Danube, but instead of playing the iconic

major triad that forms the opening gesture of Strauss’ waltz, Hoffnung’s “trinkler”

plays the notes of an augmented triad. The chordal punctuation that follows this

gesture likewise comprises augmented triads, further distorting Strauss’ theme by

40 Ibid, p. 33
41 Ibid, p. 37
42 In an earlier draft, I considered the term “deformation” for this phenomenon, but this too is almost

as loaded as “uglification.” See Rodgers (2006, pp. 236-7) for a summary of how the term
“deformation” has been used in recent music theory. He contrasts Hepokoski and Darcy’s use of the
term in Elements of Sonata Theory (2006), with Straus’ (2006) discussion in relation to music and
disability.
43Immediately before this cue, some of the wind and brass players are shown using their instruments

as lengthy straws to consume alcohol during the performance. An oboist (based on a Hoffnung
drawing) with a devilish look on his face drinks beer through the pipe of his instrument as he plays
part of a paraphrased fragment of Beethoven’s Second Symphony.

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making the chords more dissonant, caricaturing the syntax twice. Yet this is not the

only form of caricature here; this example is one of the few cases where the music is

caricatured in syntactic, phonological, and contextual means. The phonological

element here results from the distorted timbre of these chords; it sounds as though

the instruments are playing under water. And it should sound this way given the

cartoon context; this music is, after all, played on a “trinkler,” and water comes out

of the bell in the cartoon as the trumpeter plays.

EXAMPLE 3-4: “Blue Danube” Caricature

Chagrin’s dissonant-waltz-as-caricature is hardly novel, of course. This was a

favorite tool of early modernist composers. Two examples immediately come to

mind: One is Bartók’s Fourteen Bagatelles (op. 6), the final piece of which is, in

Crawford’s words, “a bitter, demented Waltz.”44 Another is the brief moment of

Schoenberg’s 3rd String Quartet (first movement) which Cherlin calls a “waltz

parody,” as though “from a world lost as it remembers (or evokes a memory of) the

‘gay Vienna’ of Schoenberg’s youth.”45 Though neither of these pieces has a specific

44Crawford (2002), p. 130

Of interest, Bartók himself may have thought of this gesture as a type of caricature. In a letter from
January 1909 (quoted in Crawford), written a mere few months after the Bagetelles were composed,
he says the following about contemporary music: “It is curious that in music until now only
enthusiasm, love, grief, or at most distress figured as motivating causes—that is the so-called exalted
ideals. Whereas vengeance, the caricature, sarcasm are only living or are going to live their musical
lives in our times…I am unable to imagine products of art otherwise than as manifestations of the
creator’s boundless enthusiasm, regret, fury, distorting ridicule or sarcasm.” (Ibid, p. 133)
45 Cherlin (2007), p. 223

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hypotext upon which it is based, the act of satirical pastiche in these two examples

serves to caricature the conventions of a style more generally.

To summarize, these “distorted waltzes” present us with our fourth (and

final!) type of syntactic caricature, which will now be added to the chart. This type,

unlike the other three techniques of syntactic caricature, does not involve

exaggerating the traits of a hypotext. Caricature through distortion changes the

notes and rhythms of a piece in such a way that the result is most akin to the timbral

or registral changes of phonological caricature.

TYPE SYNTACTIC (Changing notes and rhythms) PHONOLOGICAL CONTEXTUAL

METHOD Expansion Saturation Amplification Distortion
Exaggeration Exaggeration of Hyperbolic Presenting
of a a characteristic exaggeration Alteration that Changing the music alongside,
characteristic feature by of the affect of presents the timbre, or in connection
feature by increasing the a piece (e.g. If piece in an instrumentation with something
increasing the frequency of its it’s “dark,” unfavorable , or range to that makes it
duration of its appearance make it darker, way, but by alter a piece in seem ridiculous
appearance etc.). blurring, not an unflattering by association.
accentuating or ridiculous
the stylistic manner.
traits.

RESULT Exaggeration of a trait in the music; something that The hypotext is changed, but No change to
(Musical) makes the hypotext sound “more like itself.” without exaggerating its the music
characteristic traits.
TABLE 3.3: Techniques of Caricature (3)

3.3.2: Non-Syntactic Caricature in The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra: Play With

Range

The four examples above are an exhaustive list of the syntactic caricatures in

the HSO cartoon. However, there are at least two excerpts that are caricatured in

both phonological and contextual ways that nonetheless invite commentary.

Hoffnung’s drawing of a flutist and a (literally!) pocket-sized piccolo player is

brought to life in the cartoon with the opening passage of Daniel-Francois Auber’s

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Fra Diavolo overture. After hearing a two-measure snare cadence (a truncation of

Auber’s opening gestures), the first melodic utterance is presented by a pair of flutes

(one alto, I presume), in the same key and range as Auber’s string theme. Changing

the instrumentation from strings to flutes alone does not count as caricature, but

when the piccolo player emerges from the flutist’s pocket for the tag of the phrase,

the range of the melody is pushed an octave higher. The second phrase continues in

the higher octave, until an even smaller player with a “sopranino piccolino” (or so I

suppose we should call it) appears in the piccolo player’s pocket to extend the range

an octave higher still. The pairing of the melody, whose range steadily goes higher,

with images of players, whose size steadily decreases (commensurate with the size

of their respective instruments), creates the impression that the melody here is

smaller than its sonic “likeness” in Auber’s original context.

The opposite musical transformation is used to animate another of

Hoffnung’s concoctions, the “String Tuba”. Hoffnung must have been quite fond of

this drawing, as it appears on the book’s cover, and it is the only other image in the

book besides the serpent that is paired with a caption: “This instrument is

sometimes referred to as the ‘Minstrel Tuba’ or the ‘Blow-Plucker.’ It is interesting

to note that the String Tuba is a member of both the string and brass families though

it is usually seated with the former.”46 In the cartoon, the string tubist, by his

lonesome, plays the “Pizzacato” passage from Delibes’ Sylvia.47 In this elephantine

46 Hoffnung (1955/1985).
Four out of fifty drawings are devoted solely to variants on the tuba, including the aforementioned
serpent and “Wagner Tuba,” the “String Tuba” discussed above, and a “Bass Tuba” drawn larger than
its player.
47 The excerpt was recorded by a tubist and harpist presumably, unless a real string tuba was

commissioned for the occasion.

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rendering of the “Pizzacto,” Delibes’ spritely string melody is sounded two octaves

down, almost making it sound “too big.” So both here and in the Auber excerpt,

Chagrin seems to play games with the “size” of the music, accomplished both by

altering the instrumentation and range of the music that is borrowed, and at least

with Auber, presenting the music in connection with images of corresponding size.48

3.4: An Aphoristic Interjection

In section 3.2 above, I mentioned that pictorial caricature can involve making

a feature of the subject larger or smaller. The Figaro example demonstrates how a

musical gesture can be expanded, but what about the inverse procedure of

contracting music? This could be a compelling method of caricature if a composer is

known for their aphorisms. Webern seems an easy target here, and in fact, Alban

Berg and Theodor Adorno have caricatured Webern in just this way. In his half-

personal, half-scholarly reminiscences of Berg, Adorno writes, “[t]ogether we once

concocted a Webern parody, consisting of a single quarter-note rest under a

quintuplet bracket and garnished with every conceivable symbol and performance

notation, which, to top it off, was then to fade away.”49 This is perhaps both a

contraction and a saturation, but one that is entirely silent.

48The associations of small size/high pitch and large size/low pitch are of course not entirely
arbitrary. A piccolo, after all, is smaller in size than, say, a bass flute. Perhaps a consequence of the
acoustic correlation between size and frequency, if a cartoon composer wants to “Mickey-Mouse” the
actions of a tiny hummingbird, a piccolo is perhaps the obvious choice of instrument. Conversely,
underscoring the actions of say, the ballet-dancing hippos in Disney’s Fantasia (1940) with high
winds is unabashedly ironic as the likely candidate would be tubas, bassoons, and contrabassi.
49 Quoted in Ross (2010)

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 This caricature demonstrates two important points: that expansion and

contraction are both viable techniques (though the prior is presumably much more

common), and that it is possible to create a caricature with no sound at all. In

another of Hoffnung’s books, Acoustics, there are number of drawing of pianists

“playing” works by certain composers. A performer who plays Liszt uses a whip to

tame the piano, for Boulez the performer stands atop a smashed piano, and most

topically, for Webern a man sits an infant on his lap to indiscriminately hit the keys.

Each of these images offers satirical commentary on music without any sound. 50

3.5 Translation plus Caricature

Although translation and copyphrase are distinct from one another because

of their irreconcilable goals and techniques, translation and caricature are more

compatible. One may simultaneous translate a piece into a new style, and

exaggerate the most recognizable traits of a composer. Some of my examples of

translation in Chapter 1 certainly have elements of caricature in them. P.D.Q. Bach’s

Last Tango at Bayreuth is perhaps a phonological caricature of Tristan for its

comical instrumentation—sorry, bassoonists—as much as it is translation to fit the

stylistic norms of tango. Similarly, Some of Lee’s Piano Variations may present the

style of the composers they imitate a little too well. The “Webern” variation is

maybe a little too sparse to be a passable imitation. And the Beethoven variation

seems to exaggerate the composer’s trademark of long-winded closing rhetoric. It

50In Hoffnung’s Acoustics, there are also several drawings of people listening to records, including a
shadowy figure listening to Wozzeck, cowering in the corner while nervously drinking brandy and
chain smoking. There is no sound in this caricature, but there is both graphic notation and the image
of someone listening to music.

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so happens that Lee is in good company is caricaturing this feature of Beethoven’s

syntax; some of the strongest examples of translation-plus-caricature that I am

aware of do just this.

3.5.1: Beethovenian Endings

Dudley Moore’s side-splitting translation of the “Colonel Bogey March,” in the

style of a middle-period Beethoven sonata is a brilliant example of musical

caricature. The performance is itself a lampoon of a piano recital; Moore knows

what he is doing is humorous, but never cracks a smile during the entire

performance, maintaining an all too serious demeanor. But even if we just hear a

recording of this piece without seeing Moore’s hilariously feigned earnestness, it is

still an effective caricature—perhaps the same cannot be said if Chagrin’s

caricatures were divorced from their visual accompaniment. Moore singles out two

features of Beethoven’s idiolect to exaggerate in his performance. First, he

incorporates a few extra rapid shifts of dynamics, tempo and expressive genre for

which Beethoven is known, saturating the piece with jarring juxtapositions. Next,

and most pointedly, he targets Beethoven’s terminal strategies, creating an

unusually extreme example of caricature through expansion.51

The piece is 134 measures long, and from about measure 72 onward, it

sounds as though every phrase will be the penultimate one, if not the very last.

51A remarkably astute analysis of Moore’s parody can be found in a YouTube comment (Accessed
March 2013): “Those who are more academic than I may correct me, but in essence, the Beethoven
sound is about long and insistent rhythmic passages, emphasis on passion rather than elegance,
juxtapositions of contrasting sections, and false endings. Dudley Moore captured all that very well.
Actually this is also an affectionate homage to Beethoven as well, since really you can only parody
someone when their sound is absolutely unique and unmistakable.” This academic, for one, feels no
need to offer any corrections.

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There are number of false endings, perhaps the most dramatic of which appears in

m. 118, with a brief tonicization of the bII that pulls the rug out from under a

seemingly final cadence. After a few more measures of relentless tonic-dominant

alteration, Moore pauses on a dominant triad in the penultimate measure, which of

course, we have no idea is the penultimate measure at the time. Feigning fatigue,

gasping for air, he finishes the piece with a rushed, matter-of-fact, and unsatisfying

iiø7-V7-I, the reaction to which is, “all that closing rhetoric, for this!?”

On the whole, Moore’s performance is more of a caricature of Beethoven

than it is a translation of “Colonel Bogey.” By the time he focuses on exaggerating

Beethoven’s terminal procedures, we lose sight of the “Colonel Bogey” tune. It is

still a translation, as Moore offers a few different Beethovenian takes on “Colonel

Bogey” earlier in the piece almost as a theme and variations, but it makes a better

example of caricature.52

3.6: Copyphrase plus caricature

3.6.1: Simpsons’ Copyphrase Re-Examined

Just as caricature and translation are not mutually exclusive, neither are

caricature and copyphrase. A few examples from the The Simpsons that I introduced

in the previous chapter bear re-examination to highlight the elements of caricature

in them. My first example from Chapter 2, “See My Vest” (Example 2-1) seems to

52 The same is true of the work of other such comic virtuoso pianists. Richard Grayson, for one, who
can actually improvise “X in the style of Y” pieces based on audience suggestions, usually abandons
the tune which he is translating for significant lengths, focusing on imitating (and at times
exaggerating) the style of the composer instead. Personal favorites are his version of John Williams’
“Imperial March” in the style of Beethoven, which is perhaps more of a counterfeit of Beethoven’s
style than a caricature. Again, we lose sight of the fact that it is a version of the “Imperial March,” but
it always sounds just like a Beethoven Sonata.

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caricature the rhyme scheme of “Be Our Guest,” exaggerating it through saturation

with more internal rhyme. In this case, the text of the copyphrase caricatures that of

its source, though not the music. Clausen’s “Dr. Zaius” (Example 2-2) is perhaps an

amplification of “Rock Me Amadeus” as well as a phonological caricature; it

exaggerates the campiness of “Rock Me Amadeus,” and depicts it unflatteringly with

intentionally amateurish electronic timbres. And lastly, his parodies of Nirvana’s

“Rape Me” and Bush’s “Glycerine” each exploit the most readily identifiable aspects

of each artist’s style and use them with greater frequency.

A trademark feature of Nirvana’s idiolect is a device that Chris McDonald

calls “modal subversion,”53 which in his words, is a “contradiction of the established

[or assumed] modality.”54 Conveniently, McDonald uses Nirvana’s “Rape Me” as a

didactic example of this technique. The chord progression during the verse of this

song (G#5, B5, D#5, F#5) contains three diatonic third relations, establishing an

assumed modality of G# Aeolian. However, the F-double-sharps in the melody,

McDonald explains, call “the modality into question twice,” demonstrating “a salient

feature of [Nirvana’s] songwriting style.”55 This characteristic F double-sharp only

appears once every four measures in the verses of “Rape Me,” but in “Shave Me,” it

appears twice—a simple, but efficient solution.

The elements of caricature in Clausen’s “Margarine” are not quite as

transparent, as the defining traits of Bush’s style are somewhat less marked than

Nirvana’s. Modal subversion is rarely, if ever found in their songs. Rather, perhaps

53 See McDonald (2000), p. 355

54 Ibid, p. 358
55 Ibid

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the most identifiable trait of Bush’s idiolect is the use of extended melodies with

remarkably narrow ranges, usually comprising only the first three scale degrees.

We find such economical melodies in at least half of the songs on their first two

albums, including (naming only the hits) “Machinehead,” “Comedown,” “Greedy Fly,”

“Swallowed,” “Cold Contagious,” “Mouth,” and—of course— “Glycerine,” the source

for “Margarine.” This is bland trademark, perhaps, but one that apparently Clausen

has noticed as well. He saturates “Margarine,” with more ^3-^2-^1 figures, but since

this is a copyphrase, and thus must be different enough from its source, he removes

some of the figures from the corresponding measures in which they appear in

“Glycerine,” but makes up for their absence elsewhere.

Both of these songs from “That 90’s Show” are examples of saturation

without expansion. In fact, the saturation is made all the more effective because the

songs are contracted; both are reduced to virtually nothing but the most

characteristic features of each artist. Especially in the case of “Shave Me,” we might

call this process caricature through simplification, which according to Rivers, is a

common technique in pictorial and literary caricature.56 One example, Rivers

explains, is Hitchcock’s self-caricatural drawing, which omits most his facial features,

thus bringing those that are included into sharper focus. Another appears in the

novels of Balzac, where it is typical to find sparse physical descriptions of characters

that only mention their most extreme features.57

56Inhis words, “A portrait (either pictorial or in words) might be composed of nothing more than a
few sketchy lines suggesting, let us say, a pair of eyeglasses and a moustache… leaving out all the
other features of a subject’s face. (1991, p. 47)
57 On this matter, he notes that “ a writer cannot submit the face in toto to the reader all at once the

way an artist can,” so “[a] certain judicious selectivity thus being standard procedure in any good
writing, it follows that a writer must truly carry this technique to the extreme in order for it to

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3.6.2: The Use of Barbershop on Family Guy

Family Guy’s creative team is apparently much enamored of the barbershop

style. Three such songs appear on the show, each illustrating a different paraphrase

technique. One is an entirely original barbershop number (that is to say, “original”

insofar as pastiche composition can be) that is faithful to musical characteristics of

the genre, neither attempting to caricature the style nor any particular piece.

Another is a caricature of barbershop style using an original number, and a third is

at once a copyphrase and a caricature, subjecting a standard barbershop tune to

hyperbolic expansion and saturation. I will discuss each in turn.

The “N.A.A.F.P. Anthem” (“National Association for the Advancement of Fat

People”) from the episode “The Fat Guy Strangler” (2005) is an original number in a

barbershop-choral style. It is a realistic imitation of the barbershop idiom with two

exceptions: First, the highest voice consistently has the melody, while in

barbershop the melody is more typically in an inner voice (although voice crossing

is not unusual in the genre—the other three parts move out of the way of the

melody). Also, the sophomoric humor of the lyrics (describing their vision of the

obese divine) is unbecoming of the genre, which makes for an ironic juxtaposition of

music and text. Perhaps this offers an element of contextual caricature, but nothing

is done to the music itself to exaggerate the barbershop dialect.

Another original barbershop song on Family Guy is called “You Have Aids,” in

which Peter and a barbershop quartet (in traditional dress: hats, canes, and all)

inform an unfortunate hospital patient of his condition. This song, though not based

constitute exaggerated simplification.” The examples from Balzac’s Pierre Grassou that Rivers cites
do exactly this. (Ibid, p. 50)

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upon any pre-existing barbershop tune (so far as I am aware) is not as faithful to the

musical style as is the “NAAFP Anthem.” It is a clear style parody, exaggerating the

typical ending rhetoric one finds in barbershop, creating a textbook example of

caricature—but caricature only, without copyphrase, as there is no single hypotext

upon which it is based. Just as in Dudley Moore’s Beethoven send-up, from about

the middle of the song on, it sounds as though every line is the penultimate one,

thumbing its nose at two of barbershop’s characteristic terminal devices: the

repetition of the final line of text (usually the third try is the charm to end a

barbershop song), and the brief cod(ett)as in the form of tags that so frequently

appear in the final measures of a song in this genre.

A third Family Guy barbershop number, “Say Goodbye to Manhood” (or “The

Vasectomy Song”58) is an example of both copyphrase and caricature. The source

for this song is “Goodbye My Coney Island Baby.” Exactly how many viewers of

Family Guy are familiar with this barbershop classic is anybody’s guess, so the

humor of paraphrasing it was likely lost on most fans. But even without knowing

the tune, certainly some viewers appreciated the fact that it pokes fun at the

barbershop style. The song appears after Peter and his wife Lois have a pregnancy

scare, and Lois suggests that Peter be vasectomized. Peter objects initially, because

he is unfamiliar with the term, so a Barbershop quartet is summoned to explain

what such a surgery would entail. Four singers appear in Peter and Lois’s bedroom,

replete with matching outfits and medical diagrams to explain the procedure in

graphic, techincal detail. (“You make a small incision in the scrotal skin, isolate the

58The “Vasectomy Song” has developed a cult following among men’s collegiate singing groups. No
fewer than six performances by different groups appear on YouTube.com.

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vas deferens…”) The quartet parody “Goodbye My Coney Island Baby” in its entirety,

and in fact their song is longer than a typical performance of its source.

The verses of “Say Goodbye to Manhood” are oversaturated with tags at the

end of lines, making for a long-winded yet spot-on caricature of both the song and

the genre. And in an even more extreme gesture, the chain of homophonic

dominant-seventh chords that serves as the (re)transition out of the ‘B’ section of

the song is replaced by a static dominant seventh chord, simultaneously simplifying

and expanding the length of this section ad absurdum. Overall, I would argue that

for a listener familiar with ”Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby” (perhaps a minority of

Family Guy viewers), the features of copyphrase and caricature are equally salient.

The song is mocked without mercy, but never does caricature subsume copyphrase,

as the source is always traceable.

3.7: Full Circle—The Opposite Musical of Caricature

Earlier in this chapter, I mentioned that there is no such thing as musical

portraiture, and that counterfeit is a better term against which to define caricature.

(And I maintain that this is so.) While in the visual arts, we can say with some truth

that portraiture is the opposite of caricature, with music, counterfeit is not

caricature’s antithesis. If there is an “opposite” of musical caricature, it should be

characterized by similar goals to that of portraiture. A portrait, whether on canvas

or camera is not a value neutral imitation—the objective is often to depict the

subject in the best possible light. Portraits still must be “realistic,” to a degree, but

anyone who has the resources to commission an artist to immortalize their likeness

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on canvas may expect minor improvements to their appearance in the end product.

A painter may gloss over minor “imperfections” (according to culturally specific

standards of beauty) and give their subject a more distinguished jaw-line, higher

cheekbones, and a nice ruddy complexion. Such enhancements are possible in any

visual medium of course, from sculpture to digital photography. Table 3.4 below

illustrates the correspondences between these practices in the sonic and visual arts.

DOMAIN: VISUAL SONIC

OBJECTIVE:
Satire Caricature Caricature
Value Neutral Imitation Candid photography Counterfeit
Improved Presentation Painted Portraiture ???
Posed Photography
Enhanced/Altered Photography
TABLE 3.4: Caricature and its counterparts

Let us now fill this empty cell of this chart. If there is an acceptable analog to

portraiture in the sonic arts, it should be a form of musical paraphrase that

somehow improves the source material, a sort of poietic amelioration. A wide range

of practices belong to this category. One is the Neoclassicist adaptations of

Stravinsky, Resphighi (et. al) that I mentioned in Chapter 1 as an example of time

translation; many of these are better examples of paraphrases for the purpose of

making piece a more suited to a composer’s tastes, or the tastes of their culture.

And of course, any re-orchestration or arrangement can be symptomatic of this

ameliorative impulse, not just those of the Neoclassical composers. (We might

include Wagner’s re-orchestrations of Beethoven, Mahler’s re-orchestrations of

Schumann, etc.)

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 Joseph Straus discusses this process of adaptation in Remaking the Past in

Freudian light, arguing that the changes composers make in arrangements and

orchestrations bring their aesthetic priorities into sharp relief. Just as sampling the

culturally specific adaptations of Chinese food around the world is often a better

window into local culinary values than it is a representation of Chinese taste,

sometimes the best way to learn what a composer values most artistically is to see

how they adapt, re-orchestrate, or arrange a piece of music rather than by studying

their “original” compositions.

While such ameliorative changes are often born of a preconscious, Freudian

slip, they need not be. Composers may also be wholly aware of the fact that they

view the alterations they make as “improvements.” And perhaps unsurprisingly,

these agentive adjustments often manifest themselves in remarkably similar ways.

The most common techniques of ameliorative paraphrase are the opposite of those of

caricature. If a piece is repetitive, a caricaturist might saturate a satirical version of

the piece with extra repetition of a common figure. But instead of making this “flaw”

all the more apparent, a composer who wishes to make a “better” version is likely to

de-saturate a piece if it has “too much” of any given pattern or gesture. An

amelioration, whether it is consciously thought of this way or not, is more likely to

excise gratuitous repetition or length. To illustrate these anti-caricatural techniques,

I will explore three paraphrases that improve upon their source so much so that

their respective hypotexts are made to look like caricatures.

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3.7.1: Charles Ives and the Great American Symphony

My first example is Ives’s paraphrase of the famous English horn solo from

Dvořák’s “New World Symphony” in the adagio of his own first symphony.

Burkholder offers the following evaluation: “Taken as a whole, Ives’s theme is an

elegant condensation of Dvořák’s, which is three times as long. Dvořák’s melody is a

tiny ternary form (ABA’), with repetitions in each phrase; in the Ives, nothing

essential is missing, but most repetitions within and between phrases are

trimmed.”59 Burkholder further notes that “every measure of the Dvořák is

represented in the Ives, and the omissions simply avoid redundancy.”60 If we listen

to Dvořák’s symphony after hearing Ives,’ this very redundancy—a “problem” that

may have escaped our attention without Ives’ critique—becomes all too noticeable.

It is perhaps too simplistic to say that ameliorative paraphrases always

reduce the length of the passage of the source that they adapt, while caricatures

increase the length of the excerpt they satire. Burkholder notes that in a few

passages of Ives’s First symphony, the composer “repeats more than he omits” from

Dvořák’s model, which makes it clear that even in an exceptionally strong case of

ameliorative paraphrase, contraction is not the only means of “improvement;” at

times, this process may entail developing a motive to further exploit its potential as

a germ from which a larger passage may grow.61 Yet, it seems that shortening, or

“tightening” a model and removing repetition to create a more concise version is the

default procedure—the two examples that follow attest to this.

59 Burkholder (1995), p. 92
60 Ibid
61 Ibid, p. 91

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3.7.2: Copyphrase as Amelioration of “Feed the Birds”

Most copyphrases on The Simpsons present a more compact version of their

source. At times, a more concise rendering of a piece is inevitably a critique of its

source, whether or not this is the intended effect. The copyphrase of “Feed the

Birds” from Mary Poppins (mentioned briefly in Chapter 2) is a remarkable

amelioration of its hypotext. Julie Andrews sings this song to the children as a sort

of lullaby, but it is a wonder they can even manage to stay awake for most of the

tune. It’s long winded, repetitive, and nothing terribly interesting happens in the

music or text—it’s even boring for a lullaby. Its copyphrase, “A Boozehound Named

Barney” is less than a third the length of its source; this alone “fixes” most of the

problems, but it is not the only improvement. Clausen’s version floats deftly

through a number of expressive genres, providing a depth to the music that was not

present in “Feed the Birds,” and expands the range of the vocal utterances to add

some much needed melodic interest. Further, the text of this song is enriched by its

diversity of poetic styles. While Mary Poppins sings many lines in the “voice” of the

poor women who sells bird-food for “tuppence a bag,” The Simpsons’ “Shary

Bobbins” offers a satisfying narrative frame at the songs beginning an end, allowing

Barney (the eponymous boozehound) to enter into first a lyric mode, lamenting his

penniless existence, and then a dramatic, dialogic mode, conversing with Moe the

barkeep. After hearing this version, I find “Feed the Birds” rather difficult to listen

to.

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3.7.3: The Reeducation of Frankie Valli62

Sometimes these ameliorative techniques can be found in covers of popular

songs as well. Many artists who cover a song change nothing more than timbre—

though this too can cast a song in a more (or less!) favorable light—but occasionally

we come across a cover that offers a poignant critique of an earlier version of the

song. Lauren Hill’s version of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” reveals

that verses in the original are deeply problematic. They are harmonically static (a

bit of interesting plagal motion notwithstanding), and the text, which is nothing

more than a loosely connected sequence of platitudes unfolds at an unbearably slow

pace—facts which become all too clear after hearing Hill’s amelioration. She slows

down the tempo drastically, which is a remarkably canny maneuver that kills two

proverbial birds with one stone; at this tempo, the number of measures in the verses

can be cut in half, and we are left with more time to revel in the chorus.

Also incisive is the choice to remove the campy brass interludes that appear

between the verse and the chorus in the original. This is hardly a crippling

amputation; by pruning the weakest branch, the remaining flowers bloom all the

brighter. This cut makes one wonder why these interludes were there in the first

place in a crooning song, as they do nothing but delay the onset of the strongest part

of piece.63 But she doesn’t banish this material entirely; she reforms the clunky,

plodding interjection as a graceful vocal duet overlain atop the chorus. It fits so

62This subheading is a reference to the Lauryn Hill album on which the cover discussed in this section
appears, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” is a bonus track on the
album.
63 The purpose of these interludes might have been to provide a dance break.

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naturally with the melody here that is seems as though the original had been

misassembled, and only in its present state is everything in the right place.

3.8: Conclusion: Caricature as criticism

Despite the fact that caricature and ameliorative paraphrase are performed

through largely the opposite techniques, the processes in fact have much in common.

As Dentith explains, “[o]ne of the typical ways in which parody works is to seize on

particular aspects of a manner or style and exaggerate it to ludicrous effect. There is

an evident critical function in this, as the act of parody must first involve identifying

a characteristic stylistic habit or mannerism and then make it comically visible.”64

As we have seen, the act of amelioration involves the very same first step of analysis

and identification of the infelicities in a piece, but instead of making them “comically

visible,” they are rendered wholly or partially invisible. Both caricature and

amelioration reveal the “flaws” of a composition, though they are attended to with

the opposite strategies of exacerbation and extraction. Yet they both have in

common the initial process of criticism. In fact, criticism may be a common feature

of all types of paraphrase. Translation, copyphrase, caricature, and ameliorative

anti-caricature alike can all be heard as a critique of their source, as can the types of

paraphrase I will discuss in the chapters to come.

64 Dentith (2002), p. 32

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Chapter 4: John Williams: Paraphraser or Plagiarist?

4.0: Framing the Problem

No music is composed in a vacuum. All music is intertextual; in virtually any

piece, there are moments that remind us of another. If this is taken a step further,

and one piece is explicitly based upon another, we can say that there is a

hypertextual relationship between the two. Surely all composers have tried their

hand at such a method, but if an artist’s works betray such a hypertextual

relationship too often, they may be derided as unoriginal, uncreative, or even

plagiaristic, especially when their hypotexts are not explicitly acknowledged.

Perhaps no composer is accused of such tacit appropriation more than John

Williams.

In casual conversation, one often hears that Williams borrows liberally from

the works of other composers. Perhaps we have said as much to our students, or

maybe we ourselves have been the student who learned the standard repertoire in a

survey class and could not help but notice the resemblances to film scores we knew.

Regardless, few would question that there is a robust intertextual relationship

between Williams’ scores and many works from both the late Romantic/early

Modernist orchestral literature, as well as the film scores of Hollywood’s “Golden

Age” by the likes of Max Steiner and Erich Korngold. However, the alleged

hypertextual element of Williams’ music has never been properly evaluated. There

is only a small body of scholarship on Williams' film scores—surprisingly little,

given both the quantity and wide cultural reach of this work—and while some

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authors mention resemblances to pre-existing works in passing, the question of

musical borrowing has never been the primary focus of a study.

My objective is to determine the degree to, and manner in which John

Williams bases his music on works by other composers. After explaining my

methodology, I posit which material is borrowed from what sources, and

demonstrate how John Williams alters and adapts pre-existing music for use in his

film scores, comparing his idiosyncratic manner of paraphrase to the practices

discussed in the previous chapters. We might expect Williams’ procedures to

resemble those of copyphrase most closely, as both are forms of borrowing for

filmic media—and arguably, because both are subsets of the larger practice of temp

tracking—but we will find that Williams’ techniques are quite different from those

of the most of the composers discussed so far. Occasionally, an example will remind

us of translation, copyphrase, or caricature, but the majority reveal an entirely

different approach to paraphrase.

4.0.1: Stumbling Blocks and Methodological Quandaries

A project with the lofty goals of “revealing” a composer’s unacknowledged

practice of paraphrase inevitably faces a few methodological challenges. As

Burkholder explains, “[s]tudies of … musical borrowing hinge on a claim that the

composer of one piece of music has used material or ideas from another piece.”1

Unless we have documentary evidence, he asks, “[h]ow can we be sure that the

similarity results from borrowing and is not a coincidence or the result of drawing

1 Burkholder (2010), p. 116

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on a shared fund of musical ideas?”2 In the case of John Williams, where the

apparent hypertextual relationship is rarely made explicit, one always faces this

nagging question.

Burkholder offers three categories of evidence that may be used in

determining the likelihood that a composer has borrowed from another:

1. “analytical evidence gleaned from examining the pieces themselves, including

the extent of similarity, exactness of match, number of shared elements, and

distinctiveness;”

2. “biographical and historical evidence, including the composer’s knowledge of the

alleged source, acknowledgement of the borrowing, sketches, compositional

process, and typical practice; and

3. evidence regarding the purpose of the borrowing, including structural or

thematic functions, use as a model, extramusical associations, and humor.”3

These categories provide me with a convenient frame to discuss my

methodology. Evidence of a historical or biographical nature is the simplest to

address in this case. Williams virtually never acknowledges that he has borrowed a

passage from another composer, yet all of the pieces I suggest as possible sources

are so well known that Williams is sure to have been familiar with them.4 And

although we know little about his compositional process, we do know that he

2 Ibid
3 Ibid, p. 117
4 Williams is hardly forthcoming about the sources of inspiration for all of his scores, though he has

occasionally compared his work to that of others in interviews. Describing his early work for the
British television version of Jane Eyre, he explains how he used “the modalities that gave the
ambiance of nineteenth century Yorkshire… somewhat in the same way that Vaughan Williams had.”
(Anderson, 2009, p. 465)
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generally works under a tight schedule, which suggests that his modus operandi

involves paraphrasing music from other sources as a method of producing large

quantities of music rather quickly.5

I consider evidence from the third category about the “purpose” for

borrowing on a case specific basis. If a passage of Williams’ music resembles a

programmatic work, sometimes there is a clear dramatic justification for alluding to

or borrowing from such a piece at a given moment in a film. If a program, or more

broadly, an extra-musical association of the source material is consonant with what

is happening on screen, the evidence for borrowing is all the stronger. (But if there

is no such correlation between the program and the film’s narrative, this is not

“proof” that Williams did not borrow from the potential source).

The vast majority of the evidence that I use necessarily comes through

analysis. I distill three basic parameters to examine: parity, duration, and

markedness. Parity includes a number of factors, including correspondences

between the pattern of notes and rhythms, similarity of timbre or instrumentation,

and pitch level. Williams does not generally quote from other sources directly, but

the more similar that is passage is to a possible source, the more likely it is that he

has borrowed from it. The notes and rhythms are never exactly the same, but if a

passage has the same key, range, or instrumentation as that of its apparent source,

this makes the case for borrowing somewhat stronger. 6

5 If there is evidence that he had to work at an unusually rapid pace, one could argue that is even
more likely that he would resort to borrowing in a particular score.
6 This is not to say that if the key and instrumentation are different, that borrowing is unlikely.

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 As for duration, the longer a passage corresponds to an apparent source, the

more likely it is the Williams has borrowed; if the excerpt exceeds the length of a

single phrase, then the evidence starts to become rather concrete. If an apparent

quotation is only a few notes long, than we stand on less solid of ground in arguing

that Williams has borrowed unless the figure is marked by some distinctive features.

The more singular the material is, the more likely it is that it is borrowed, regardless

of its length.

After considering the analytical evidence, and when appropriate, evidence

from the extra-musical associations from a possible source, at times it is still unclear

whether or not Williams has borrowed. A passage in one of his scores may evoke

another piece quite clearly, but without conclusive evidence, the proverbial jury

might be hung. The answer is rarely a clear “yes” or “no,” but rather it will usually

fall somewhere on the spectrum from certainly evocative to almost certain. Yet

there are some clear cases where Williams appears to paraphrase material for a

theme from a single, identifiable source. At times, a passage from one of Williams’

scores is similar enough to its apparent model that, as we shall see, to posit mere

coincidence seems to push the limits of plausibility.

4.0.2: Distinguishing the Intertextual from the Hypertextual

In academic scholarship, print journalism, and “vernacular criticism”

(Internet commentary) alike, there is generally a lack of precision is describing how

Williams uses music from other sources. All too often one reads that a Williams

score “sounds like” or “was inspired by” another piece without mention of why or

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how this is so. At times this is understandable—if a movie reviewer mentions that

moments of a score remind her of a piece from the classical literature, this is

probably sufficient. Nevertheless, greater specificity in describing Williams’

apparent use of existing music is necessary to arrive at a verdict on exactly how, and

how much, he does in fact borrow. To suggest that a piece was inspired by another

is quite another matter from suggesting that a piece has a clear model on which it is

based. When asserting that Williams’ music “sounds familiar,” one must attempt to

determine whether this a case of 1) stylistic allusion, 2) modeling, 3) paraphrased

quotation, or perhaps some combination of the above.

To be clear, it is not my goal to take to task all those who collapse the

distinctions between these categories. This taxonomic work is especially

challenging because there are not clear lines between stylistic allusion, modeling,

and melodic quotation and paraphrase. Two listeners might well disagree about

which category a resemblance to another piece might fall into, and further, the

categories are not mutually exclusive.7 I will focus primarily on those cases where

the evidence for borrowing is the most overwhelming (applying the methodology

outlined above), privileging thematic paraphrase over both modeling and allusion,

limiting study to the passages of film scores where Williams appears to borrow

more than style. A lot of ink could be (and has been) spilled on allusion, but this

tells us very little about William’s practice of paraphrase. Further, a study of

allusion alone would be of limited utility; music for film is meant to sound “familiar,”

7It is possible to borrow a melody (with or without alterations) without evoking the style of the
source piece, though modeling almost always entails stylistic allusion.

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and virtually every passage in Williams’ film scores can be heard as an allusion to

something.

4.1 Williams’ Style and Suggested Antecedents

The literature on Williams’ music is rife with comparison to the works of

familiar composers, both those who are most known for their concert music and

those whose fame rests primarily on their film scores. Before narrowing my scope

to focus on modeling and paraphrase in John Williams’ film music, it is helpful to

review which composers Williams has been compared to; unsurprisingly, it is these

composers from whom he seems to borrow the most. Holden says that Williams’

“big, bustling soundtracks… have established him as the most distinguished

successor to the grand symphonic tradition of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz

Waxman, Max Steiner, and Alfred Newman."8 And in the concert music world,

Williams’ music is most often likened to that of Copland, Dvořák, Holst, Strauss,

Stravinsky, and Wagner.9 Moormann discusses both concert and film music in the

same gesture, arguing that Williams “alludes to… some compositions by Beethoven,

Bruckner, Copland, Mahler, Schubert, Strauss, Tchaikovsky or Wagner, and also

some scores of Steiner or Korngold to present a sound-world that is as familiar as

8 Holden (1989), p 438. Comparisons to Steiner and Korngold are especially common. Moormann
(2010a) also mentions Steiner and Korngold as models for Williams’ style, as well as Bernard
Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa. Paulus (2000) mentions all of the above, and adds Burt Bacharach,
Henri Mancini, Nino Rota, and Ennio Morrico for their use of leitmotiv (if not for stylistic similarity).
9 Or in Holden’s words, “instead of creating pastiches of Rachmaninoff, Mahler and Strauss, Mr.

Williams has moved a little further ahead to Prokofiev, Bartok and Stravinsky for stylistic inspiration,
and even added dollops of electronic pop.” (1989, p. 440)

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possible,” while using the styles of Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Stravinsky, Penderecki or

Schostakovitch for the opposite purpose of alienation or agitation.10

4.2: Passages Modeled on Pre-Existing Music

4.2.1: John Williams and the “Rite of Strings”

John Caps offered some of the first scholarly recognition of Williams’ early

work, analyzing his music in several films from the 1970s. He compares the score

for The Poseidon Adventure (1972) to the work of Vaughan Williams, because it

“immerses us in an aura of the sea.”11 In Earthquake (1974), he mentions a “city

song” that resembles “sunrise from Copland’s Quiet City.”12 And of Jaws (1975), he

describes an “Idee fixe… punctuated by brass notes and a howling Stravinskian

tuba.”13 Each of these three observations is qualitatively different. The first is a

claim of stylistic allusion to the work of a composer more generally. The second is

slightly more specific, suggesting allusion to a specific piece—that one piece may

have inspired another. The third, about the resemblance of the Jaws theme to

Stravinsky’s music (though Caps does not say so explicitly) is stronger still; Caps

identifies a crystal-clear case of modeling.

Others have said much the same about the relationship between the Jaws

theme and Stravinsky’s Rite; Scheurer argues that “[t]he Great White’s music is a

10 Moormann (2010), p. 775. More specifically, Moormann argues that to create “an atmosphere of
unease, terror, and shock, the composer uses especially atonal passages, instruments in extreme
registers, low men’s voices, marcato accents, [etc.],” mentioning Witold Lutoslawski’s Concerto for
Orchestra, György Ligeti’s microtonal works, and more generally the sound-worlds of Bartok,
Schostakovich and Pendercki as likely models. (2010, p. 762)
11 Caps (1976), p. 274
12 Ibid, p. 275
13 Ibid, p. 278

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page ripped right out of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, echoing especially the

vigorous polyrhythms of the ballet’s opening.”14 The pitch material is not identical,

but in terms of affect and evocation, this is true enough. The latter portion of the

Jaws theme, after it grows in intensity, certainly does sound more than a bit like the

“The Augurs of Spring” portion of the Rite—the resemblance is unmistakable.15 To

be clear, though, this is a case of modeling rather than melodic paraphrase. The

texture of throbbing, heavily accented strings is borrowed, but not an altered

version of the notes and rhythms of a melody.

Williams seems to include passages modeled on “The Augurs of Spring” in

several other films, perhaps a dozen or more. Moormann, who has studied all of the

Williams-Spielberg collaborations in great detail, deems this trope common enough

to simply call it “Rite of Spring Strings.” He mentions the example in Jaws,16 as well

as ones in E.T.17, Minority Report18, War of the Worlds19, The Lost World

(especially!),20 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom21, Indiana Jones and the Last

Crusade22, and Hook.23 Other examples outside of Williams’ work with Spielberg can

be found in the first three Harry Potter films, and in the Star Wars saga. In A New

Hope (Episode IV), we hear this type of texture as the Storm troopers march in a

hanger of the Death Star; this is arguably the clearest example, and has drawn some

14 Scheurer 1997, p. 61
15 A comparison of the two recordings even appears on WhoSampled.com (Accessed October, 2012)
16 Moormann (2010), pp. 39-40, 76
17 Ibid, p. 103
18 Ibid, p. 292
19 Ibid, pp. 304, 315, and 318
20 Ibid, p. 368
21 Ibid, p. 484
22 Ibid, pp. 522 and 556
23 Ibid, p. 575

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internet commentary (more on this below).24 Such music also appears in the

opening battle sequence of Stars Wars Episode III when Obi-Wan and Anakin

approach General Grievous’ ship to retrieve that captured Chancellor.

Williams may likewise model parts of his scores on “The Glorification of the

Chosen One” section of the Rite, generally when a hero is in mortal danger. The

clearest example is in Jurassic Park, upon Ellie Sattler’s discovery of raptors in the

shed.25 In this example, as in Jaws, we might imagine that there is programmatic

significance to saluting Stravinsky’s Rite: If the ritual depicted in the ballet, as

Taruskin reminds us, involved cannibalizing the sacrificial victim, the action on

screen in these films of earthly predators consuming human flesh seems to fit nicely

with the music of the Rite.26 Another passage apparently modeled on the “The

Glorification of the Chosen One” appears in the iconic opening sequence of Raiders of

the Lost Ark at eight minutes into the film when Indy jumps across an open pit to

escape the perils of the temple.27

4.2.2: Wheels a-turning: Hanson’s Symphony No. 2

The music of Howard Hanson is one of the most important stylistic

antecedents for Williams. Hanson’s symphonies, especially his (relatively) well-

24 Lieb has a video on YouTube playing recordings of this passage of the Rite and of Williams’ music
for the Storm Troopers side by side. Arguably, this is Williams’ most similar passage to “The Augurs
of Spring,” and it is unsurprising that someone has noticed it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9IV5u9iwuQ (Accessed November 2012)
25 Similar music appears throughout Jurassic Park’s sequel, The Lost World (1997) in comparable

moments of dinosaur-based danger.

26 See Taruskin (1995), p. 11
27
Lieb also suggests (through his YouTube video) that in Star Wars Episode III, the General Grievous
theme (heard generally when Obi Wan is near said villain) is likewise based upon this portion of The
Rite. This example is not as convincing as the others I have listed, but it is not without merit.
Another such passage appears in The Empire Strikes Back, when Han is running to find Leia in the
besieged Hoth base. Similar “danger” music can be heard here, though the resemblance to the Rite is
significantly less striking than the example from Jurassic Park discussed above.

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known Romantic Symphony (No. 2) could well be used as the soundtrack to a

blockbuster—and in fact a passage of this piece was used in Aliens (1979), without

Hanson’s permission, it so happens.28 Hanson’s somewhat conservative style,

evocative of Strauss, Stravinsky and Wagner makes his music a perfect stand in for

Williams.’29

Karlin calls Hanson’s symphony as a "role model" for E.T. (in a film music

textbook), but does not explain how or why this is so.30 This information could

make for a useful piece of historical/biographical evidence for borrowing, if it is true.

Regardless, the scoring of the bicycle chase scene in E.T. certainly does have a

similar texture to the opening of the third movement of Hanson's symphony.31 Both

begin with a repeated falling pattern in the high winds and strings as background,

followed by a lower brass melody. Comparing the notes and rhythms of these

brassy melodies does not make for a convincing case of paraphrase, but modeling

seems likely enough.

Williams seems also to base a brief portion of the Jurassic Park score on this

passage. As the main characters arrive on the island and ride in jeeps to view the

dinosaurs, there are a few moments that resemble this passage of Hanson’s

28 Cohen explains, “Hanson was not consulted by his publisher on the granting rights for this use, and
when he found out about it after the movie opened, he was extremely angry. Eventually he decided
that it was not worth trying to fight.” (Cohen 2004, pp. 24-5)
29Hanson’s music, like Williams,’ is full of allusions to Stravinsky’s “Russian works” like the Rite. And

the final movement of his first symphony (The “Nordic Symphony”) is unmistakably modeled on the
Valkyrie theme from Die Walküre.
30 Karlin 1994, p. 6. There are some internet rumors about music from Hanson’s Second Symphony

appearing in an early trailer for the film, which can be found here: http://filmus-
l.bernardherrmann.org/?t=e-t-and-howard-hanson-was-re-david-rose (Accessed January 2013)
I have found no evidence to confirm this, but neither have I found evidence to the contrary.
31 Arguably a few of the themes in E.T. bear comparison to other orchestral pieces by Hanson as well.

The “Belief theme” (see Moormann 2010) is reminiscent of a theme from Hanson’s first symphony
that is first stated at rehearsal Q of the first movement.

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symphony vaguely, but as the jeeps drive down the hill towards the point where

they stop to view the brachiosaurs, high string and wind falls appear again that

unmistakably evoke Hanson; the argument for modeling is even more convincing

here than the passage in E.T.32

Note that in both cases, these figures seem to accompany rapid movement,

specifically the turning of wheels, either on a bicycle or jeep—not quite so as to

“Mickey Mouse” the actions on screen, but to provide subtle, sympathetic support

for what we see. A passage from Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade provides further

support for this “wheel hypothesis;” when Indy struggles with the Nazi soldiers for

control of an army tank—when we see the belt-wheels of the tank spinning, no

less—we hear a texture that sounds conspicuously like the familiar passage from

Hanson.

4.3 Melodic Paraphrase: Four potential (yet problematic) examples

4.3.1: The borrowed Jaws motive?

Perhaps the most iconic musical moment in film history is the ascending

semitone of the Jaws motive. We know that the shark is coming after hearing only

two notes; the theme announces its arrival long before it is seen. Moormann

suggests about a dozen possible sources for this motive—both for the ascending

semitone alone, and for the Jaws theme in its entirety (mentioned above in the

discussion of modeling). His thoroughness is admirable, though some of the sources

he suggests are less convincing, and he omits what (at least to my ear) is the most

32Unfortunately, I have been unable to obtain the score for this portion of Jurassic Park, and such a
passage is not easily transcribed. A comparison of the recordings is nonetheless convincing.

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striking resemblance: The opening of the fourth movement of Dvořák’s Symphony

No. 9.

EXAMPLE 4-1: Jaws and its potential source

An isolated ascending semitone in the low strings with similar rhythm and

articulation begins both pieces. Having heard the Jaws theme before having heard

Dvořák’s Symphony, I cannot help but think of one when I hear the other. (Surely

I’m not alone here.) Yet the two are not in the same key, and the respective

passages are only similar for a few measures. Because of the length of the

resemblance, and the fact that the instrumentation and interval itself are relatively

unmarked, it is dubious to posit that Williams borrows this motive from Dvořák

(even though, as I will argue below, Williams is not shy to borrow from this very

symphony in other scores). If it were, say, a xylophone and English horn playing a

minor ninth, a case for borrowing from a mere two notes might be more easily made,

as this is more distinctive, both timbrally and structurally. Two notes can be

perfectly evocative, but it is not conclusive evidence of borrowing.

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4.3.2: Rebel Fanfare from Star Wars

Sometimes a slightly longer passage may evoke another piece quite clearly,

but arguing that Williams has borrowed is still difficult because the material is too

common to pin it down to a single source. A prime example is the “Rebel” theme

from the Star Wars saga (alternatively called the “Empire” theme), which comprises

brassy major triads leaping around by minor third. This motive has much in

common with a pair of passages from Hanson’s Second Symphony.

EXAMPLE 4-2: Star Wars “Rebel Motive” and its potential source

Note that both the Williams motive and the first of the two passages from

Hanson’s symphony involve motion within the same octatonic system. The excerpts

certainly sound alike, but the argument for borrowing here might be somewhat

more convincing if there were only a single source that this “Rebel” theme

resembled. Hanson’s Romantic symphony is clearly not the only place where we

find such planing. Another potential source is found in The Rite of Spring, “Ritual of

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the River Tribes,” and surely more examples of motives like this can be found in the

standard repertoire. Yet no piece, so far as I am aware, sounds so much like this

familiar Star Wars motive that the evidence for borrowing is overwhelming.

EXAMPLE 4-3: Octatonic Brass in The Rite of Spring

4.3.3: Hook: Pan, Tinkerbell, and Classical Precedents

The score to Hook (1991) is rife with material that evokes works from the

classical literature. One of Williams’ finest scores, it serves as a delightful sonic

background to a wild fantasy film, recalling the styles of any number of orchestral

composers. Moormann identifies resonances with works by Debussy, Holst, Mahler,

Mussorgsky, Ravel, Shostakovich, Strauss, Stravinsky, and Wagner—and these

suggestions are accurate, but most are cases of mere allusion. Yet some parts of this

score do seem to suggest more than intertextuality with familiar works. Moormann

notes that portions of Tinkerbell’s music are modeled on “Mercury” from The

Planets, while Hickman suggests that “Williams engages in a bit of musical fun by

adapting [this] passage from Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet, since Peter initially thinks

that she is firefly (31:00).”33 Both of these assertions are sonically convincing, and

33Hickman (2006), p. 410

The passage Hickman refers to is presumably from the ballet’s introduction or one of the early parts
of the first tableau; he surely does not refer to the iconic “Dance of Kastchei’s Retinue” or the
“Disappearance of Kastchei’s Palace”.

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they fit with the program quite well; the lighted, mercurial Tinkerbell, in her first

appearance on screen, is quite literally serving as a “winged messenger.”34

If there is a case of paraphrase in Hook, it is found in the heroic theme

representing Peter Pan, which has much in common with the famous “Valkyrie

Theme” from Wagner’s Ring. Both themes 1) comprise four successive statements

of a five-note motive, 2) are in 9/8 meter, 3) are at similar tempi, 4) are played by

brass instruments over a background of pulsing strings, 5) and feature abrupt

chromatic shifts.

Wagner, “Valkyrie Theme,” (Die Walküre)

Williams, Peter Pan’s Theme, Hook (1991)

EXAMPLE 4-4: Peter Pan’s Theme and its potential source

Despite the many similarities between these two themes, however, the

resemblance between the two is not so crisp that one can momentarily forget

whether they are listening to Wagner or Williams.35 Once again, there is insufficient

evidence to argue that Williams has borrowed, in this case because of parity rather

than duration or markedness.

34 As another example of modeling, Moormann argues that the theme representing Captain Hook and
his ship (The “Jolly Roger”), is evocative of The Flying Dutchman overture. The shared association
with mythical sea farers strengthens the claim. While the precise notes and rhythms have little to do
with one another, the textures are similar enough, suggesting that William’s theme could be modeled
on Wagner’s.
35
Further, there isn’t an especially clear programmatic reason for using music from Die Walküre in
this context. Peter Pan isn’t exactly a Brünnhilde figure, although there are some superficial
similarities between their respective abrupt entrances as part of a rescue operation.

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4.3.4: Fanfare for a Spielberg Blockbuster

Williams appears to quote Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for a Common Man in

three of his scores for Spielberg films: Always (1989), Saving Private Ryan (1998),

and Lincoln (2012). Anyone familiar with Copland’s Fanfare will likely recognize

this. Moormann notes these apparent salutes to the Fanfare in the two earlier films,

and mentions the potential programmatic significance of borrowing from Copland.

Saving Private Ryan is, of course, the story of American soldiers in World War II—

quite literally, the “common men” to whom Copland referred—and Always, though

the characters are firefighting pilots in (then) present-day America, is a remake of A

Guy Named Joe (1943), which is about US military pilots of World War II. Adding

Lincoln to the mix, it is clear that all three movies depict the trials and sacrifices of

American heroes.

EXAMPLE 4-5: Copland, Fanfare for a Common Man, mm. 13-18

EXAMPLE 4-6: Always, Versions of the Main Theme

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EXAMPLE 4-7: Saving Private Ryan, “Hymn to the Fallen” (Credits)

EXAMPLE 4-8: Suite from Lincoln

The themes from Always and Saving Private Ryan resemble Copland’s

Fanfare for the opposite reasons; the prior for its melody, and the latter for its

texture and instrumentation. And the Suite from Lincoln (Williams’ most recent

score) falls somewhere between the two. It begins with a solo clarinet melody,

followed by a Clarinet-Flute pairing, analogous to Fanfare, which begins with a solo

trumpet, soon joined by a horn. Monger describes this theme as “a cornucopia of

measured yet soul-stirring, Aaron Copland/Randy Newman-imbued Americana”—

an apt description indeed.36

So the resemblance to Copland’s music is clear in each of these themes, but

even still, none makes the most defensible example of paraphrase. The themes all

sound plenty like Fanfare, but there are a number of other pieces by Copland that

they resemble as well. And further, the “Copland sound” is itself derived from the

American military band ceremonial music tradition, so it is just as likely that

Williams was influenced by the same sources as Copland was as it is that he

borrowed directly from Copland.

36Monger (2012), Allmusic.com (Accessed January 2013)

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4.4: Melodic Paraphrase—Three Clearer Examples

The four groups of examples listed above, though perfectly evocative of

familiar pieces are all problematic for one reason or another. One is too short,

another has too many potential sources, the third, though plenty lengthy, resembles

its apparent source too vaguely, and the last group of excerpts might be a case of

shared influence rather than borrowing. Williams may have paraphrased the

sources I have suggested in these cases, but we are on thin ice in making such an

argument without qualification. However, there are plenty of examples that leave

less room for second guessing.

4.4.1: Superman and Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration

One of the clearest cases of paraphrase appears in John Williams’ score to

Superman. The memorable “Love Theme” has a primary motive quite similar to that

of Richard Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung. The notes are not all the same, though the

leap up to high ^3 and ensuing stepwise descent to an elongated ^2 makes Williams’

motive immediately recall Strauss.’ Further, the rhythm, contour, and tempo are

virtually identical. These motives even develop similarly, appearing at least a dozen

times throughout their respective pieces in a variety of keys (at least five in each), as

well as in different registers and instrumentations. With strong evidence from

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parity, duration, and markedness, the only way that the resemblance could be a

coincidence is if Williams was entirely unfamiliar with Strauss’ tone poem.37

EXAMPLE 4-9: Superman “Love Theme” and its apparent source

4.4.2: E.T. Main Theme and the Dumky Trio

The main theme from E.T. is one of Williams’ best-known; only a few tunes

from Star Wars, Harry Potter, Jaws, and Raiders of the Lost Ark can possibly compete

in cultural ubiquity.38 In its thirty-year afterlife, several authors have noted that this

theme has much in common with an important motive from the final movement of

Dvořák’s Fourth Piano Trio (“Dumky”), op. 90. The evidence for borrowing here is

convincing enough that Moormann was moved to include a graphic example (one of

the very few in his book) to display the two themes side-by-side. He compares only

mm. 164-7 of Dvořák’s trio to first two measures E.T. theme, which is plenty

compelling, but when we compare the latter to the opening of the movement as well,

37 Some internet authors have noticed this resemblance as well. Recordings of the two clips side by
side can be found here: http://patterico.com/2007/08/15/john-williams-thief-the-proof/ (Accessed
February, 2013)
38 E.T. (1982) was shown in theaters for the 30th anniversary of its release in October of 2012,

preceded by a short “making of/reception of” video, during which the narrator rhetorically asks (not
quite in these words), “can we see the footage of Elliott flying in front of the moon without hearing
Williams’ memorable theme?” This produced a visceral nod from many audience members.

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we see that the E.T. theme, while much closer to the Dvořák’s later statement, shares

certain features with the earlier one, namely the descent to low ^5. As a result, the

E.T. theme, as is, would not sound out of place as the final varied statement of the

main theme in the context of Dvořák’s trio.

EXAMPLE 4-10: “Dumky” Trio Motives compared with E.T. Main Theme

EXAMPLE 4-11: “Dumky” Trio, VI, mm. 164-175

EXAMPLE 4-12: E.T. Main Theme

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 Comparing a longer sample of the E.T. theme (Example 4-12) to the end of

the “Dumky” trio (Example 4-11) reveals that the melodic similarities do not end

with this single motive rising from C to G. The respective second iterations of the

primary motive both peak on A, and the respective third statements reach a focal

point of C, leaving little room for doubt that Dvořák’s melody serves as the basis for

Williams.’ The two are quite close—closer to one another than a source theme and

copyphrase generally are. Walter Murphy, Ron Jones, and Alf Clausen would likely

change quite a bit more if (hypothetically) one among them were to compose a

theme for use on television designed to signify Dvořák’s melody. That said, his

characteristic changes to rhythm and meter are quite unlike the techniques of

copyphrase, where rhythm is generally preserved.

4.4.3: E.T. and Hanson’s “Romantic Symphony

In the discussion of modeling above, I suggested that certain passages of

the E.T. score seem to be based upon the third movement of Hanson’s “Romantic”

Symphony No. 2. It is also quite clear that another theme from E.T. is a paraphrase

of a portion from this movement as well. As far as I am aware, this theme has not

been named in the scholarship on E.T., but it is one of the many important motives

that appear in the concert excerpt “Adventures on Earth.” The source from which

the motive is apparently derived is somewhat of an ostinato in Hanson’s symphony.

I will present two of the strongest of the resemblances between the two works.

The respective first statements of this motive in each piece correspond

closely. Williams’ first iteration features analogous planing over a steady pedal, and

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similar orchestration to Hanson’s figure, only substituting trombones for bassoons.

As is typical of his practice, he changes the meter, although a shift from 4/4 to 2/4 is

perhaps not perceivable by ear, the occasional measures of ¾ notwithstanding.

EXAMPLE 4-13: E.T. excerpt and its potential source (1)

Some later statements of this motive in E.T. also correspond quite clearly to

passages of Hanson’s symphony, again featuring almost identical orchestration.

What is striking in the latter case (shown below), is that despite the change of

notated meter, the rhythms of Williams’ paraphrase are identical to those of the

source. This is a rare case where Williams uses the same techniques as the cartoon

composers: preserving the rhythm, but changing the contour of the melody. And

like the previous example of the E.T. primary theme, the resemblance here between

the apparent hypotext and hypertext is perhaps too similar to be used a copyphrase.

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EXAMPLE 4-14: E.T. excerpt and its potential source (2)

4.5 Star Wars and the use of pre-existing music

In a 1997 interview, Williams explained how the music for Star Wars was

designed to be “emotionally familiar.” Of this score, he says that “[i]t was not music

that might describe terra incognita but the opposite of that, music that would put us

in touch with very familiar and remembered emotions, which for me as a musician

translated into the use of a 19th Century operatic idiom, if you like, Wagner and this

sort of thing.”39 Williams’ self-comparison to Wagner is oft cited (and evaluated);40

39
Byrd (1997), p. 18

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at least three studies compare Wagner’s and Williams’ respective use of leitmotiv,

perhaps the most Wagnerian element of Williams’ style.41 However, I argue that the

music for Star Wars has closer stylistic precedents than Wagner’s Ring, the use of

leitmotiv notwithstanding. Lerner aptly singles out Stravinsky, Holst and Korngold

as the primary influences on the music for Star Wars.42 As we shall see below, the

work of these composers serves as far more than inspiration for Williams; many of

the themes in the Star Wars saga are unmistakable paraphrases of some of their best

known pieces.

4.5.1: Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV, 1977)

Williams’ music for the first installment of the Star Wars saga is simply

saturated with borrowed material, perhaps more so than any other of his scores. At

times there appears to have been little effort to hide the fact that the material is

borrowed; some of the resemblances are barely paraphrased at all. Two factors

may explain the ubiquity of such borrowings. The first is the time restriction

Williams faced in composing the music for A New Hope. He had a mere six weeks to

score about 90 minutes of music, which is a daunting task even with the help of

professional orchestrators.43 Another cause, perhaps of equal importance, is the

fact that Williams may not have taken the job quite seriously enough. Paulus

suggests that some of the problems with the music for A New Hope (when compared

with the balance of the trilogy) are “probably the result of the composer’s conviction

40 Of this claim, Hubbert argues that "[a]lthough Williams refers to ... Richard Wagner as his musical
source [for Star Wars], his theme-for-every-character approach... suggest more specifically the
scoring techniques of Max Steiner.” (2011, p 387) She also considers Star Wars more "Steineresque"
because of Williams’ "use of preexisting musical styles.” (Ibid)
41 See Buhler (2000), Paulus (2000), and Bribitzer-Stull (forthcoming).
42 Lerner (2004), p 98
43 See Anderson (1998/2009), p. 467

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that he was writing music for a light film that would not have too much response

from the public and hence did not require so very much effort to compose.” 44

Williams has said so himself, explaining that he “was thinking of it as a kind of

Saturday afternoon movie for kids really, a kind of popcorn, Buck Rodgers Show.”45

At the time, it was impossible to know what kind of cultural impact Star Wars

would have. Williams was blissfully unaware that this movie would be part of a

trilogy, let alone that he would score yet three more films in the distant future. 46 It

is difficult to say whether or not Williams would have borrowed as much as he did

(or would have done so more covertly) had he suspected that the films would have

such an enthusiastic reception, but the fact that there are fewer obvious borrowings

in the latter films of the original trilogy suggests that this is so. Paulus argues that

“when the box office success of Star Wars outdid the most sanguine expectations,

and when Lucas stated that there would be sequels, the composer got down to work

much more seriously.”47

4.5.1.1: Main Title Theme and Kings Row

The main title theme is the very first music that we hear in all six of the Star

Wars movies, and along with the “Imperial March” (Darth Vader’s theme, first

44Paulus (2000) p 172

She notes that “in the chronologically first film… his themes on the whole follow each other (and
appear in predictable places),” whereas in the later films there is evidence of more advanced
techniques of thematic development. (Ibid)
45 Byrd (1997), p. 18
46Williams may yet score another trilogy of Star Wars films. Episode VII is to be released in 2015,
thanks to Disney’s multi-billion dollar purchase of Lucasfilm. If Williams (now 81 years old) is alive
and well enough to do so, he may well agree to score them, but to my knowledge, no composer has
been selected.
47 Paulus (2000), p. 172

More seriously perhaps, but not with the luxury of a great deal more time to work; Kalinak reminds
us that “for The Empire Strikes Back, Williams had less than eight weeks, from the initial spotting
session… to the recording sessions.” (1992, p. 190)

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introduced in Empire Strikes Back), it is perhaps one of the best known themes in

film history. It is almost certain that this theme is a paraphrase of Erich Korngold’s

main theme from Kings Row (1942); to hear the similarity, there are several videos

available on YouTube comparing recordings of both themes side-by-side.48 The

resemblance between the two is well documented in the scholarly literature.

Scheurer says of the Star Wars main title, “[l]ike Korngold’s theme, it begins with a

triplet pick-up to more quickly propel the opening melodic leap of a perfect fifth,

which is then followed by a stepwise descending three-note figure.”49 As he

suggests, “the first five notes are almost exactly the same,” and provides the

following example50:

EXAMPLE 4-15: King’s Row vs. Star Wars (from Scheurer)

The similarities between the two melodies speak for themselves, but the

texture of the two pieces is quite different. Lerner describes the Star Wars main title

as “brassy, bold, and masculine.” The King’s Row theme is plenty brassy and, and

perhaps “bold,” but it lacks some of the martial character of the Star Wars theme.

48 The best of the comparative recordings can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V47enEvsafQ (Accessed December 2012)
49 Scheurer (1997), p. 63
50 Ibid, p. 62

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Both themes are anthemic, but Williams’ belongs to a different expressive genre. It

is a military march, replete with a battery of percussion, while Korngold’s is a more

like a hymn with its chorale texture. The resemblance between the two melodies

certainly could be a coincidence, but it is far easier to believe that a professional film

composer—one who likely saw King’s Row at the cinema, which was released within

a week of his tenth birthday—knew quite well what he was doing.51 Scheurer

suggests that through a salute to Korngold, Williams evokes nostalgia for “the

golden age of movie-going,” arguing that his music “does indeed recall the great

swashbuckling films and epics of decades past, and it does so unabashedly and

without irony.”52

Another reason for the parallel between the two themes is perhaps, as Lerner

notes, that both Star Wars and King’s Row are “coming-of-age narratives about a

male protagonist,” Luke and Parris respectively. The main title theme of Star Wars

is, to an extent, associated with Luke, as the theme most often transforms (at least in

A New Hope) to match his emotional or physical state. The theme is not exclusively

Luke’s, however. Hickman reminds us that in the prequels, “[p]eriodically, Williams

quotes Luke Skywalker’s theme during a battle scene, with no reference to his

51 So far as I am aware, Williams has not admitted to borrowing from Korngold. However, while
recording the music for The Phantom Menace (1999), which included re-recording the main title
theme, he mentioned that something he was recording was an “homage to old man Korngold,” but it
is unclear to which passage of music this referred. (Dyer, 1999)
52 Ibid. Scheurer’s full explanation merits extended quotation. Of the similarity to the Golden Age

films, he recalls that “[i]n those days one sat in the theatre waiting in anticipation for the lights to go
down, the curtain to open, and the studio’s triumphant fanfare to fill the darkened theatre. Then the
main theme would emerge out of the fanfare, signaling that what was to follow would be heroic and
romantic, something that would take you out of yourself and your life and transport you to, well,
someplace far, far, away—maybe even a galaxy. That is what the great themes of Korngold and
Steiner did, and that is what Williams accomplished with his Star Wars theme. And heroic it is… In
short, from the beginning the heroic note is struck, and it is struck in a very nostalgic fashion as well.”

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character.”53 Bribitzer-Stull calls this the “Heroism theme,” which is perhaps more

accurate.54 That the theme does not correspond isomorphically to his character is

most clearly proven by the fact that it is not used to accompany Luke’s birth in

Episode III, while the theme for his twin sister Leia does appear, however briefly.

But the main title theme is nonetheless associated with Luke to an extent; the one

circumstance in which it is sure to appear is when Luke swings into action.

4.5.1.2: Droids on Tatooine

A mere few minutes into A New Hope, the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO are sent to

the planet Tatooine with a message for Obi-Wan Kenobi. R2 follows his

programmed instructions to find Obi-Wan immediately, but C-3PO selects a

different path. As the latter wanders off on the barren, desert planet, we hear music

(hereafter “desert music”) that is nearly a copy of the introduction of Part II (“The

Sacrifice”) from the Rite of Spring. This is one of the most obvious borrowings in the

entire film, and others have noticed it as well.55 One YouTube author has a video

that plays recordings of the two passages side by side, and then simultaneously(!),

deeming this the work of “John Stravinsky.”56 The oscillating wind patterns in the

two pieces are nearly identical, though the orchestration differs slightly; Williams’

version has more brass, as well as some percussion. The two even develop

similarly—Williams’ music here grows in intensity as the range expands and the

53 Hickman, (2006) p. 439

54 Bribiter-Stull (forthcoming), p. 32
55 Hickman, for one, notes that “a passage derived from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring appears just after

the droids split up on Tatooine (10:25).” (2006, p. 331)

56 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9IV5u9iwuQ (Accessed December 2012)

The comparison of these two passages begins at 2:58.

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dynamics grow louder just as Stravinsky’s does, though Williams’ does so more

quickly.

Meanwhile, R2D2, who was following the coordinates to Obi Wan’s last-

known whereabouts, is intercepted by Jawas (dwarflike people native to Tatooine).

After the Jawas stun R2D2 and carry the droid to their vehicle, we hear a theme in

the high brass (see above) that sounds almost identical to a portion of “Mars, the

bringer of war” from Holst’s suite, The Planets. The combination of the dotted

rhythms and chromatically planing triads in the high brass make for an obvious

resemblance to Holst’s theme. The material at rehearsal II and III of “Mars” is a clear

model, especially mm.45-49.

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EXAMPLE 4-16:

Mars/Jawa

171
 Making the case for borrowing all the more convincing is the fact that the

Jawa theme appears three times in total, curiously mirroring the three statements of

its apparent source in The Planets. The second statement of the source theme in

“Mars” begins in the lower strings and winds (starting at m. 96), and when R2 and C-

3P0 are re-united on the Jawa’s transport, we hear a theme derivative of this version.

The third appearance in “Mars” (starting at m. 143) is again higher in register, much

like Williams’ final statement of the Jawa theme. If there were only the single

appearance the Jawa’s music, perhaps the evidence for borrowing from Holst would

not be quite so strong, but given the three parallel (if not entirely identical)

appearances, a coincidence seems almost impossible. Further, the significance of

borrowing from a suite named for exotic celestial bodies seems rather transparent.

Despite Williams’ claim that the music for Star Wars would be warm, romantic, and

“emotionally familiar,” this is—quite literally—the music of “terra incognita.” (And

why not borrow music from a movement called “Mars” to create a theme for the

mysterious dwellers of a fictional red planet?)57

4.5.1.3: The Death Star!

When Han, Luke, Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan find themselves on the Death Star

as the unlikely rescuers of Princess Leia, there are (at least) two more rather clear

instances of borrowing—from the same two sources upon which the Tatooine music

was modeled. A theme (of sorts) for the storm troopers is unmistakably based upon

The Rite. It appears at 105:49, 1:27:32, and 1:29:16. As mentioned above, this is

57That said, I doubt that there is a programmatic significance to borrowing from Stravinsky’s Rite in
the case of the “desert music,” but it certainly fits the stylistic profile of music that sounds a bit “alien.”

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perhaps the clearest case of a passage modeled on “The Augurs of Spring.”58 And

while Luke and Han (wearing the uniforms of storm troopers, with Chewbacca

posing as their prisoner) wait for an elevator, we hear another brief borrowing from

Holst’s “Mars” at 113:14. The portion borrowed here is found between mm. 28 and

33 of “Mars,” only a few bars before the excerpt that was the apparent source for the

Jawa music.

Later, in the climactic battle of the film, Hickman notes that the final

measures from “Mars” serve as “the obvious model for the music accompanying the

destruction of the Death Star (1:56:50).”59 This assertion is sonically and

programmatically convincing. What better music could one use for inspiration to

accompany the destruction of an Imperial base that is literally a planet-sized

“bringer of war” than Holst’s eerie symphonic premonition of the horrors of modern

weaponry?

4.5.2: The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi

Far fewer themes are so obviously derived from a classical or filmic

precedent in the balance of the original Star Wars trilogy. I do not believe that

Williams, as he is so often accused in Internet discussion boards, borrowed or

“ripped-off” Holst’s “Mars” in composing the “Imperial March.” Williams’ march

does begin with a drum cadence that is certainly reminiscent of the first measures of

“Mars,” but beyond that, the similarities between the two are limited to style, if even

58 Again, Lieb’s YouTube video (Accessed January 2013) conveniently plays the two side by side. The
comparison of these two pieces begins at 1:55.
59 Hickman (2006), p. 331

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that.60 I also have significant doubt that “Han and the Princess” (the other new,

primary theme introduced in Empire) is based upon the first movement of

Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, which is likewise an Internet rumor).61

Nonetheless, one moment of The Empire Strikes Back stands out as a likely

paraphrase of the King’s Row main title. Unlike the Star Wars main title theme,

which has a melody almost identical to Korngold’s, this passage resembles King’s

Row for the opposite reasons. A brief, brassy chorale appears at 25:35, which recalls

the expressive genre of Korngold’s theme quite clearly, but the two melodies are

different enough that the Korngold estate is unlikely to pursue legal action. And

there may also be one theme right at the beginning of Return of the Jedi that is based

upon yet another portion of The Planets—a case of modeling, if not paraphrase. Lieb

suggests (I think correctly) that the “Death Star approaching” music is derived from

“Neptune.”62 It is tempting to wonder if there is some programmatic significance to

the fact that Williams apparently quotes “Mars,” the first movement of The Planets at

the beginning of the trilogy, and “Neptune,” the final movement, at the end—that

there is an alpha-to-omega completion of the narrative in the final installment.63

60 Rather, a motive from A New Hope (at 113:25) seems to be the most probable source for the
opening melody of the march, and Bribitzer-Stull demonstrates that a version of Wagner’s “Tarnhelm”
motive that accompanies Vader’s first appearance in Star Wars blossoms into a portion of the theme
as well. (See Bribitzer-Stull 2012, p. 172)
61 See especially http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=19979 (Accessed February

2013) Below I discuss a theme by another film composer who quite clearly did use the Tchaikovsky
concerto as a source.
62Lieb’s Video on YouTube (Accessed January 2013)
63Recall that "Mars" and “Mercury” do not appear in the correct astronomical order. “Mars” makes
for a stronger opening movement than would "Mercury," which fits nicely as the third movement,
functioning almost like a scherzo following the much slower "Venus.” The rest of the movements
appear in order of increasing distance from the sun, with the exception of the Mars/Mercury swap.

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4.5.3: The prequel trilogy

Star Wars enthusiasts should consider themselves fortunate that John

Williams was available to score the prequel trilogy, preserving thematic continuity

across all six films. As mentioned above, the main title theme appears in each film,

and the “Force theme” (most clearly associated with Obi-Wan Kenobi) is used with

great regularity.64 But the majority of thematic material for the three films was

newly composed. Williams introduced at least one significant new theme complete

with a name and excerpted concert version for each of the films, to be marketed as a

hit-single of sorts.

In Episode I, The Phantom Menace (1999), the primary new theme is “The

Duel of the Fates,” which is heard as the accompaniment to the light sabre duel

pitting Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi against the Sith apprentice, Darth Maul.

Dyer calls this theme “a terrifying, primitive pagan rite that makes even Stravinsky's

Les Noces sound tame.”65 Hickman describes it as “Orff-like,” presumably referring

to “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana.66 “The Duel of the Fates” and “O Fortuna” are

of similar scale, scored for full orchestra and large chorus, and they draw from a

shared darkly-dramatic expressive palate. Though instead of the Latin text that Orff

sets, Williams had an old Welsh poem translated into Sanskrit, apparently because

he “loved the sound of it.”67 The choral passages of “Duel of the Fates” seem at least

to have been inspired by (if not modeled on) those from Carmina Burana, but there

is another source from which Williams may borrow here somewhat more directly;

64 Note that the “Force theme” is transcribed above in Chapter 2.

65 Dyer (1999)
66 Hickman (2006), p. 439
67 Dyer (1999)

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compare the main instrumental motives from “Duel of the Fates” to the primary

theme of the third movement of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony:

Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, III, Main Motive

“Duel of the Fates”

EXAMPLE 4-17: “Duel of the Fates” and its potential source

While we cannot be certain that Williams borrowed this motive from Dvořák,

as the motive is quite short, listening to the two pieces one after the other makes for

a convincing case; they are even in the same key. And more compelling still is the

fact that Williams appears to derive another important theme for the Star Wars

prequel trilogy from the very same symphony. We find this apparent borrowing in

the primary new theme for Revenge of the Sith, “Battle of the Heroes.” This theme,

like the “Duel of the Fates,” serves as the accompaniment to a climatic light-sabre

duel, this time the long-anticipated battle between Obi-Wan and his former

apprentice, the newly dubbed Darth Vader. Some of the music underscoring their

battle resembles the Khatchaturian “Sabre dance” (the significance of which seems

obvious enough), but as the fight intensifies, we hear a brief melody that sounds

plenty like primary theme from the fourth movement of Dvořák’s 9th symphony.

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Williams changes the meter, and the key, but both themes include a melody of

similar shape stated in the brass.68

EXAMPLE 4-18: “Battle of the Heroes” and its potential source

4.6: Addendum: Overt Borrowing in Williams’ film scores

All of the apparent borrowings that I have introduced above are discussed in

an almost forensic mode, using the evidence available to determine the likelihood of

whether a particular source serves as the model upon which a passage is based. Yet

there is a great deal of borrowed material in Williams’ scores that is meant to be

noticed, requiring no such arm-chair detective work. I call such borrowings “overt.”

The term fits well enough, though I resist calling all of the possible borrowings

discussed above “covert” by default; Williams does not always make a significant

68Williams’ theme appears in both C minor and D minor. Dvořák’s is stated in E minor first, but some
editions of the score are for Trumpet in E.

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effort to obscure the fact that he is borrowing (though he does usually change

enough so that he cannot be accused of “copying”). Or put another way, though the

quotations discussed below in Williams’ music are certainly meant to be noticed, the

others are not necessarily designed to go unnoticed.

4.6.1: Quotation and Paraphrase in non-diegetic music

At times, Williams will quote a familiar tune in the non-diegetic score for a

film. Williams adapts “When You Wish Upon A Star” from Pinocchio (1940) into the

music for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).69 In E.T., he borrows portions

of Victor Young’s score to The Quiet Man (1952) as the title character watches this

movie on television.70 And the “Wedding March” from Wagner’s Lohengrin appears

several times in The Terminal (2004).71

All of these overt quotations are used for programmatic reasons that the

audience is likely to catch. Some overt borrowings are less likely to be noticed,

however; not all viewers will recognize that Williams uses the “Dies Irae” in several

of his scores. Moormann notes its presence (usually paraphrased at the start of a

longer melody) in Close Encounters, Minority Report (2002), Jurassic Park, The Lost

World, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Munich (2005),

often used to foreshadow the danger that a character is in.72 The use of this motive

cannot be classed as quotation, however. Rather, “Dies Irae” is shared cultural

69 See Moormann (2010), p. 246

70 See Hickman (2006), p. 346
He notes that “while E.T. watches a romantic scene for The Quiet Man Williams borrows a portion of
Victor Young’s score for this 1952 classic, but concludes the quotation with the cadence of the E.T.
theme.” See also Moormann (2010), p. 131 and 227
71 See Moormann (2010), p. 727
72 Ibid

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property, borrowed as though from a public library. The “Dies Irae” also makes a

cameo in the Star Wars prequel trilogy to foreshadow the death of Padme Amidala.

A paraphrased version of this motive appears in Attack of the Clones, first when a

mercenary (who had been apprehended after a failed attempt on Senator Amidala’s

life) is shot with a poison dart (24:35), and again when Anakin carries in his

mother’s body (123:17) as a sign of his growing anger and path to the dark side that

will ultimately lead to Padme’s death. In Revenge of the Sith, “Dies Irae” appears

again when Padme reveals that she is pregnant with Anakin’s child (26:40), and

when Anakin and Chancellor Palpatine discuss Padme’s fate (104:35).

4.6.2: Self-quotation and parody

Other overt quotation comes in the form of self-quotation and parody. In at

least two film scores, Williams appears to borrow from himself. Of course, many of

his themes are quite similar to each other, but Williams’ outright borrowing of

another of his scores for a dramatic purpose is another matter entirely.73 The

clearest example of this is in E.T. When the children are out trick-or-treating on

Halloween, taking E.T. to the woods to “phone home,” they pass by a child in a Yoda

costume. As Hickman explains, “Williams underscores this humor by quoting Yoda’s

theme, first heard in The Empire Strikes Back.”74 Williams may also at times parody

his own themes. Moormann suggests that the theme of the overzealous patriots in

73 And then there is the separate matter of other film makers borrowing Williams’ music. A prime
example is the use of Williams’ brassy Superman theme in Goonies (1985) when the deformed anti-
hero, Sloth, swings into action while wearing a Superman shirt. (Perhaps a decision made by Steven
Spielberg, who produced the film.)
74 Hickman (2006), p. 347

Hickman continues, “This brief tribute to the George Lucas film is reciprocated in The Phantom
Menace (1999), in which we can see E.T. figures sitting in the Imperial Senate.” (Ibid)

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1941 (1979) is a parody of the music from the throne-room ceremony in Star Wars,

and perhaps also of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March.75

4.7: Evaluation and Summary

While scholars rarely take a composer to task for a perceived lack of

originality, some independent (internet-based) writers call Williams everything

from a “fraud,” to a “petty thief,” both for borrowing from others without citing his

sources, and for the similarities between his themes. Yet most of the supposed

borrowings are too vague to determine their source with any certainty. Williams is

remarkably canny in how he adapts music from another source (if, and) when he

does. If borrowing a melody, Williams is usually quite careful to change a number of

notes. But if he keeps a lot of the notes the same, he will often change the meter—

perhaps the hallmark of his paraphrase technique—as well as a few of the rhythms.

In the rare case where the notes, rhythms and meter are quite similar, he will

change the expressive genre (as in the King’s Row/Star Wars paraphrase). Never will

he borrow both the melody and its accompaniment (except for homophonic

planing), and only rarely can we conclude with reasonable certainty that a passage

of one of his scores is adapted from another piece.

In short, Williams is not the best target for accusations of plagarism.

Arguably, no film composer should be criticized for this, as they are often expected

to compose something that resembles a temp track quite closely, under significant

time constraints no less. A classic example of this is Bill Conti’s (Oscar winning!)

75 Moormann (2010), p. 689

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score for The Right Stuff (1983). Conti, reportedly, was pressured by the producers

of the film to churn out music at a remarkable pace that resembled the temp tracks

as closely as possible.76 And so Conti did, so much so that he felt obliged to cite his

sources in the credits for the film.

Even with this overt acknowledgement of his models, some of Conti’s

paraphrases for The Right Stuff resemble their (cited!) source no more than

Williams borrowed themes do. In one passage, Conti borrows the main theme of

“Jupiter” from Holst’s Planets. Despite a few short (near) identical segments

(indicated with brackets on the example below), the melodies are not so similar that

the Holst estate would have just cause to sue Conti had he failed to explicitly cite

“Jupiter” as his template. This cue has the same key signature and meter as its

source, but the two melodies have different modal characteristics; both are more or

less in Eb major, but Holst’s has some folk-like Aeolian and pentatonic leanings,

while Conti’s has Lydian inflections (perhaps a film music cliché).

EXAMPLE 4-19: The Right Stuff score and Holst’s “Jupiter”

76 IMDB, “The Right Stuff” (Accessed March 2013)

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 A second example to compare is Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto and Conti’s

music for the end credits of The Right Stuff.77 The two pieces have similar

triumphant melodies (note the brackets), and comparable patterns of

accompaniment. The chord progression is not identical, but the manner in which

the chords are presented (in combination with the similar melody and bass

fragments) makes for a much closer resemblance between source and film score

than we find in any of Williams’ scores. Williams rarely borrows a melody without

changing the texture, and never does Williams borrow both the melody, and adapt it

in the same key and meter, with similar bass motion, chordal articulations, and

phrase structure (see below).

To be clear, I do not mean to take Conti to task either, especially since he was

gracious enough to cite his sources. Had he not done so, and went on to accept the

Academy award for this score, I can see how this might raise an eyebrow. But to

return to the big question at hand—is Williams a thief? I’d prefer to think not. At

worst, he is what Mezter calls, “a creative thief,” and a clever one at that. The fact

that so many accuse Williams of having an aesthetically dubious method of

composition is presumably a consequence of his fame. Globally, he is perhaps the

most well known living composer of orchestral music for any medium; millions of

people across the urbanized world can hum his themes, and it follows that the

biggest name wears the biggest target. Williams’ techniques of paraphrase differ

77There is a spirited discussion on IMBD (Accessed March 2013) about the appropriateness of using
Russian music in a movie about an American “space race” triumph over the Soviets. It could be
worse, though. In The King’s Speech (2010), Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is used—not
paraphrased—as the dramatic underscore to the English King’s radio announcement that war has
just been declared on Germany.

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greatly from those of the composers I discuss in other chapters, as do his objectives,

but such a creative process places him not only in the company of other film

composers, but also countless composers of concert music, who as use pre-existing

material as their starting point for crafting a new piece.

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EXAMPLE 4-20:

The Right Stuff score

and Tchaikovsky’s

Violin Concerto

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Chapter 5: Berg the Wagnerian—Tristan and Lulu

5.0: Setting the Stage

It is well known that Berg had a penchant for quotation, both of his own

pieces, and of works by other composers. Most of Berg’s borrowings are not “direct”

or “literal,” however. Berg’s creative energies were ignited by reworking pieces by

other composers. As Khittl suggests, Berg made a habit of recomposing music from

other sources with “striking differences and deviations,” explaining that when Berg

paraphrases another piece, he “transforms [his] model by subjecting it to ‘extreme

metamorphosis.’”1 While it is tempting to pursue a project exploring Berg’s

practice of paraphrase more extensively, I instead chose to focus on Berg’s use of a

single piece: Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. After surveying Berg’s use of

material from Tristan und Isolde in his earlier works, I demonstrate that frequent,

often opaque paraphrases of familiar thematic material from Wagner’s opera serve

as the keystone to the secondary program of Lulu. The allusions to Tristan that are

most often discussed—say, those that appear in the love duet between Alwa and

Lulu—are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I argue that many of the opera’s

most iconic themes are in fact elaborate recompositions of passages from Tristan.

The shadow of Tristan lurks beneath Lulu’s interactions with the Painter (Lulu’s

eventual second husband), and most importantly, with Schön, her only admirer

whose love she claims to reciprocate.2

1 Khittl (1998), p. 140

Khittl describes how Berg performs this “extreme metamorphosis” on Brahms’ song, “Wie Melodien
zieht es mir” in his own song, “Die Nachtigal,” from his Sieben Frühe Lieder.
2 While there is presumably also an autobiographical significance to the uses of material from Tristan,

as Berg often surrounds these quotations with ciphers for Fuchs’ initials and his own, I do not use
evidence in the music to advance arguments about Berg’s biography.

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 Although in the previous chapters I have addressed the question of how a

composer paraphrases music in cases where the goals of the process are explicit,

here I provide some new answers for why it is that Berg so often turned to Wagner

while composing Lulu.

5.0.1: Paraphrase in the Context Of (Secret) Programs

Berg’s practice of paraphrase is best understood as a critical component of

the “secret,” extra-musical programs in his music. He relished the act of constructing

a hidden narrative, saturating his music with references to people, places, and

events. 3 Douglas Jarman explains that “[a]fter Wozzeck, the invention of some kind

of extra-musical story line became [a] habitual and necessary… part of Berg’s

working methods.” Apparently “the adoption of such secret narratives seems to

have satisfied a number of needs in Berg’s creative and personal psychology and

there are, perhaps, additional reasons why he felt it important that the precise

details of autobiographical events should be embodied in the music—irrespective of

whether or not anyone else knew what these events were.”4

The practice of quotation and paraphrase is one of at least three common

features that routinely appear in Berg’s programs. Another is his practice of

incorporating the initials or names of people close to him into his pieces. As shown

3 At times he revealed the content of his programs in a public forum—he published an open letter to
explain the symbolic code of the Chamber Concerto. This letter was first published in Pult und
Takstock 2 (February/March 1925), pp. 23-8. It has been republished by Willi Reich. (1937, pp. 86-91)
In other cases, only the dedicatee (if anyone at all) was privy to a work’s hidden meanings. He
annotated a copy of the Lyric Suite that he gave to Hannah Fuchs (to whom the piece was dedicated in
private) to illustrate how the music tells the story of his imagined affair with her. (See Perle (1995),
pp. 75-102)
4 Jarman (1997), p. 177

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in Example 5-1 below, we find ciphers for himself, his wife Helene, his colleagues

Schoenberg and Webern, and Hannah Fuchs, his partner in an emotional affair.5 The

third is Berg’s habit of structuring his pieces around certain numbers, fueled by his

quasi-religious zeal for numerology. Berg had a superstitious fascination with the

number 23, believing it had a great personal significance—that it was the number of

his fate.6 Allusions to this number are found throughout his late works, as well as to

the number 10, which he associated with Hannah Fuchs.7 We will see that

paraphrased quotation, musical initials, and musical numbers interact in fascinating

ways, even starting with his earliest works.

5Berg and Fuchs’ presumably unconsummated affair was sustained through private letters from
1925 until his death in 1935. As the letters could not be sent by post without risking discovery by
their respective spouses, Berg and Fuchs relied on mutual friends including Theodor Adorno and
Alma Mahler (who became Fuchs’ sister-in-law upon marrying Franz Werfel) to hand deliver their
correspondence. (See Floros 2008, p. 4)
6Berg’s obsession with the number 23 is in part the result of reading Wilhelm Fliess’s
Von Leben und Tod,
as evidenced by a letter from Berg to Schoenberg from June, 1914. Jarman explains, “Berg seems to
have become acquainted with Fliess’s work in the summer of 1914, by which time he had already
noted ‘the strange coincidences surrounding the number 23’ and had persuaded himself that the
number played an important role in his life.” (1990, p. 183) These “coincidences” include the death
of Berg’s father and Berg’s first asthma attack, both of which occurred on the 23rd day of the month.
7 In Berg’s correspondence with Fuchs, there is ample discussion of the pair’s respective numbers. In

one such letter, Berg mentions what he believed to be the fateful significance of his train ticket
number 1023 from his trip back to Vienna after meeting Hanna initially. In the Lyric Suite, both the
number of measures in movements and tempo markings are more often than not multiples of 23 or
10.

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EXAMPLE 5-1: Berg’s Musical Initials

5.1: Berg the Young Wagnerian: A Tour of His Early Works

Before exploring Berg’s use of Tristan material in Lulu, it is helpful to

understand Berg’s practice of borrowing from Tristan in his earlier pieces. Adorno,

Floros, and others have argued that Berg used the music of Tristan in his first

mature works to symbolize his once disallowed relationship with Helene.

Significant biographical evidence supports this claim. Berg first saw Helene at the

Opera, and during their courtship, they attended several performances of Tristan

together.8 Perhaps they found the opera especially meaningful in the years before

their 1911 marriage, which—reminiscent of Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck—

8 Esslin (1990), p. 2
Berg presumably did attend the opera with Helene as part of their courtship, though it is uncertain if
Berg saw or met her there. Schroeder suggests that they met through Peter Altenberg, the poet whose
text he would later set in his Op. 4 Lieder (see Schroeder, 1999), while Hailey asserts that Berg “had
first noticed her at concerts and the Opera. When he discovered she was a neighbor… he began to
haunt her street, dipping out of sight as soon as she appeared.” (1997, p 10)

188
was long opposed by Helene’s father. Berg once even addressed Helene as “[his]

Isolde” in a 1908 letter, which, as Floros notes, suggests some degree of self-

identification with the opera’s protagonists, fancying themselves as Wagner’s ill-

fated lovers.9 Both Berg’s Op. 2 song cycle of 1909 (his first work officially

dedicated to Helene) and his Op. 3 string quartet (dedicated to her privately)

contain glimmers of material from Tristan und Isolde, sometimes alongside ciphers

for their initials.

Naudé observes that Op. 2 begins with three motives from the opening

measures of Tristan und Isolde: The “Desire” motive (in a slightly altered sequence),

a “Tristan chord,” and the set-class equivalent of the “Grief” motive.10 We should

also note that this version of the “Grief” motive is spelled to include the notes A, Bb

and B (H), which is likely a cipher for the initials of their names, “Alban Berg;

Helene.” And Berg might quote Wagner here for another reason, not exclusive of the

prior: As Kett explains, both works involve “a psychological exploration of, and

journey to, a distant world of ‘sleep-death.’”11

9Berg (1971), p. 33
See also Floros (2008 p. x)
10 Naudé (1997), p. 52

Naudé notes the presence of the “Tristan chord” and the desire motive, but does not posit the
inversion of the “Grief” motive to include the notes A, Bb, B as a cipher for Alban and Helene.
11 Kett (1990), p.69

Adorno similarly notes that, “the state of the subconscious into which the songs enter… fills Tristan’s
night with floating mists.” (1991, p. 47)

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EXAMPLE 5-2a: Opening Motives from Tristan und Isolde

EXAMPLE 5-2b: Berg, Op. 2, No. 1, mm. 1-3.

Further suggesting that Berg associated the music of Tristan with his own love

interest is the fact that the key of Op. 2/1 may also refer to Helene; in a letter from

1907 he called her his “most glorious symphony in D minor,”12 and he describes “the

most glorious D minor chords of [her] soul sound[ing] forth in their full

magnificence” in a letter from 1909, the year Op. 2 was composed.13 A D-minor

chord appears in Op. 2/3 in precisely the place where, according to Adorno, Berg

uses the pitches A, Bb and B as a cipher for Alban’s own initials and Helene’s given

12 Berg (ed. and trans. Bernard Grun), Letters to his Wife, p. 19

For discussion of this letter, see Reiman (1998), p. 230
13 Ibid, p. 62

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name.14 Although there is no evidence that Berg told Adorno about the cipher, in

this case, I am willing to take him at his word. Not only do two apparent symbols for

Helene appear simultaneously, but the text here, einer weiβen Märchenhand (“of a

white fairy’s hand”) appears in a letter Berg wrote to her in 1910.15 And, the A-B-H

of their initials appears as a part of an ascending chromatic line of four pitches,

perhaps alluding to the “Desire” motive from Tristan (transposed up by one

semitone) as well as their names.

EXAMPLE 5-3: Berg, Op. 2, No. 3

Berg’s next work, String Quartet No. 1 (Op. 3) was also composed during his

courtship of Helene, and may likewise contain passages modeled after music from

Tristan und Isolde. Floros lists a number of excerpts in which Berg seems to

paraphrase familiar passages from Wagner’s opera, many of which are convincing, if

not quite as clear as those in Op. 2.16 There is little mention in the scholarly

14 Adorno (1991), p. 49
15 Berg (1971), p. 120
16 That said, the apparent Tristan motives in Op. 2 are not easily heard, while those in Op. 3 might be

more audible despite the often vague relationship between the model and hypertext. Floros
discusses these borrowings in the context of the testimony of a neighbor of the Bergs. Said neighbor
claimed that Helene had told her that the inspiration for Op. 3 came after Berg had been banished
from Helene’s household in 1908, and that “[l]ove speaks in [the quartet], and jealousy and
indignation over the injustice that was done to us and our love.” (1992, p. 155) Pople explains that
although there is “no documentary support for [the] account, this oral history cannot simply be

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literature of borrowing from Tristan und Isolde in Berg’s Op. 4 (the Altenberg Lieder,

1912), Op. 5 (Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, 1913), Op. 6 (Three Orchestral

Pieces, 1913-15), and Op. 7 (Wozzeck, 1914-1922). In his later years, however, the

music of Tristan returned to the forefront of his imagination. It is generally assumed

that the catalyst of this creative shift was the start of his platonic affair with Hanna

Fuchs.

Just as Helene’s “musical initials” were at times embedded in Tristan motives

in Berg’s earlier works, the Tristan material in Berg’s late works often appears in

conjunction with apparent symbols for Berg and Fuchs, either through ciphers of

their initials (AB and HF respectively) or through the numbers he associated with

each (23 and 10). Such autobiographical symbols begin to appear in the very first

piece he wrote after meeting Fuchs: A serial setting of Strom’s Schliesse mir die

Augen beide. Perle explains of this song that “[t]he number of bars [20] is twice

Hanna’s number,” and that the row form always begins and ends on F or H (B)

respectively.17 What is perhaps most significant about this song is that Berg had set

this text once before in 1907, which was presumably inspired by his early encounters

with Helene.18 Re-setting this song for Hanna, therefore, can be understood as a

symbolic affirmation that she had supplanted Helene as Berg’s primary muse.

dismissed.” (1997, p. 77) Pople also identifies what he believes to be a passage modeled upon Act III
scene 1 of Tristan. In this scene Tristan is “separated from Isolde by the jealous King Marke,” which
Pople suggests provides a “striking” correlation with “[Berg’s] separation from Helene… if one wishes
to think of music in these terms.” (Ibid, p. 81)
17 Perle (1995), p. 94

Of note, Floros reminds us that this song was (supposedly) finished on September 23rd 1925; Berg
relished being able to put the number 23 in the date of a manuscript. Floros also points out another
pair of ciphers: “the dyad A/Bb in mm. 14 -15 and H/F(B) in m. 16.” (1992, p. 234)
18 As far as I am aware, the 1907 setting does not contain a reference to Alban or Helene’s initials, nor

to any motive from Tristan. However, Berg included the text of this poem in one of the earliest letters

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 In a 1925 letter, composed October 23 (10/23) no less, Berg declared to

Fuchs his “passion comparable only to that of Tristan and Isolde,”19 and divulged—

with more than a little enthusiasm— his observation that the opening material from

Tristan contains their initials (see below in Example 5-4).20 Interpreting this

fortuitous connection as fate, he came to associate the first phrase of Tristan with

Fuchs for the balance of his life, using it as a symbol for her in his music.21

EXAMPLE 5-4: From Berg’s Letter to Fuchs (1925)

The most well-known example of this is the unmistakable presentation of the

Opera’s four opening bars in Berg’s Lyric Suite, 22 a work dedicated to her in

secret.23 This is quite an unusual moment, as it is one of the very few

unparaphrased, unobscured borrowings (from any work) in his entire output. This

quotation is by far the most explicit in the Lyric Suite, but it is not the only one; the

he sent to Helene in 1907. (See Berg, 1971, p. 19) The fact that Berg sent Helene this poem in the
same year that he set it to music suggests her influence. See also Perle (1995, pp. 93-4) for a
discussion of the disputed date of composition of the first Strom setting. Perle avers— correctly, no
doubt—that the song was composed in 1907, rather than in 1900 as Redlich suggests in the 1960
edition of the score. Such graceful treatment of chromaticism is not found in Berg’s earliest songs
from 1900-02.) The possibility remains that Berg revised the song in 1907, but regardless, there is
little doubt that he could not have composed it en total in 1900.
19 Floros (2008), p. 25
20 Ibid
21 Ibid, p. 37
22 The inclusion of this material from Tristan represents, as Straus explains, Berg’s “unfulfilled love

for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin”, as his “personal version of the myth of Tristan und Isolde.” (1990 p.144)
23 See Perle (1995)

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others, more characteristically, are not as easily spotted. Floros lists several motives

from Tristan that may appear in Berg’s quartet, some of which are more convincing

than others,24 and DeVoto has noted “a more subtle appearance of the Tristan chord”

which appears at the conclusion of the second movement.25

5.2: Tristan and Lulu

As we have seen, fragments of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde appear

consistently in the music of Alban Berg, but nowhere is this more so the case than in

his late life masterpiece, Lulu. I am certainly not the first to make connections

between Tristan and Lulu;26 the two works are often compared to one another in

both scholarly and journalistic literature. Reviewers have been eager to compare

Lulu to Tristan throughout the work’s performance history. Thomas Mann noted

“Tristan-like effects” after viewing the two- act premiere of Lulu in 1937, and

journalists have followed suit ever since.27 Yet there remains no satisfactory

treatment of the ubiquitous Wagner quotations in Lulu. My objective is to

(re)interpret this aspect of Lulu, exploring how the borrowed material interacts

24 Floros (1992), pp. 280-5

25 In DeVoto’s words, it is “sustained after the pizzicato C’s in the cello [representing Fuch’s youngest
child, Dorothea or “Do-do”]… have died away. He continues, “the signification is plain: Hanna’s
children had run off to play somewhere else, while Alban and Hanna are left to contemplate their love
for each other.” (1995, p. 151)
26 One interesting parallel is that both Lulu and Tristan are believed to be the creative result of an

emotional affair. Bailey explains, Wagner’s “relationship with Mathilde Wesendonk quickly reached a
level of great intensity, and both came to look upon Tristan as a collaboration—the symbolic ‘child,’ as
it were, of their spiritual and platonic union.” ( 1985, p. 7) Deathridge and Dahlhaus explain that this
affair was “celebrated and idealized in Tristan und Isolde,” and agree that said affair (like Berg’s) was
“probably never consummated.” (1984, p. 936)
27 Mann (1984), p. 278

Jarman (1991, p. 401) and Naudé (1997, p. 45) both cite this quotation. Holloway’s review-essay of
the 1979 three-act premiere is rife with comparisons to Tristan (1979/2003). In a review of the 2002
London production of Lulu, Conrad (2002) criticizes the production for being too graphic and
sexualized, reminding us that, “Lulu, like Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is about desire, not sex.”

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with the ciphers and numerological features endemic to Berg’s music in the creation

of programmatic meaning.

Few Tristan quotations in Lulu are as overt as the one in the Lyric Suite

discussed above, with the exception of the lone Tristan chord that appears when

Alwa declares his love for Lulu, shown below in Example 5-5.

EXAMPLE 5-5: Tristan Chord in Alwa and Lulu’s duet

In DeVoto’s words, this Tristan chord “refers to Alban Berg himself, in the

person of the composer Alwa, declaring his love for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, his

secret love and his muse in composing the opera.”28 Presumably, many of the

borrowings from Tristan in Lulu have gone unnoticed because they are not as clear

as this, but also because of the established personal significance of these allusions,

scholars have been most eager to look for Tristan material in scenes involving the

character Alwa, at the expense of “discovering” more in other parts of the opera. Of

course, this is a logical place to start; it is well known that Alwa is an

autobiographical character—he is a composer, like Berg himself. In the moments

28DeVoto (1995) p. 152

He continues, “Berg wrote to Hanna that he was writing Lulu inspired by her, though of course not
about her.” (Ibid)

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before Alwa’s ballet is supposed to premiere (Act I, Scene 3), the character

comments as an aside that “one could write an interesting Opera” about the events

that have transpired while the orchestra plays the opening music of Wozzeck. And

Patricia Hall has suggested that “Berg associated…Alwa with Tristan,” as well as

with himself, noting source material where Berg calls Alwa a “Heroic, Tristan

Tenor.”29 Indeed, Berg reinforces the similarities between Alwa and himself by

linking him to Tristan, in whom Berg had already found a kindred spirit.

Silvio Dos Santos offers perhaps the most detailed reading of Alwa and Lulu’s

Act II love duet,30 demonstrating convincingly that Tristan quotations permeate the

scene.31 Yet he allows that “if Tristan provides the background from which Berg

models the love relationship between Alwa and Lulu, it fails [at the conclusion of the

duet] because of Lulu’s lack of reciprocity.” The eventual failure of this parallel

opens a space for the issues that I address. Lulu is not merely the love story

between Alwa and the opera’s title character, and the use of Tristan material is not

limited to these scenes. We find Tristan material in Lulu’s own themes, and above all,

in the music representing the reciprocal attraction between Schön and Lulu.

29Patricia Hall explains the association between the two characters at length: “[M]any sketches for
the Rondo suggest that on some level Berg associated the character Alwa with Tristan in Wagner’s
opera… In his sketches, Berg specifies that Alwa, like Tristan, is to be a Heldentenor, to which he adds
“Tristan.” And there are numerous sketches of the Tristan chord which occurs in the climax of the
Rondo (mm. 335-36) as Alwa sings, “Mignon, I love you.” (1996, p. 149)
30His primary argument is that the interactions between Alwa and Lulu appear to trace the

progression of “sensual,” “spritual” and “metaphysical” love outlined in Emil Lucka’s Drei Stufen der
Erotik (The Three Stages of Love), which Berg had first read decades earlier. (See Dos Santos, 2003)
31Dos Santos (Ibid) suggests that “Berg perhaps intended Alwa’s theme to resemble… the desire
music of Tristan” (165), noting both the “permutation of the initial four pitches of the chromatic
ascending melody of the Tristan desire music” (170) at the beginning of the subordinate theme, and
the fact that “Alwa’s chromatic row paraphrases the desire motive” (175-6).

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5.3 Lulu and the Painter

Let us first examine the Act I duet between Lulu and the Painter. In this

scene, the Painter, lusting after Lulu, chases her around his studio until he catches

and embraces her. We might imagine that Berg’s secret wish to consummate his

affair with Fuchs—his desire to pursue Fuchs in the way the Painter pursues

Lulu—is represented here by his inclusion of material from Tristan, the story of

another forbidden love, or we might simply take this as Berg’s excuse to quote

Tristan, evidence only of Berg’s fascination with hidden meanings. Regardless, in

this passage, we find a slightly altered “Grief” motive, sounded twice in succession

at the same pitch-class level at which it is stated in Tristan. Concurrently, the

pitch-class A (that begins this motive) is followed by a Bb in the same register and

voice, which may represent Berg’s initials. Symbols for Fuchs’ initials follow

immediately thereafter; the H of her name supports a transposed Tristan chord,

while the F is the bass-note of an F-minor chord whose top voice initiates the

“Desire motive” at the original pitch level in the opening phrase of Tristan.32

EXAMPLE 5-6a: Motives from Tristan (presented again for ease of comparison)

32 I am indebted to Peter Mowrey for discovering the “Desire” motive in this location.

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EXAMPLE 5-6b: Berg’s adaptation of these motives in Lulu, mm. 160-66

In addition to serving as one of Fuchs’s initials, this F-minor chord may be

part of a tonal reference to Tristan. Berg salutes the key of A here, which is the

implied tonic of the first phrase of Wagner’s opera. Each of the three pitches in

this chord (F, Ab and C) move by semitone to E, A, and C# (which often has a

dominant function in A), much in the way that the voices of the Tristan chord

move to the E7 chord at the conclusion of the phrase through chromatic voice

leading.33 And the next two chords that Berg uses imply C major analogously,

which may be a nod to the second phrase of Tristan.

We also find references to Berg and Fuchs’ respective numbers, 23 and 10

alongside the ciphers and Tristan quotations. This complete duet is 30 measures

long, which is a multiple of Fuchs’ number, 10.34 The precise midpoint of the

excerpt notated above (m. 163, beat 2) is the 23rd beat of the section, which means

that Fuchs’ initials appear directly between Berg’s initials and beat 23; Berg

33The notes that the Painter sings in m. 163 over these chords may also imply A with a quasi-cadential
figure containing B, G# (spelled Ab) and A.
34 The number 3 (the quotient of 30 and 10) was treated as a determinant of the work’s structure

in the Chamber Concerto in much the way that 23 and 10 are in Lulu, as Berg explained in his
published “open letter” about the former piece.

198
therefore surrounds her name with two symbols for himself, perhaps literally

encircling her as the Painter does to Lulu in this scene. Those less familiar with

Berg’s numerological habits may question the self-referentiality of this 23rd beat,

but we must consider that the frequency at which Berg alludes to the number 23 in

Lulu, in Hall’s words, “bordered on the obsessive.” She continues, “[n]othing

seemed to delight [Berg] more, for instance, than incorporating his number of fate,

23, into the music of Lulu, and the sketches are filled with exuberant annotations.”35

Of note, Berg treats Fuch’s initials analogously in his concert aria, Der Wein,

which was composed not long after Berg had completed this passage of Lulu.36 A

B/F polychord sounds at the climax of the aria, which appears at the center of a

musical palindrome.37 We know that this chord (by design) contains the pitch

classes H and F for Fuchs’ initials—Berg said so himself in a letter;38 it also

(perhaps coincidentally) includes A, the initial for Berg’s given name, though the

note Bb for his surname is absent from this sonority. However, as part of the

palindrome around m. 141, Bb is both the final note to appear (in m. 139) before all

voices sound a member of B/F chord, and the first note to enter outside of this

collection in m. 143. I do believe that these two appearances of Bb are self-

35Hall (1990), p.247

36See Pople (1997), pp. 213-217
Berg suspended work on Lulu, because of (in Pople’s words) “a financially attractive commission”
of 5,000 schillings to compose the aria. (Ibid, 213)
37The noteheads of this polychord were placed in the center of m. 141 at Berg’s request. As Dalen

explains, “Berg took great pains to ensure that the turning points of his palindromes were aurally and
visually conspicuous… [He] instructed the printer to place the central points of the palindromes in
the Lulu Suite and Der Wein in the middle of the page and to arrange the bars on either side
symmetrically around the point.” (1990, p. 150)
38 Berg explains in a 1929 letter to Fuchs, “[W]hom else does it concern but you, Hanna, when I say

(in “The Wine of Lovers”): “Come, sister, laid breast to breast, Let us flee without rest or stand, To my
dreams’ Elysian land,” and these words die away in the softest accord of H [B] and F major!” (Floros
(2008), p. 56)

199
referential, not only because they flank the sonority for Fuchs’ initials, but also

because they appear 10 beats apart, guiding the appearance of his own name with

Fuchs’ number.39 So it appears that in both Lulu’s duet with the Painter, and in Der

Wein, Berg “surrounds” Fuchs’ initials with symbols for himself.

EXAMPLE 5-7: Palindrome with Berg and Fuchs’ initials, Der Wein

We learn as well from Lulu’s scene with the Painter that the music of Tristan

supports not only Lulu’s love duet with Alwa, but even her interactions with less

significant characters—the painter doesn’t even have a name.40 More crucial and

more compelling still is the fact that themes most important to Lulu and Schön are

filled to the brim with paraphrased material from Tristan.

39 Although this passage of Der Wein contains no Tristan quotations (so far as I can tell), some can
be found elsewhere in the aria, perhaps unsurprisingly in mm. 23 and 46 (the latter twice Berg’s
number). Sinuous, chromatic lines in contrary motion begin at m. 23 of Der Wein, evocative of the
counterpoint of the “Grief” and “Desire” motives. Similarly, in m. 46 and the surrounding bars,
several “Tristan chords” appear both harmonically and arpeggiated melodically. Naudé notes the
presence of these chords, though not the potential significance of the fact that they appear in m. 46.
(1997, p. 48)
40 The Painter ends up marrying Lulu, but the relationship is short lived—he commits suicide in the

following scene when he learns of her sordid past and present.

200
5.4 Lulu’s Music

Lulu’s most important theme first appears in the Opera’s prologue.41 A

narrator of sorts introduces the character of Lulu in a recurring section that

Perle calls “Lulu’s Entrance Music” (mm. 44-62).42 (Perle calls such segments

Leitsektionen, or passages of music “with the referential function of Leitmotiv,”

subject to varied reprisal later in the opera. 43) This theme is so thoroughly

saturated with Tristan material, that it may fairly be called a recomposition of

mm. 17-24 of Tristan und Isolde. Note the following similarities between the

two passages:

1. The tempo of the two excerpts is similar. Berg's indication (quarter=50) at the

beginning of this passage ensures that—if the passage is played according to his

wishes—the tempo of "Lulu's Entrance Music" will resemble that of the Tristan

prelude.

2. The figure in m. 44 of Lulu contains the pitch classes F, A and B, which may

allude to Wagner's "Destiny Motive" from m. 17 of Tristan. Given the similarity

of pitch content, tempo, and timbre (resulting from similar orchestration)

Berg’s figure has an obvious aural resemblance to Wagner’s.44

41 In typical Bergian fashion, this theme appears at the precise midpoint of the prologue. Berg’s
fascination with palindromes and symmetrical forms is well documented. Hall (1996) suggests that
on some level, Lulu is a palindrome in its entirety.
42 Perle (1985), p. 69

Lochhead, refers to this as “Lulu’s Freedom Music.” (See Lochhead 1997 and 1999)
43 Ibid (Perle)

Through Berg’s use of these Leitsektionen, Perle explains that “Lulu represents a revolutionary
elaboration of Wagner’s famous device, in Tristan und Isolde, of returning at the conclusion of the
work to an extended musical episode of the preceding act.” (Ibid)
44Adorno has argued that “the simultaneous merging of instruments to achieve a balanced timbre…

201
 a. “Destiny” motive b. Lulu, m. 44

EXAMPLE 5-8: Tristan, m. 17 (a), compared to Lulu, m. 44 (b)

3. At the very moment in Tristan when the appoggiatura of the “Destiny” motive

resolves to a consonant F-major triad, the cellos begin to play the “Glance”

motive (Tristan, mm. 17-21). Berg delays the entry of his version of the “Glance”

motive, but employs an F major triad (the same connective tissue that Wagner

uses) to link the “Destiny” to the “Glance.”45

4. The statement of Lulu’s tone row in mm. 48-52 paraphrases the cello gestures

from mm. 17-20 of Tristan. In mm. 48-9 of Lulu, we see that all of the intervals of

this melody are identical to those in a portion of Wagner’s “Glance” motive,

though Berg’s version is two semitones (plus an octave) lower. Also note that the

rhythms Berg uses with his version of the “Glance” could fit quite well in 6/8

meter, whence they are derived in Tristan, though the meter of the Lulu prologue

is ¾ throughout.

is not only intensified to the heights of virtuosity in Tristan, but also remains the rule in Schoenberg
and, above all, Alban Berg.” (2005, p. 75) This passage of Lulu supports Adorno’s claim.
45 See the score to the Lulu prologue, mm. 45-49. Berg adds a Cb to this F-major chord. An F- major

triad with an added Cb (=B) perhaps functions as a second homage to the “Destiny” motive (an F-
major triad with a B-natural added).

202
 a. Tristan, mm 18-19 b. Lulu, mm. 48-9

EXAMPLE 5-9: Respective versions of Wagner’s “Glance” Motive

5. In mm. 56-59, we find four half-diminished seventh-chords, which likely allude

to Tristan despite the fact that they are spelled as tertian sonorities (which is to

say, not as Wagner's inventive dyads of fourths).

EXAMPLE 5-10: Four Tristan Chords, Lulu, mm. 56-9

6. The figure in mm. 60-1 of Lulu is quite similar to mm. 20-1 of Tristan. The two

melodies are essentially the same, though they appear at different pitch levels.

EXAMPLE 5-11: Comparable figures in Tristan and Lulu

7. The remaining voices in m. 60 of Lulu are a transposition of mm. 44, which means

that they also correspond to m. 17 of Tristan. The only other difference between

the two measures (44 and 60) is the change of bass sonority in m. 60. Note that

these two harmonies are rooted on B (H) and F. Perle suggests, quite correctly,

203
 that this is a cipher for Hanna Fuchs.46 In placing this cipher in a measure with

the text, “die Urgestalt des Weibes,” Berg is effectively likening Fuchs to Lulu,

calling both “the primal form of woman,” and analogizing both to Isolde by

including two Tristan figures as well.47 To Berg’s great delight, in a single

measure he found a way to at once symbolize Tristan’s love for Isolde, Schon’s

love for Lulu, and perhaps even his own idealized love for Fuchs.48

EXAMPLE 5-12: Tristan Material and Initials in Lulu, m. 60

5.5: Schön’s “Coda Music”

The Coda of the Act I Sonata (hereafter “Coda Music”)—the thematic

material most explicitly linked to Schön’s identity—is perhaps even more

evocative of Tristan than is “Lulu’s Entrance Music.” The first appearance of this

46Perle (1985) p. 139

47 Berg placed this text at the bottom of the first page in his original libretto with the words typed
with extra space between each of the letters, suggesting the emphasis he envisioned for this text.
This page is reprinted in Perle (1985).
48 Perle (Ibid, p. 62) argues that although the narrator (an Animal tamer) sings this passage, it is

really the autobiographical Alwa who "speaks" here for the following reasons: 1) the Animal
Tamer’s first sung utterance employs Alwa’s thematic material; 2) the Animal Tamer introduces
all of the primary characters except for Alwa, and that curious absence of this introduction is
readily understandable if it is truly Alwa who is “speaking;” and 3) Alwa’s first utterance in the
Opera (the first line of Act I, Scene 1) is asking permission to enter (“Darf ich eintretten”), which
perhaps is a metaphor for Alwa ending his role as narrator in the prologue, and entering the
drama as one of its characters.

204
theme represents, in Perle’s words, “Lulu’s love for Schön and his inability to free

himself from it.”49 Most authors mention the remarkable tonal evocation,

recalling a distinctly Mahlerian sound—for good reason—though few mention

the strikingly audible correspondences to the opening bars of Tristan und

Isolde.50

EXAMPLE 5-13: Tristan Motives in Schön’s Coda Music

At the start of the passage, we hear Berg’s version of the “Grief” motive,

which contains a prominent upward-leap of a sixth, creating an immediate

resemblance to Wagner’s iconic motive. The notation of the words that Lulu

speaks may also reference the chromatic descent of the “Grief” motive (see

49 Perle (1985), p. 79
Before this theme appears, Schön tells Lulu of his wish to end his illicit sexual relationship with
her once he is married to another woman. Lulu pleads with Schön not to end their affair, and
speaks the words, “If I belong to anyone in this world, I belong to you—without you, I would be… I
don’t want to say where.” This text does not appear in Wedekind’s Erdgeist (on which the first half
of Lulu is based), but was added by Berg. Perle notes here that this intensification of the text is
“entirely consistent with Lulu’s special relationship to Dr. Schön.” (Ibid)
50 Lochhead in particular notes this connection. In her words, “[a]s Lulu articulates the nature of the

bonds that link her with Schön, the music alludes to the melodic and harmonic profile of the Prelude
from Tristan und Isolde and insinuates the sense of romantic longing that attaches to the work.”
(1999, p. 236)

205
above).51 Meanwhile, the “Desire” motive appears in an inner voice (at the

original pitch-level). As in the first phrase of Tristan, these two melodic figures

terminate with an E7 chord.52 The E7 chord implies an A tonic in the first

phrase of Tristan, as does Berg’s E7 sonority, in some ways more so than

Wagner’s, as it is followed by an A-major triad in the subsequent measure.

Though Berg’s paraphrased “Grief” and “Desire” motives do not align to create a

Tristan chord en route to the E7 sonority in m. 616, a half- diminished seventh

chord appears two measures later. This possible Tristan chord reference is

agogically accented—it is the only simultaneity in the section to sound for longer

than a single beat.

An important reprise of the Coda music appears at the conclusion of Act I

(m. 1327). Schön closes the act with the words, “Jetzt kommt die Hinrichtung,”53

sardonically predicting his own demise.54 This statement, like the prior, includes

transformed versions of the “Grief” and “Desire” motives (see below), as well as

what Baragwanath calls “[o]ne of the most obvious ‘quotations’ from Wagner in

Lulu:” A chord that “consists of precisely the same collection of notes as that

which thwarted the culmination of Tristan and Isolde’s passion (in m. 1631) at

the very end of their act II love duet.”55

51 Because this text is spoken, and therefore not pitched precisely, the reference is purely Augenmusik;
the line does not evoke the corresponding motive in Tristan aurally.
52 Note that Berg imitates Wagner’s approach to the E7 chord; his paraphrased “Grief” motive

ends on the seventh of the chord (D) and his “Desire” motive floats up to the fifth of the chord
(B), just as these respective motives do in Tristan.
53 “Now comes the execution.”
54 At this point in the opera, Schön has just broken his engagement with another woman and

has agreed to marry Lulu.

55 Baragwanath (1999) p. 81

He explains how this chord “arises throughout Lulu, invariably to suggest an ‘interruption’ of some

206
EXAMPLE 5-14: Berg’s use of Tristan motives at the close of Lulu, Act I

Also note that the final sonority of the act might allude to the series of chords

we hear in Act III of Wagner’s opera when Kurwenal attends to the wounded Tristan

(“Bist du nun tod? Lebst du noch?”). Although the two sonorities only have one pitch

class in common (see below), there is, to my ear, an audible similarity between the

kind. (Ibid, p. 83) Perle too has noted the importance of this recurring figure, referring to it as Basic
Cell V. A subset of this sonority (Ab and Db), which Perle (1985, p. 91) calls the “Signal” motive, or
Basic Cell IV, is sounded to indicate various entrances or exits of the characters. Perle catalogues the
“Signal” motive’s appearances, explaining the significance of each, but makes no mention of this as a
potential Tristan quotation. This motive is usually sounded by the vibraphone in a manner
resembling a doorbell.

207
two passages, and further, they have similar dramatic functions as harbingers of

death.

EXAMPLE 5-15: Rhythmic Figures in Tristan and Lulu

Berg employs the rhythm of this figure (called the Monoritmica) throughout

the opera as a leitmotive, both with and without these low, dissonant sonorities.

This motive is sounded most prominently in Act I Scene II in the moments leading

up to and following the death of the Painter.

EXAMPLE 5-16: Lulu, Monoritmica

5.6: The Synthesis of Lulu and Schön’s Themes

Perhaps the most significant statement of the Coda music appears in the

final scene of the opera, this time representing both Schön and his doppelganger,

Jack the Ripper. Lulu murdered Schön in the previous act, but the actor who

played him returns as Jack the Ripper, who in turn will murder Lulu. The reprise

of Schön’s music flows directly—or in Lochhead’s words, “imperceptibly

transforms”—into Lulu’s thematic material a few measures later. 56 Naudé

explains how the melody Lulu sings in this passage (as she lures Jack to bed) is

derived from the pitches of two successive Tristan chords, followed by a

56 Lochhead, (1997) p. 243

208
 dominant seventh chord (C7), which is the pitch-class inversion of a half-

diminished 7th chord. This “mirror image” of the Tristan chord may symbolize

the uncanny similarities in appearance between the characters Jack and Schön.57

EXAMPLE 5-17: The synthesis of Lulu and Schön’s Themes

The themes of the two lovers are synthesized, as their love narrative comes

to its inevitable close. The example above shows the passage that links Lulu and

Schön’s respective themes. This material is rich with allusions to Tristan, while

connecting two themes which themselves paraphrase material from Wagner’s

opera.

57Naudé, (1997) p. 57

209
 5.7: Conclusions

Having demonstrated that many of the most memorable themes in Lulu

are based upon familiar motives from Wagner’s opera, it is clear that the music of

Tristan und Isolde played a crucial role in shaping Berg’s vision for Lulu. At the

very least, it was a source of creative stimulus, but what other significance we can

ascribe to these quotations remains an open question.

The autobiographical symbols that routinely appear alongside material

from Tristan cannot be ignored. They suggest that Berg equated the love

narratives in Lulu with those of his own life, but even if much of the material from

Tristan does refer to Hanna Fuchs, this is not conclusive proof that Berg loved her

to his dying day—a point of contention among Berg scholars. Floros argues that

Berg’s affair with Fuchs had “an enormous impact on his work,” to the extent that

“[c]ompositions like the Lyric Suite and the concert aria Der Wein—probably also

Lulu—would not have come about without [her].”58 Perle agrees, making a case

quite passionately that Berg’s adoration for Hanna never dwindled. 59 Adorno, on

the other hand, in a letter to Berg’s widow suggests that her late husband “didn’t

write the Lyric Suite because he fell in love with Hanna Fuchs, but fell in love with

[her] in order to write the Lyric Suite” 60—that she was nothing more than “a

necessary muse for Berg.”61 To be clear, I seek neither to affirm nor deny any

arguments about Berg’s romantic life—anyone may draw their own conclusion by

reading his correspondence, keeping in mind what David Schroeder calls Berg’s

58 Floros (2008), p. 1
59 See Perle (1985)
60 Quoted in Douglas Jarman (1997), p. 177
61 Schroeder (1999), p. 234

210
 “exceptionally skillful epistolary masks.”62

Mark DeVoto points out one final Tristan chord in Lulu which may help us to

understand Berg’s motivation more clearly. This quotation appears when Lulu begs

Jack to spare her life. DeVoto notes the “bitter irony” in referencing Wagnerian love-

death as Lulu is brutally murdered—no less by a character who reminds the

audience of Schön, the only man she ever loved. 63 This quotation, I hope, has little

to do with Fuchs. DeVoto calls it “a muted backwards glance” to “the legacy of

Wagner’s revolution in operatic structure”—an homage to a composer Berg

admired deeply. 64

EXAMPLE 5-18: The final Tristan Chord in Lulu

Indeed, Berg’s idolatry of Wagner’s music is almost legendary. Countless

anecdotes attest to this. His early letters to Helene are filled with words of cultish

praise for Wagner. Berg’s nephew suggests that Alban developed this admiration

growing up in a household in which his elder brother would sing through entire

62 Ibid, p. 187
63 DeVoto (1995), p. 152
64 Ibid, p. 153

211
Wagner operas “from beginning to end” while accompanying himself at the piano.65

And Adorno has claimed that Berg would rush towards a piano whenever he laid

eyes on one to play the famous “Tristan-chord”—no doubt an exaggeration, but a

telling story nonetheless.66 Despite this evidence, I am not comfortable concluding

that all of the references to Tristan in Lulu are simply homages either.

It seems more likely that Lulu—en total—is a modernist retelling, or more

precisely, un-telling of Tristan. Lulu is not an idyllic tale of two lovers denied earthly

happiness; it’s the antidote to such a fantasy—an eloquent critique of Tristan,

arguing for the irrelevance of Liebestod to the realities of the present. Suffering

from more than a Bloomian “anxiety of influence,” Berg reportedly once said that he

“wished to burn the Lulu score whenever he heard Tristan und Isolde.” 67 But rather

than burn Lulu in frustration, he sought to shatter the legacy of Tristan instead.

Berg never set out to recreate Tristan—he aimed to top it. Employing the Tristan-

chord as Jack fatally stabs Lulu signifies Berg’s desire to rip the shadow of Wagner

from his back—to silence Wagner’s heavy footsteps behind him, once and for all,

and make himself the giant who would cast his shadow over Opera.

One cannot help but wonder if this desire grew in Berg’s later years. He was

not only anxious about influence, but also about the fate of his own music.68 Berg

said as much to Webern in a 1933 letter—part of a rich correspondence desperately

in need of publication: “I can’t get rid of the fear that the Nazis will take over here

65 Erich Alban Berg (1985), p. 14

66 Both Baragwanath (1999, p 62) and Naudé (1997, p. 19) remind us of this, citing Jarman’s reading of
Adorno’s unpublished reminiscences.
67 Baier (1989), p. 599
68 And perhaps he also feared for his life as well as livelihood. He cynically referred to his

Wörthersee estate as his “Concentration camp” (Konzentrationslager). See Adorno (1991, p. 5)

212
too, that is, our government won’t be strong enough to stop it.”69 (How right he was!)

It is well known that after the Nazis rose to power in 1933, Berg’s music came under

attack as “degenerate art.” Performances of Wozzeck were banned in Germany and

its orbit, causing Berg much financial and emotional trauma. The piece that had

made him literally rich and famous was gradually making him an enemy of the state.

Meanwhile, the music of Wagner was lionized as one of the crowning achievements

of German civilization. I suspect that these circumstances caused Berg to resent the

music he once revered.

When Berg started composing Lulu in the late 1920s, the music of Tristan

was clearly a significant source of inspiration for him. And his affair with Fuchs

might also have been. While it is difficult to believe that Berg spent ten years

obsessing over a woman he virtually never saw, and it’s even harder to fathom that

Berg could still have worshiped Wagner’s music when the political tides threatened

his very existence. What started as an inspiration became an albatross, and Berg’s

passion turned to pathos in his vain struggle to finish Lulu. The final Tristan chord

in Lulu is not, as DeVoto suggests, a “muted, backward glance,” but a promise to

never—ever—look back again.

69 Quoted in Hall (1996), p. 55

213
214
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