Repeated Borrowing: The Case of “Es ist genug”

Author:

Metzer David

Abstract

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

Publisher

University of California Press

Subject

Music

Reference199 articles.

1. This article began as a talk given as a Class of 1960 Scholar at Williams College in March 2016. I would like to thank the Music Department for the invitation and the faculty and students for their inspiring questions and comments. I have also benefitted from the insightful responses of the Journal's anonymous reviewers, which gave me much to consider in contemplating the practice of borrowing and the four works discussed in the article.

2. In a study of Bach chorale quotations in twentieth-century German works, Klaus Winkler mentions the appearance of “Es ist genug” in both Berg's concerto and Zimmermann's Ekklesiastische Aktion: Winkler, “Bach-Choralzitate.” Guillermo Scarabino discusses the use of the “Es ist genug” melody in Berg's concerto and references to it in Britten's War Requiem. As he acknowledges, the references in the latter work are not as direct as those in the concerto, emerging from the emphasis in the War Requiem on the F♯-C tritone: Scarabino, “Bach, Berg, Britten.”

3. To this list could be added Eve Beglarian's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1994). Like the works discussed in this article, the movement that sets the William Blake proverb “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough” concludes with a quotation of “Es ist genug.” Consistent with the referentiality of repeated borrowing, there are parallels between Beglarian's work and the four covered here, but the connections are not tight enough to place it in this discussion. Beglarian also incorporates melodic strands of the chorale in her The Continuous Life (2000). Another notable work is Magnus Lindberg's Chorale (2002), which, unlike the works studied here, does not quote the chorale melody but is rather a setting of “Es ist genug.”

4. Burkholder, “Uses of Existing Music.”

5. Reynolds, Motives for Allusion.

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