Plagiarism and the Napoleonic Potpourri

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents the modern rediscovery of the potpourri, a genre of music that appeared in France around 1787 and was banned by Napoleonic copyright law in 1810. While potpourris have been dismissed as mere medleys, this article shows that in its original form, the potpourri used musical excerpts for an intriguing game: to make pointed musical commentary about the politics of musical resemblance. As a genre, the potpourri reveals various conclusions about musical creation, setting into relief tensions between older ideas about the primacy of imitation and newer ideas about creativity ex nihilo—tensions that were not sufficiently resolved when the new intellectual property law privileging the ‘rights of genius’ was enacted in 1793. Potpourris provide, from the viewpoint of working musicians, previously unexamined commentary on the philosophical discourse and legal action that defined and protected certain creative practices and delegitimized others around the turn of the nineteenth century.