MMED-5245 Music History: Musical Borrowing
Composers have been borrowing the work of other composers since the Middle Ages with the troping of chant. Bach arranged some of Vivaldi’s concertos to be played on the organ. The theme from Paganini’s 24th caprice has been used in more than one hundred different variation works! In this chronological survey of musical borrowing throughout history, we’ll look at the fourteen categories of musical borrowing identified by leading musicologists. We’ll also consider where borrowing crosses the line into plagiarism.