Algorithmic musical borrowing: techniques and meaning

Abstract

Musical borrowing has been a widespread practice within Western musical composition at least since the dawn of its notated music. The practice has been the subject of extensive research ranging from studies of specific genres (such as quodlibet works) to taxonomic studies that traverse genres and periods to the study of meaning generated by borrowing. The present study focuses on a specific underused class of procedures of musical borrowing: algorithmic transformation of the source material. A suite of algorithmic borrowing procedures were chosen drawn from already known transformations (inversion retrograde multiplication modal transformation and pitch rotation). The results of applying these procedures in a wholesale way to pre-existing music are assessed for validity with the successful specimens being used to create new musical works or even simply declared as new works simpliciter. The ramifications of the results are discussed in the context of whether such borrowing procedures are ethical and legal (including subjects such as plagiarism fraudulence moral rights and copyright) whether the results have esthetic merit (particularly in the context and tradition of John Cage) and whether the results can legitimately be called works of art.