(1) A compositional technique, popular particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries, whereby a pre-existing melody (usually chant) is used in a polyphonic work; it may be subjected to rhythmic and melodic ornamentation but is not obscured. Examples can be found in settings of the Mass Ordinary from the 14th and 15th centuries. In early 15th-century settings of hymns, antiphons and sequences based on chant, the borrowed melody usually appears in the upper voice and was not subject to much alteration. In cyclic masses, however, borrowed melodies (mainly restricted to the tenor) could be extensively paraphrased (e.g. Du Fay's Missa ‘Ave regina celorum’). In masses of the late 15th century and the 16th, paraphrased melodies appear within an imitative texture, moving from voice to voice (as in Josquin's Missa ‘Pange lingua’ or Palestrina's masses based on hymns). It has been suggested that 15th- and 16th-century composers consciously included in their works short citations or paraphrases of sections of well-known chants or even of works by other composers for interpretative or symbolic purposes. Paraphrases of popular tunes are also found in the music of Charles Ives, notably in his Second Symphony (1902).
(2) In the 19th century the ‘Paraphrase de Concert’, sometimes called ‘Réminiscences’ or ‘Fantaisie’, was a virtuoso work based on well-known tunes, usually taken from popular operas. Liszt in particular wrote such paraphrases for piano, including ‘Grande paraphrase de la marche de Donizetti’ (1847) and Totentanz: Paraphrase über das Dies irae (1849).
See also Borrowing; Paraphrases, Scottish; Parody (i); Psalms, metrical.
J. Handschin: ‘Zur Frage der melodischen Paraphrasierung im Mittelalter’, ZMw, x (1927–8), 513–59
R.L. Marshall: ‘The Paraphrase Technique of Palestrina in his Masses based on Hymns’,JAMS, xvi (1963), 347–72
E.H. Sparks: Cantus Firmus in Mass and Motet, 1420–1520 (Berkeley, 1963/R)
I. Godt: ‘Renaissance Paraphrase Technique: a Descriptive Tool’, Music Theory Spectrum, ii (1980), 110–18
S. Döhring: ‘Réminiscences: Liszts Konzeption der Klavierparaphrase’, Festschrift Heinz Becker, ed. J. Schläder and R. Quandt (Laaber, 1982), 131–51
J.P. Burkholder: ‘Quotation and Paraphrase in Ives's Second Symphony’, 19CM, xi (1987–8), 3–25
G. Boyd: ‘The Development of Paraphrase Technique in the Fifteenth Century’, Indiana Theory Review, ix (1988), 23–62
C. Reynolds: ‘The Counterpoint of Allusion in Fifteenth-Century Masses’, JAMS, xlv (1992), 228–60
M. Fromson: ‘Themes of Exile in Willaert's Musica Nova’, JAMS, xlvii (1994), 442–88
RICHARD SHERR