The incorporation of a relatively brief segment of existing music in another work, in a manner akin to quotation in speech or literature, or a segment of existing music so incorporated in a later work. Quotation usually means melodic quotation, although the whole musical texture may be incorporated, and solely rhythmic quotation is possible, if rare. Quotation is distinct from other forms of Borrowing in that the borrowed material is presented exactly or nearly so, unlike an Allusion or Paraphrase, but is not part of the main substance of the work, as it would be if used as a Cantus firmus, Refrain, fugue subject or theme in Variations or other forms, or if presented complete in a Contrafactum, setting (see Setting (ii)), Intabulation, transcription, Medley or Potpourri. Quotation plays a role in other forms of borrowing, such as Quodlibet, Collage and many instances of Modelling. Musical scholarship has not always observed these distinctions, and ‘quotation’ and its German counterpart Zitat have been used to refer to a variety of borrowing practices.
A quotation in speech or literature may be attributed or unattributed, familiar or unfamiliar to the listener, set off from the surrounding context by punctuation or tone of voice or so integrated with its context that only the most observant notice that it is a quotation. A similar range is possible in music. Some 20th-century scores identify quotations with footnotes, and quotations of text with music provide almost as explicit an identification, but most quotations appear without attribution. Quotations are often prominent and brief, suggesting that the composer or improviser expects those familiar with the quoted work to recognize it from a short excerpt. It is also possible for listeners to hear a ‘quotation’ where none was intended, based on a coincidental similarity. In most cases, quoting existing music is an act that conveys meaning through the text or associations carried by the quoted music and the implications aroused by the way the quoted material is presented or manipulated. Like a synecdoche in literature, the quotation can stand for the entire work from which it is extracted and thus for its composer, its genre, its historical period, its region of origin or the musical tradition from which it comes. Quotation has also been used to create humour through surprise or incongruous juxtapositions and, in 20th-century music, to comment on the distance between the present and the past.
The practice of musical quotation, as distinct from older forms of borrowing such as centonization, contrafactum, use of a model and polyphonic elaboration of chant, may have begun in medieval secular songs in tandem with quotation of text. Both words and melody from Machaut's ballade Phyton, le mervilleus serpent are quoted in Phiton, Phiton by Magister Franciscus, which replies to Machaut, and Ciconia's Sus une fontayne quotes text and music from the beginnings of three ballades by Philippus de Caserta, apparently in a gesture of homage. The practice can also be found in the Renaissance. Josquin's motet Tu solus, qui facis mirabilia quotes text and music from the opening of Ockeghem's chanson D'ung aultre amer, joining the French and Latin texts to read ‘To love another [than Christ] would be deception’. It has also been suggested that melodic resemblances between some Renaissance works represent quotations or allusions meant to recall the words of the quoted work and enrich the meaning of the words being sung (Reynolds, 1992). This is surely true in the first recitative in Bach's ‘Peasant’ Cantata (1742) when the strings quote the song Mit dir und mir ins Federbett (‘With you and me in the feather-bed’) to suggest that Mieke's lover wants more than the kiss he requests.
In dramatic or programmatic works, quotations can depict a performance of the music being quoted or suggest activities or groups of people through music associated with them. Early examples include Biber's representation in Battalia (1673) of soldiers encamped before a battle through the folksongs they sing, and the supper scene in Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787), in which an onstage band plays tunes from operas by Soler and Salieri and from his own Le Nozze di Figaro. The quotations of patriotic songs in battle-pieces from James Hewitt's The Battle of Trenton (1797) to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (1880) represent the opposing armies through the music of their bands. Quotation of Ein' feste Burg in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (1836) represents a performance of the chorale, but its appearance in Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony (1832) more abstractly represents the Reformation in general.
Quotation of vocal music in instrumental works can be interpreted as a reference to the original text, which can suggest meanings and invite programmatic interpretations, as in Brahms's and Mahler's quotations from their own songs or the quotations from Zemlinsky's Lyrische Symphonie in Berg's Lyric Suite (1925–6). An exact quotation may also signal another, less obvious relationship between two works; in Ives's song West London (1921), the appearance in the piano postlude of the opening phrase of the hymn There is a Fountain Filled with Blood makes overt the source from which almost the entire vocal line has been paraphrased (Burkholder, 1985). Quotations can have humorous or satirical intent, like the reference to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in Debussy's ‘Golliwogg's Cakewalk’ from Children's Corner (1906–8) and the quotation of Chopin's funeral march in Satie's Embryons desséchés (1913). Tin Pan Alley songwriters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries often quoted well-known tunes near the end of the chorus, as in George M. Cohan's The Story of the Wedding March (1901, with Mendelssohn's wedding march), or used quotation to suggest a scene or activity, as in James Thornton's Streets of Cairo (1895), which evokes exotic dancing by borrowing the tune that accompanied the ‘hoochy-koochy’ dance performed at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Jazz improvisers often quote popular tunes, classical music or other jazz artists in their solos, with aims that vary from homage to private jokes. Quotations can convey meanings remarkably quickly through the associations carried by the quoted material; this is often exploited in music for films and television.
Composers since World War II have used quotation to suggest the gulf between present and past by juxtaposing current and past musical idioms; in ‘Dream Images (Love-Death Music)’ from Crumb's Makrokosmos I for amplified piano (1972), the middle section of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu appears ‘as if emerging from silence’ amidst Crumb's own sweetly dissonant modern sounds, ‘like the gentle caress of a faintly remembered music’. The many and varied uses of borrowed material in 20th-century music have often all been described as ‘quotation’, which obscures important distinctions (see Borrowing, §§12–14).
MGG2 (G. Gruber: ‘Zitat’)
F. Peterson: ‘Quotation in Music’, MMR, xxx (1900), 217–19, 241–3, 265–7
R. Sternfeld-Friedenau: ‘Musikalische Citate und Selbstcitate’, Die Musik, ii (1902–3), 429–42
G. Münzer and O. Grohe: ‘Musikalische Zitate und Selbstzitate’, Die Musik, iii (1903–4), 430–33
L. Harrison: ‘On Quotation’, MM, xxiii (1946), 166–9
P. Keppler, Jr.: ‘Some Comments on Musical Quotation’, MQ, xlii (1956), 473–85
H. Kirchmeyer: ‘Vom Sinn und Unsinn musikliterarischer Schlagwortzitate: eine Studie zum Thema “Demagogie der Informationen”’, NZM, Jg.122 (1961), 490–96
G. von Noé: ‘Das musikalische Zitat’, NZM, Jg.124 (1963), 134–7
B. Meier: ‘Melodiezitate in der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts’, TVNM, xx/1–2 (1964–5), 1–19
Z. Lissa: ‘Ästhetische Funktionen des musikalischen Zitats’, Mf, xix (1966), 364–78
H. Goldschmidt: ‘Zitat oder Parodie?’, BMw, xii (1970), 171–98
E. Budde: ‘Zitat, Collage, Montage’, Die Musik der sechziger Jahre, ed. R. Stephan (Mainz, 1972), 26–38
U. Günther: ‘Zitate in französischen Liedsätzen der Ars Nova und Ars Subtilior’, MD, xxvi (1972), 53–68
C. Kühn: Das Zitat in der Musik der Gegenwart: mit Ausblicken auf bildende Kunst und Literatur (Hamburg, 1972)
T. Kneif: ‘Zur Semantik des musikalischen Zitats’, NZM, Jg.134 (1973), 3–9
Z. Lissa: ‘Historical Awareness of Music and its Role in Present-Day Musical Culture’, IRASM, iv (1973), 17–32
L. Krïlova: ‘Funktsii tsitatï v muzïkal'nom tekste [The functions of quotation in music]’, SovM (1975), no.8, pp.92–7
G. Gruber: ‘Das musikalische Zitat als historisches und systematisches Problem’, Musicologica austriaca, i (1977), 121–35
W. Siegmund-Schultze: ‘Das Zitat im zeitgenössischen Musikschaffen: eine produktiv-schöpferische Traditionslinie?’, Musik und Gesellschaft, xxvii (1977), 73–8
C. Ballantine: ‘Charles Ives and the Meaning of Quotation in Music’, MQ, lxv (1979), 167–84
M. Hicks: The New Quotation: its Origins and Functions (diss., U. of Illinois, 1984)
J.P. Burkholder: ‘“Quotation” and Emulation: Charles Ives's Uses of His Models’, MQ, lxxi (1985), 1–26
A.M. Gillmor: ‘Musico-poetic Form in Satie's “Humoristic” Piano Suites (1913–14)’, Canadian University Music Review, viii (1987), 1–44
A. Gimbel: ‘Elgar's Prize Song: Quotation and Allusion in the Second Symphony’, 19CM, xii (1988–9), 231–40
H. Danuser: ‘Musikalische Zitat- und Collageverfahren im Lichte der (Post)Moderne-Diskussion’, Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Kunste: Jahrbuch, iv (1990), 395–409
K. Gabbard: ‘The Quoter and his Culture’, Jazz in Mind: Essays on the History and Meanings of Jazz, ed. R.T. Bruckner and S. Weiland (Detroit, 1991), 92–111
B. Sonntag: ‘Die Marseillaise als Zitat in der Musik: ein Beitrag zum Thema “Musik und Politik”’, ‘Nach Frankreich zogen zwei Grenadier’: Zeitgeschehen im Spiegel von Musik, ed. B. Sonntag (Münster, 1991), 22–37
C.A. Reynolds: ‘The Counterpoint of Allusion in Fifteenth-Century Masses’, JAMS, xlv (1992), 228–60
D. Parmer: ‘Brahms, Song Quotation, and Secret Programs’, 19CM, xix (1995–6), 161–90
P. Thissen: Zitattechniken in der Symphonik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1998)
For further bibliography see Borrowing.
J. PETER BURKHOLDER