Abstract
The music of American composer Charles Ives (1874--1954) has generated outstanding research in the areas of compositional technique and the use of musical borrowing. Ives incorporated quotations of hundreds of American folk tunes, patriotic songs, and hymns into his compositions. More recently, American composer Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938) directly quotes American folk melodies in a significant portion of his piano music. The purpose of this study was to compare the use of borrowed folk material in the music of both Ives and Rzewski, including an overview of the history of musical borrowing, discussion of other twentieth-century American composers who used quotations of native folk tunes in their piano compositions, summary of the nature of quotation as a compositional procedure, and examination of a compositional model applied to the music of Charles Ives by J. Peter Burkholder.
The focal point of this study, Rzewski's four North American Ballads (1979) for solo piano, serves as a basis for comparison with the compositional philosophy and procedures of Ives. The investigative process applied to each of Rzewski's Ballads included a grouping structure analysis and Schenkerian diagram of each of the borrowed folk tunes, as well as a systematic analysis of every instance of folk tune quotation. These quotations were examined and categorized by location, specific motives used, length of the quotation, range, tonality, and texture. The model applied to Rzewski's work was J. Peter Burkholder's All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Six forms of quotation, as defined by Burkholder, were found to be used by Rzewski in the North American Ballads: cumulative setting or pre-imitation, variations, modeling, setting an existing tune with new accompaniment, stylistic allusion, and programmatic quotation. Other similarities in compositional style between Ives and Rzewski included the use of style juxtaposition, polytonal contrapuntal layering, and a thematic use of melodic quotation.