(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: "Import and Allusion"

Chapter 9 of the Kostka text covers “external” influences on 20th-century music. He divides external influences into three main sources:

• The Past (Neoclassicism, Neoromanticism, Quotation)
• The Present (Folk/Jazz/Pop)
• The Unfamiliar (Music from other cultures)

Setting aside the idea of “the unfamiliar,” which is fairly loaded from a cultural studies perspective, I would prefer to talk about external influences in two main categories:

• Stylistic copying
• Quotation

Quotation makes use of pre-existing musical material, incorporated into a new composition.

Stylistic copying makes use of the recognizable elements of a particular style, without using any actual pre-existing music from that style.