The Reformation would have profound consequences for German sacred music. There was an established tradition of vernacular hymnody in Germany even before the time of Martin Luther (1483–1546), but through his efforts the chorale would assume a central place in worship. A gifted musician, Luther contributed directly to the establishment of a repertory of German texts and tuneful melodies suitable for congregational performance.

Luther also instituted the practice of supplying preexisting tunes with new religious texts. By 1524 the melody of an old pilgrims' song, "In Gottes Namen fahren wir," had been modified to accommodate Luther's own versificaton of the Ten Commandments, and was published in the Erfurter Enchiridion.

While retaining its identity, the melody was further transformed in the early eighteenth century by Bach, who harmonized the chorale (BWV 298), used it in the accompaniment of Cantata No. 77 (first chorus), and again in the Clavierübung (BWV 678, BWV 679). It also became the basis for "Dies sind die heil'gen zehn Gebot'" (BWV 635), which appeared in his Orgelbüchlein (appendix 2, no. 3).

According to the title inscription, this unfinished manuscript collection of forty-five short organ chorales (c. 1713–17) was intended "to instruct a beginning organist how to set a chorale in diverse manners." As such it documents Bach's personal commitment to the practice of derivative historicism.

Bach's ability to transform this borrowed historical material into a dazzling variety of forms in the space of just twenty measures is astounding. While the chorale theme is intoned in long note values in the uppermost part of a four-voice texture, Bach avails himself of its inherent motivic potential in the other three parts. In the bass part performed by the pedal, the chorale's initial stepwise ascent of a perfect fourth is transformed into a tightly knit family of motives that recur continuously in rhythmic diminution, either singly, sequentially, or in inversion. The lower two voices performed on the manual present still other members of this motivic family, often in faster note values. In a texture of such complexity, it is impossible for the ear to detect individually these many variants, which overlap, succeed one another, or even occur simultaneously in contrary motion. One can only marvel at the extraordinary unity Bach achieved through such diverse means.

When I was a graduate student in musicology at Harvard in 1976, Bach scholar Christoph Wolff told me that he was "quite skeptical" about any numerological symbolism in this little piece. He was more inclined towards an analysis based on musico-rhetorical figures (viz., anaphora). I now must agree with him that it would be difficult to prove anything about this piece or its cantus firmus based on numerological analysis, although other Bach scholars, including Karl Geiringer and Albert Schweitzer, have reached different conclusions.

What is really significant about "Dies sind die heil'gen zehn Gebot," the Orgelbüchlein as a whole, and an overwhelming number of the works comprising Bach's oeuvre, is the fact that they were not created ex nihilo but are demonstrably the products of a superlatively derivative creative process that incorporated the past and built firmly upon its foundation.

Brahms enthusiastically studied the music of the Baroque in his formative years, penning sarabandes and gigues of his own while in his early twenties. That he took these youthful historicist essays seriously is confirmed by the fact that the first of his two extant sarabandes—WoO 5, no. 1, which appeared in 1855—was incorporated into the "Grave ed appassionato" movement of his String Quintet, op. 88, published nearly thirty years later in 1883.

Indeed, Brahms's historicism permeated every aspect of his career. He eagerly transcribed works by J. S. Bach, Handel, Gluck, Schubert, Weber, and Chopin. He composed cadenzas to concerti by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. He produced chorale preludes and fugues for the organ, choral works in liturgical Latin, and secular canons for various vocal ensembles. He compiled several large collections of German folksongs and created dozens of vocal solos, duets, quartets, and choral works set to German texts and translations whose sources were both historically wide-ranging (e.g., the Bible, Hafiz, William Shakespeare, Luther, Ossian [Macpherson], Goethe) and ethnically eclectic (e.g., Bohemian, Czech, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Moravian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Sanskrit, Slavic, Slovakian, Spanish, Swabian, and Turkish). His four piano Ballads, op. 10, were inspired by the old Scottish poem Edward, which had appeared in Percy's Reliques (1765) and in Herder's Stimmen der Völker.

Some of the finest works of Brahms's maturity draw freely on traditional music and musical forms. The Variations on a Theme of Haydn (Op. 56 a/b) are based on an old Austrian pilgrim's song (Chorale Saint Antoni) quoted in the second movement of the eponymous composer's Feldparthie in B-flat Major (HobII.146). The Academic Festival Overture (op. 80) incorporates several traditional student songs and the hymn "Gaudeamus igitur." The theme of the finale of the Fourth Symphony (op. 98) is adapted from Bach's Cantata, "Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich," and serves as the germinal seed of a massive passacaglia.

Brahms was not yet thirty years of age when he began work on a new set of variations that would be for the piano what his later Variations on a Theme of Haydn (originally for two pianos), became for the orchestra. The theme he chose for his new variations set was an air on which Handel himself had based five variations that originally appeared as the third movement of the Suite No. 1 in B-flat Major for harpsichord (HWV 434). The suite in question was probably composed between 1710 and 1717, approximately 150 years before Brahms's Handel Variations were published.

Brahms already had an impressive oeuvre to his credit by 1861, including numerous works for piano solo or with a prominent keyboard solo part: the three piano sonatas (opuses 1, 2, and 5); the Scherzo in E-flat Minor, op. 4; the Piano Trio No. 1, op. 8; the Variations on a Theme by Schumann, op. 9; the Ballades, op. 10; the Piano Concerto No. 1, op. 15; and the Variations on an Original Theme and Variations on a Hungarian Song, op. 21, nos. 1–2. By 1861 he had also begun the Variations on a Theme of Schumann, op. 23, a posthumous tribute to his departed friend and mentor based on the Geisterthema allegedly given to Schumann by the spirits of Schubert and Mendelssohn that was used in the middle movement of Schumann's Violin Concerto. Brahms's next major piano work after the Handel Variations would be the two sets of Paganini Variations, op. 35, composed between 1862 and 1863.

Clearly the keyboard variations genre had become something of a preoccupation for Brahms between 1854 and 1863, and was certainly an excellent vehicle for the young man to showcase his skill both as a composer and pianist. The fact that Brahms's variations far exceeded in scope and complexity what Handel had achieved using the same material could not fail to have impressed his contemporaries, especially when the work was premiered in the composer's own home town of Hamburg by the great virtuosa Clara Schumann. The Handel Variations are regarded by many as the vehicle whereby the young composer achieved a major breakthrough in his already very promising career.

Brahms adopts Handel's eight-measure theme literally (but for the ornamental quintuplet anacrusis leading into variation 1), repeating each half (appendix 2, no. 4a).

The theme is simplicity itself, moving to the dominant at its midway point and regaining the tonic on the third beat of m. 8. Although its melodic range is a major ninth, the first phrase of the air melody is constructed principally of the first five tones of the B-flat major scale. The second phrase requires only the tones of the octave defined by the lower and upper dominant (f' and f''). There is little harmonic variety, and the tonic and dominant appear prominently in virtually every measure. But m. 6, with its succession of first-inversion triads, lends some anticipatory color to the almost literal recurrence of m. 1 at m. 7, a structural procedure that rounds off the period.

Because Handel's theme, its elegant ornamentation notwithstanding, is rather unremarkable in itself, it proved especially amenable to creative manipulation. Too distinctive a melodic or harmonic profile would likely have imposed greater constraints on both composers, whereas the theme in question provides just enough points of melodic interest and harmonic contrast to be recognizable in subsequent transformations.

Twenty-four of the succeeding twenty-five variations are exactly sixteen measures in length, whether as a consequence of inserting repeats or writing out the music in full. The sole exception is variation 15, whose second half is expanded to ten (5 x 2) measures, thus extending the length of the variation to eighteen measures. Most of the variations refer back to the opening theme both harmonically and melodically, although the allusions may be so fleeting or subtle as to escape immediate detection.

The syncopated merriment of variation 1 does not differentiate it stylistically from the opening theme, but its decidedly pianistic accents would be ineffective on Handel's harpsichord, and thus represent a departure from the early-eighteenth-century keyboard idiom (appendix 2, no. 4a).

Variation 2 moves directly into the nineteenth century, with its subtly shaded dynamics and languorous romantic harmonies. Only the general melodic contours of Handel's theme are still discernible on the surface of a gently animated three-against-two rhythmic matrix.

Variation 3 maintains a quiet but continuous eighth-note rhythm throughout while essentially abandoning any semblance of Handel's baroque keyboard texture. Instead the right- and left-hand parts alternate to produce a seamless melodic exchange against a backdrop of gently shifting syncopated harmonies.

Variation 4 fully affirms the power and authority of the nineteenth-century pianoforte, with its virtuosic octaves and dynamic syncopations. Any allusion to the aria melody is subordinated to bravura display.

Variation 5 drops suddenly to piano, modulating to B-flat minor in order to explore new harmonic terrain. The persistent dactylic motive consisting of an eighth note followed by two sixteenths is derived from the second beat of m. 5.

Variation 6, also in B-flat minor, and performed softly but entirely in octaves, is seething with pent-up energy. Here Brahms reveals his mastery of canonic counterpoint. In the first phrase, the bass clef imitates the treble at the time-interval of a quarter note. In the second phrase, the treble clef imitates the bass melody in inversion for two measures, then without inversion for the remaining two.

Variation 7, too, begins quietly, returning to B-flat major with evocative horn-fifths based on the dactylic rhythmic motive already encountered in Variation 5. The end of each phrase erupts into powerful forte sonorities.

Variation 8 maintains the dactylic rhythmic motif of variation 7 throughout, and firmly reestablishes the home key by long animated pedal tones on the tonic and dominant.

Variation 9 is a dynamically varied excursion in octaves and triplets. Allusion is made to the original air in the bass.

The triplet rhythm continues into variation 10, whose scherzando character is achieved through crisp staccatos, widely contrasting dynamics, rapid changes of register, and sprightly grace notes.

Variation 11 is enlivened by continuously oscillating sixteenth-note figuration, which begins in the bass, subsequently migrates to the treble, and ultimately alternates between both hands.

Variation 12 summons back the horn fifths heard in variation 7, but this time in an atmosphere of pianissimo tranquility provided by gently flowing sixteenth figures in the treble. Fragments of the original air melody are heard in the bass.

Variation 13, in the dark tonality of B-flat minor, is far and away the most "exotic" of the set, taking on what might best be described as a pensive Hungarian character reminiscent of the lassu, underscored by intermittent turns, scalar flourishes, and distinctive chromatic inflections.

Variation 14 is equally Magyar in character, but this time assumes the infectiously jubilant character of a friss, with its abundantly cascading sixths and mischievously disjunct bass line.

Further double notes, horn fifths, and high spirits pervade variation 15, whose second half is sequentially expanded by an extra measure. Motivic allusions to Handel's theme occur in both the treble and bass.

With variation 16, quiet is restored and a delicate counterpoint ensues which colorfully exploits the extreme registers of the instrument. A motivic fragment from the beginning of Handel's theme is repeatedly presented in imitation by the left and right hands.

The contrastive exploration of high and low registers continues in variation 17, this time with emphasis on contrary motion. The aria theme is subtly referenced in the bass.

Graceful arpeggiated figures are volleyed from treble to bass and back again in variation 18. The melodic contour of the aria theme is lightly traced between the two hands.

Variation 19 is a siciliano in 12/8 with lively dotted rhythms whose texture and quasi-pastoral sonorities are far more redolent of Handel than most of the preceding variations. Subtle allusion to the original theme is shared by both hands.

An extraordinary infusion of chromaticism distinguishes variation 20, whose colorful harmonies glide mysteriously over a bass composed entirely in octaves. Any reference to Handel's theme is well-disguised.

Variation 21 is a further exploration of cross rhythms, this time with tuplets set against arpeggiated groups of four sixteenth notes in the key of G minor.

Variation 22 is a late-eighteenth-century reminiscence that floats like a wisp of cloud over a gently animated tonic triadic pedal. Handel's theme receives a nod of recognition in the uppermost voice.

Twelve-eight meter returns in variation 23, a powerful staccato-rhythmic transition to variation 24, whose tempestuous scalar motives emanate as much from the bare outline of the original theme as they do from the ornamental filigree of variation 1.

Variation 25 is a climactic quasi-orchestral transformation of the original theme, punctuated by fortissimo dotted rhythms in a tenaciously trochaic pattern (appendix 2, no. 4b).

The concluding fugue subject is a synthesis of fragmentary portions of Handel's theme (appendix 2, no. 4b). It begins with an impulsive motive of three sixteenths followed by a quarter derived from the first four notes of the air. To this is grafted a second motive that restlessly winds around on itself, fashioned from the group of four sixteenths appearing first in measure 1, beat 3.

The subject is announced in the alto, soprano, bass, and tenor voices in rapid succession, after which Brahms forges ahead in perpetual motion (cf. Schumann's Toccata, op. 7), ultimately abandoning any strict adherence to the initial four-voice texture. The subject and its countersubject subsequently recur in a dazzling variety of guises. The subject is melodically altered, augmented, inverted, and even quadrupled and set against itself in contrary motion, all in a complex texture relentlessly exploiting rapid-fire double notes and octaves.

That a derivative historicist work could reach such heights of sheer inspiration is a tribute not only to Brahms's exuberant genius but also—as was the case with Bach—to the rich potential of creative retrospection.

Le sacre du printemps, Igor Stravinsky's most widely known orchestral work and one of the icons of musical modernism, was conceived neither as a contemporary or futuristic ballet, but as a series of ancient scenes. In the spring of 1910, as he was completing the score of The Firebird, Stravinsky had a curious dream: "There arose a picture of a sacred pagan ritual . . . wise elders are seated in a circle and are observing the dance before death of the girl whom they are offering as a sacrifice to the god of Spring in order to gain his benevolence."¹ By the summer of 1911, thematic ideas for what would become Les augures printanières first began to surface, and Le sacre was completed early the following year.

There was no physically extant music from the lost world of the Pagan Slavs that might have suggested a creative direction for this extraordinary score. Stravinsky conjured the past from the depths of memory, translating what had been unconscious imagery into objectively audible musical sound.

The same deep-rooted historicism that gave rise to Le Sacre also gave rise to Pulcinella and the many "neoclassical" works following it that so bewildered and irritated modernist critics. Distracted by matters of style, they overlooked the significance of the retrospective aesthetic orientation that informed both the composer's primitivist ballet and his archly urbane review of the eighteenth century.

Claude Debussy, with whom Stravinsky had played a four-hand version of Le sacre in the spring of 1913, seems to have intuited much the same thing, for, according to Louis Laloy, Debussy felt overwhelmed "as though by a hurricane from the remote past, which had seized our lives by the roots."² As Boucourechliev would later remark, "He was determined to make the whole of history his own, to use it for whatever attracted or inspired him at that moment, whatever the occasion or circumstance, and to use it to create a new work by Stravinsky."³

We have it on Stravinsky's own authority that history was his favorite domain:

Actually, Le sacre, was an even earlier look backward, into the very depths of his subconscious mind—if not into that great archetypal repository to which Jung gave the name Collective Unconscious. For Stravinsky, the past was a living wellspring from which he could draw fresh inspiration.

Howard Gardner, whose excellent study of Stravinsky appears in the book Creating Minds, seems to have a difficult time accounting for the composer's historicism. He variously tries to describe it as "a normal reaction" for one who had earlier rejected past traditions and personal roots, as an opportunity for the composer to further develop his own "voice," as an atonement for past 'sins' of aesthetic iconoclasm, or even as a "playground" which prevented Stravinsky from becoming too individualistic and radical.

Too individualistic and radical? Since Gardner premises his conclusions on the modernist fiat that innovation is the touchstone of creativity, this is tantamount to suggesting that too much creativity is dangerous, or at the very least "troublesome and counterproductive."⁵

None of these apologetics rings as true as Stravinsky's own words: "Did not Eliot and I set out to refit old ships? And refitting old ships is the real task of the artist. He can say again, in his way, only what has already been said."⁶ Otherwise stated,

In this respect, Stravinsky mirrors a concept expressed by Francis Bacon (1561–1626) in "Of Vicissitude of Things":

Andrew Ross has similarly summarized the Stravinskian perspective: "everything has been prewritten, and so what is said in the past determines the real to come when that past is remembered."⁸

Stravinsky's historicist orientation made him feel strangely out of place in the modern world: "I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God."⁹

Like T. S. Eliot, he would eventually turn to Christianity and conservative politics, perhaps as an antidote to this temporal dysphoria. Neither these developments nor the historicist core of his musical oeuvre are consistent with modernist ideology. Yet Stravinsky is still consigned by critics and scholars to the "modernist" camp, as if there were no other way to account for the magnitude of his creative accomplishments. Modernism, with its agenda of radically antihistoricist innovation, it seems, is the only form creativity can possibly take—even if modern artists have more often than not been anything but doggedly modern.

Stravinsky's Pulcinella (1919–20) is a case in point. Composed of eight closely interconnected tableaux, the ballet is based on a seventeenth-century Commedia dell'arte play about the title character (disguised as a magician); four impostor Pulcinellas; the real Pulcinella's beloved, Pimpinella; several lady suitors whom Pulcinella seeks to evade; and the latter's wizardly machinations with collaborator Furbo to secure the object of his desire.

Its subtitle—ballet avec chant en un acte, musique d'après Giambattista Pergolèse ("Ballet with Song in One Act, [with] Music after Giovanni Battista Pergolesi")—is, of course, misleading, since research has since proven that Pergolesi was not the only composer on whose music Stravinsky based this unusually attractive score. According to Maureen A. Carr of Pennsylvania State University, "In 1988, the careful research of the late Barry S. Brook revealed that only some of Stravinsky’s sources can be attributed to Pergolesi and that others were written by Domenico Gallo [b. c. 1730], Carlo Ignazio Monza [1725–1801], and possibly Alessandro Parisotti [1835–1913] and Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer [1692–1766]."¹⁰ Other sources attribute some of the borrowed material to the little-known Fortunato Chelleri (1690–1757).

But for the addition of three singers (soprano, tenor, and bass, situated in the orchestra pit) and a trombone, Stravinsky's thirty-two piece chamber orchestra, with its pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, and horns; trumpet; and twenty-two strings (including an embedded quintet), would have been entirely at home in the eighteenth century.

Although Stravinsky believed that he himself had set in motion the journey back into music history that began with Pulcinella, Massine and Diaghilev were largely responsible for planning his itinerary. Encouraged by the success of Vincenzo Tommassini’s Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur (The Good-Humored Ladies, 1917), a pastiche based on Goldoni's play Le Donne di buon 'umore and harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, Diaghilev originally wanted Manuel de Falla to confect a new balletic pasticcio from the assortment of eighteenth-century manuscripts he and Massine had assembled for that purpose. When this plan fell through, however, Stravinsky was rapidly and belatedly pressed into service in the autumn of 1919.

When the work was premiered by the Ballets russes on 15 May 1920, with choreography by Massine and costumes and scenery by Picasso, critical hostility was intense, and Pulcinella has remained a controversial work ever since. Reynaldo Hahn, who was present at the opening performance, provides a particularly revealing snapshot:

Constant Lambert's often quoted allegation that Stravinsky was "travelling in more than one century at once" must be understood in light of Lambert's own strongly historicist bent as the composer of the ballets Romeo and Juliet (1924–25) and Pomona (1926).¹² Although many present at the premiere and subsequent performances around the world were taken aback by Stravinsky's unabashed historicism, still others obviously felt that he had overstepped his bounds by not presenting his eighteenth-century sources in a more transparent fashion.

Diaghilev, for one, did not quite get the "stylish orchestration" he expected, and Stravinsky believed he had "so shocked him that he [Diaghilev] went about for a long time with a look that suggested The Offended Eighteenth Century." The Russian impresario probably anticipated a straightforward orchestration of the sort Tomassini had made of Scarlatti's sonatas, or something in line with Respighi's arrangements of Rossini and Cimarosa in La boutique fantasque (1919) and Le Astuzie Femminili (1920). But its curious eclecticism notwithstanding, Pulcinella would become the most significant of his company's four antiquarian Italian ballets and would signal a major turning point in Stravinsky's career.¹³

Indeed, the score is as interesting for what Stravinsky borrowed from the eighteenth century as it is for what he brought to it, although he would state, "the remarkable thing about Pulcinella is not how much but how little has been added or changed."¹⁴ For the most part, the music in Diaghilev's manucripts—including the comic operas Il frate 'nnamorato and Il Flaminio, the serious opera Adriano in Siria, an aria, six trio sonatas, two harpsichord suites, and a concertino—remained intact. Stravinsky preserved the character of his source materials by retaining the principal melodic and bass lines, as well as all of the original texts. But, as he would later explain,

Thus the historicism evident in Pulcinella, though primarily derivative, is also to a significant degree adaptive and eclectic. Some of the principal features demonstrating that Stravinsky's eighteenth century was filtered through a russified twentieth-century lens are enumerated below:

1. Far more complex orchestration than would be typical of an eighteenth-century score from the time of Pergolesi (1710–36).
2. Unusual combinations and juxtapositions of instruments.
3. Significantly greater exploitation of distinctive instrumental colors.
4. More idiomatic, soloistic treatment of instruments (e.g., trombone glissandi).
5. Use of solo instruments as virtual dramatic characters (e.g., the humorous exchange between the double bass and trombone in the vivo of tableau 7).
6. Greater incidence of dissonant sonorities.
7. Intermittently ambiguous harmonic language.
8. Expansion, elision, or repetition of borrowed materials.
9. Sudden shifts in tempo and meter, and highly contrastive changes of mood, instrumental color, texture, and dynamics.
10. Significant use of syncopation and metrical displacement.
11. Overall stylistic heterogeneity, suggesting a collage of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century practices rather than any single "period" style.

A comparison of the opening Sinfonia and Finale suggests that these "Stravinskyisms" come fully into play only gradually:

Stravinsky himself in this case seems to have vicariously assumed the role of the real Pulcinella, who remains incognito just so long as is necessary to carry out his schemes.

Pulcinella is Italianate music from a composer who had spent his formative years in St. Petersburg, that "Venice of the North" which still bears the imprint of the many eighteenth-century Italian architects and designers who contributed directly to its picturesquely European character. In a very real sense, then, Stravinsky through Pulcinella, had found his way home, and—to borrow a line from Eliot—had "come to know the place for the first time."

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