COMPOSER AS APPROPRIATOR: SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF MUSICAL WORKS BASED ON APPROPRIATED MATERIALS By GARRETT AUSTIN HECKER A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 Garrett Austin Hecker To my Mom, my Dad, and my Brother ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my Mom and Dad for helping me find an artistic and scholarly path in life and for encouraging me to always try my hardest in every endeavor. I thank my brother for constantly challenging every idea that I ever presented to him and for forcing me to define and defend my positions. And I thank the chair of my supervisory committee, Dr. James Paul Sain, for his clear and sober advice about the profession of music and about dealing with life in general. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 7 LIST OF EXAMPLES ...................................................................................................... 8 LIST OF OBJECTS ......................................................................................................... 9 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 12 Literature Review .................................................................................................... 17 Methodology ........................................................................................................... 37 Radiohead, “Idioteque,” Kid A .......................................................................... 45 John Oswald, “Brown,” Plunderphonics ........................................................... 47 2 SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF OPEN WORKS AND DIRECT QUOTATIONS: “IDIOTEQUE” FROM RADIOHEAD’S KID A .......................................................... 50 Background Information Regarding the Creation of “mild und leise” and “Idioteque” and the Relationship Between Appropriated Materials ...................... 50 Use of Wagner’s “Tristan” Chord in Lansky’s mild und leise ............................ 50 Use of Lansky’s mild und leise in Radiohead’s “Idioteque”............................... 55 Constructing Model Listeners and Interpreting the Relationship Between Works, Creators, and Appropriators ................................................................................ 59 Construction of the Model Listener for Lansky’s mild und leise ........................ 60 Construction of the Model Listener for Radiohead’s “Idioteque” ....................... 63 Comparison of Model Listeners from mild und leise and “Idioteque” ................ 71 3 SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF CLOSED WORKS AND INDIRECT QUOTATIONS: “BROWN” FROM JOHN OSWALD’S PLUNDERPHONIC ...................................... 74 Background Information Regarding the Production and Presentation of “Brown” as it Appears on Plunderphonic ........................................................................... 74 Preceded by “Black” ......................................................................................... 74 Samples used in “Brown” ................................................................................. 76 Liner notes and commentary for Plunderphonic ............................................... 79 Constructing Model Listeners and Interpreting the Relationships Between Samples in “Brown” ............................................................................................. 81 Construction of the Model Listener for “Brown” ................................................ 81 Problems in comparing Model Listeners of samples used in “Brown” .............. 84 5 4 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 87 APPENDIX A BOUGHT AND SOLD ............................................................................................. 91 Program Note ......................................................................................................... 91 B THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS ......................................................................... 92 Program Note ......................................................................................................... 92 C EAVESDROPPERS ................................................................................................ 93 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 108 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 111 6 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 2-1 Spectrogram analysis of Radiohead’s “Idioteque.” ............................................. 73 3-1 Suggested track sequences from the “liner notes” of the original 1989 release of Plunderphonic. ................................................................................................ 75 3-2 “Liner notes” from original 1989 release of Plunderphonic. This page shows the sample sources for “black/brown” as listed by Oswald himself. .................... 78 3-3 Chart displaying the entrance and exit of different artists’ samples over time in Oswald’s “Brown.” ........................................................................................... 86 7 LIST OF EXAMPLES Example page 2-1 The chord progression from Lansky’s mild und leise that Radiohead borrows for “Idioteque.” .................................................................................................... 55 8 LIST OF OBJECTS Object page A-1 Sound file of “Bought and Sold” (.wav file 75.5 MB) ........................................... 91 B-1 Video file of “This Machine Kills Fascists” (.mp4 file 368.1 MB) ......................... 92 9 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy COMPOSER AS APPROPRIATOR: SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF MUSICAL WORKS BASED ON APPROPRIATED MATERIALS By Garrett Austin Hecker May 2018 Chair: James Paul Sain Major: Music Radiohead released Kid A in the year 2000, featuring a track called “Idioteque,” which prominently features samples from two preexisting works of electronic music: mild und leise by Paul Lansky and Short Piece by Arthur Kreiger, with the Lansky sample acting as the driving force of the work. In addition to Radiohead borrowing from Lansky, Lansky also borrows the famous “Tristan Chord” from Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde to create the main theme of mild und leise. Therefore, Radiohead’s “Idioteque” is a work created with material appropriated from Lansky, who himself appropriated material to create his work. For the listener, the use of borrowed material raises questions about how to interpret the appropriations in their new contexts. What commentary is Radiohead making about Lansky’s music by borrowing from him, and does that relate in any way to Lansky’s commentary on Wagner? How does the listener’s previous knowledge of Lansky’s work affect their reception of Radiohead’s song and vice versa? This dissertation seeks to explore the processes by which a work accumulates or loses semiotic indexical value through appropriation. Musical borrowing is a force for commentary that reveals values by placing works in relief of each other. To model these 10 processes, Umberto Eco’s theory of the Model Reader for literary analysis is adapted to the Model Listener for musical analysis. Eco’s distinction between open and closed works is used to categorize works for interpretation. Thomas Turino’s adaptations of Charles Peirce’s semiotic theories are used to elaborate on the semiotic functions of appropriations. The first part of this dissertation examines Radiohead’s “Idioteque” as a study in the construction of a model listener for an open work using samples with clear sources. The second part of the dissertation examines “Brown” from John Oswald’s Plunderphonic as a study in the construction of a model listener for a closed work using samples with unclear sources. 11 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Appropriation of music has been an essential feature of music-making in the Western World for as long as there is record of people making music. For example, performances of Gregorian chants between the 9th and 13th centuries were often elaborated with the addition of troping, wherein singers added melodies and elaborated on the original text of the chant. In the late Renaissance, Franco-Flemish composers of cantus firmus masses and imitation masses borrowed between one and four voices of preexisting works as the basis for their new masses. In 1710, George Frideric Handel composed Agrippina by borrowing music from his own past works as well as music by other composers. Opera composers of the 16th-century set certain scenes to stock chord progressions, such as the chromatic “lament bass” progression to represent grief scenes. Quotations and variations of the Gregorian chant “Dies Irae” were a popular way of representing death in programmatic instrumental music of the 19th century. In the 20th century, techniques for borrowing music have taken many unique and individual turns, from quotations