A contrafact is a musical work based on a prior work. The term comes from classical music and has only since the 1940s been applied to jazz, where it is still not standard. In classical music, contrafacts have been used as early as the parody mass and

In Nomine In Nomine is a title given to a large number of pieces of English polyphonic, predominantly instrumental music, first composed during the 16th century. History This "most conspicuous single form in the early development of English consort mus ...

of the 16th century. More recently, '' Cheap Imitation'' (1969) by

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...

was produced by systematically changing notes from the melody line of '' Socrate'' by Erik Satie using chance procedures. In

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

, a contrafact is a

musical composition Musical composition can refer to an Originality, original piece or work of music, either Human voice, vocal or Musical instrument, instrumental, the musical form, structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new pie ...

consisting of a new

melody A melody (), also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of Pitch (music), pitch and rhythm, while more figurativel ...

overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure.. As a compositional device, it was of particular importance in the 1940s development of bop, since it allowed

musicians to create new pieces for performance and recording on which they could immediately

improvise Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Improvis ...

, without having to seek permission or pay publisher fees for

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

ed materials (while melodies can be copyrighted, the underlying harmonic structure cannot be). Contrafacts are not to be confused with musical quotations, which comprise borrowing rhythms or melodic figures from an existing composition.

Examples

Jazz

Well-known examples of contrafacts in jazz include the

Charlie Parker Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz Saxophone, saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of beb ...

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th century music, 20th-century music. Davis ado ...

bop tune " Donna Lee," which uses the chord changes of the standard " Back Home Again in Indiana" or Thelonious Monk's

jazz standard Jazz standards are musical compositions that are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive List ...

"Evidence", which borrows the chord progression from Jesse Greer and Raymond Klages's song " Just You, Just Me" (1929). The Gershwin tune " I Got Rhythm" has proved especially amenable to contrafactual recomposition: the popularity of its " rhythm changes" is second only to that of the 12-bar blues as a basic harmonic structure used by jazz composers.

Classical

Examples from the classical oeuvre include the Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod); Sinfonia by Luciano Berio using fragments from Mahler; George Crumb borrowing Chopin's nocturnes; or Matt A. Mason's "Heiligenstadt Echo" which takes from Beethoven's Sonata in A♭ major, op. 110.

Sources

External links

Jazz Resource Library , Glossary
a
Jazz in America
# Helzer, Richard A. (2004). , ''iaje.com''. {{Jazz theory Chord progressions Jazz techniques Musical terminology Jazz terminology

Examples

Jazz

Classical

See also

Sources

Further reading

External links