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 non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...

was produced by systematically changing notes from the melody line of '' Socrate'' by

Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an und ...

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, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

, a contrafact is a

musical composition Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...

consisting of a new

melody A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), 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 combina ...

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 is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of impr ...

, 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 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, educatio ...

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. In spite of its usefulness, the term "contrafact" has not won wide acceptance in Western classical theory.

Examples

Well-known examples of contrafacts include the

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

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

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

Thelonious Monk Thelonious Sphere Monk (, October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including " 'Round Midnight", ...

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 li ...

"Evidence", which borrows the chord progression from Jesse Greer and Raymond Klages's song " Just You, Just Me" (1929). Examples from the classical oeuvre include Sinfonia by

Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...

using fragments from Mahler,

George Crumb George Henry Crumb Jr. (24 October 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical ...

borrowing Chopin's nocturnes, or Matt A. Mason's "Heiligenstadt Echo" which takes from Beethoven's Sonata in Ab major, op. 110. 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 The 12-bar blues (or blues changes) is one of the most prominent chord progressions in popular music. The blues progression has a distinctive form in lyrics, phrase, chord structure, and duration. In its basic form, it is predominantly based ...

as a basic harmonic structure used by jazz composers.

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

See also

Sources

Further reading

External links