Allusions and Borrowings in Selected Works by Christopher Rouse: Interpreting Manner, Meaning, and Motive through a Narratological Lens
Authors:   , Morey Michael J. 
Published: February 2025

Christopher Rouse (b. 1949), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his Trombone Concerto (1993) and a Grammy award for his Concerto de Gaudi (1999), has come to the forefront as one of America's most prominent orchestral composers. Several of Rouse's works feature quotations of and strong allusions to other composers' works that are used both rhetorically and structurally. These borrowings range from a variety of different genres and styles of works, from Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea to Jay Ferguson's "Thunder Island." Due to the more accessible filtering and funneling methods of musical borrowings (proliferation of mass media), the weighty discourses attached to them, and their variety of functions (critiquing canons, engaging in an allusive tradition, etc.), quotation has become elevated to the most prominent of musical actors that trigger narrative listening strategies, which in turn have a stronger role in the formation of narratives about music as well as narratives of music. The primary aim of this study is to adapt and apply more recent methodological narrativity frameworks to selected instrumental compositions by Rouse containing quotations, suggesting that their manner of insertion, their method of disclosure, and their referential potential can benefit from being examined through various narrative lenses as well as reveal their participation in certain roles of narrative functions. For this study, I have chosen six instrumental works by Rouse for examination - the Violoncello Concerto, Symphony No. 1, Iscariot, String Quartet No. 2, Seeing, and Thunderstuck. On a more specific level, the aim of this study is to investigate the manner, meaning, and motive of the quoted material in a select group of Rouse's compositions through various narratological lenses. To accomplish this, I intend 1) to establish a context for understanding the musical borrowing procedures of Rouse; 2) to explore how works containing quotations can be examined through various narrativity frameworks; 3) to inspect the ways in which borrowings can enhance or clarify the structural design and stylistic musical features for which he is known; 4) to investigate the various meanings that are generated from his borrowings; 5) to consider the extent to which Rouse's musical borrowings comment on various discourses, and 6) to examine the psychological needs of certain narratives triggered by quotation and the various questions they pose. This study does not attempt to systematically unify the works of Rouse that contain borrowings under a kind of "grand theory" in narrativity or borrowing studies, but rather to examine each work individually, noting the particular roles that borrowings play in regards to narratives of and about music. Fundamentally, I claim that narrativizing about music is a foundational psychological and social impulse, aiding to serve our curiosities about music's otherness qualities. Using both narratives of and about music to frame analyses, I hope to make a small contribution to the growing methodological frameworks of narrativity by featuring works containing borrowings by one individual composer, suggesting that other comprehensive approaches in borrowing studies can used for future composers.