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One Sunday morning, I was playing the Hammond B3 organ with my fellow musicians. Our church's youth choir was singing a popular gospel song, "Trouble Don't Last Always," that had been recorded by the Reverend Timothy Wright.1 As the choir sang the vamp, we began to play a riff2 of a famous bass line from the 1974 funk hit by the Ohio Players titled "Skin Tight."3 As we played the riff, I looked into the congregation and caught the eye of two young adults in our church who knew the secular song well.
Immediately, I was conflicted by the fact that they were no longer thinking about the religious, inspirational, uplifting lyrics of the song that the choir was singing: "Trouble don't last always / No, no, no, no, it won't last always." The young adults were now trying to figure out the name of the secular song we were playing. When they finally determined the tune, they were focused on the lyrical content of that song instead of what the youth choir was singing. I watched as they began to mouth the words to the vamp of the song to each other, and then they looked at me, singing the lyrics and bobbing their heads. Not only were their minds not on God, but also my focus was now taken off ministering through music and ushering in the Holy Spirit.
This experience caused me to reexamine the gospel music accompaniment that I had learned and was playing. Tb help me more clearly understand the practice of borrowing from secular music for sacred musical purposes, I decided to return to my music history notes and to review the practice of quoting secular musical passages in sacred music - focusing on several noted composers.
Historical Background
The musical practice of quotation has been in existence for centuries. Similar to the quotation of text in speech and literature, quotation in music is "the incorporation of a relatively brief segment of existing music in another work."4
Western European Art Music
The old masters of Western European art music commonly quoted musical content from secular songs in their religious compositions, as shown in the following:
Josquin des Prez. During his lifetime, Josquin des Prez (ca. 1 440-1 52...