ABSTRACT
Allusion in a score is a particular kind of quotation, that is, a quotation used to evoke another narrative. The helicopter attack scene in Apocalypse Now, during which the attackers blast Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” is an example of this, as is the “Dying Swan” in Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence. One of the most complex (and most talked about) examples of allusive music in a contemporary Hollywood film is the role of La Bohème in Moonstruck. The works quoted belong to an entire narrative, such as opera or ballet; in a few seconds of film time, an allusion can evoke another whole narrative for the perceiver familiar with the excerpt. While one might argue that the uses of popular musics that I cited above as “quotations” could be allusions to entire genres, I want to retain here the specificity of allusions to preexisting narratives, and thus exclude single songs from this definition unless they belong to a larger narrative work.
