ABSTRACT
In an article entitled "Bach's Parody Technique and Its Frontiers," Alfred Mann explored with his usual thoughtfulness the question of Bach's re-use of musical ideas in subsequent compositions. He ends the essay with the memorable phrase, "'Borrowing' with abiding inspiration," to characterize this aspect of Bach's compositional procedures. There are other composers, too, who have used similar techniques for basing new works on borrowed musical ideas. The one most closely resembling Handel in this regard is Christoph Willibald Gluck. Gluck's borrowing is most familiar from its appearance in his last great French tragedie opera, Iphigenie en Tauride Act IV, which opens with Iphigenie's "Je t'implore et je tremble." This borrowing was already mentioned in the Gluck literature at the beginning of the nineteenth century. As is true of Handel and other composers when they adapted borrowed musical ideas from other composers, Gluck does not reveal in the score the origins of the musical impetus on which he based the aria.
