Parody

   Technique by which a composer employs a preexisting composition to create a new one, using its melodic ideas, imitative patterns, harmonic structures, etc. to whatever extent he sees fit. The concept of borrowing music to begin a new piece is as old asWestern music and exists in most other traditions in some form, but "parody" usually refers to the practice of reconfiguring a polyphonic composition, prevalent in the 16th–18th centuries. Two repertories of parody most frequently heard today are the parody masses of the 16th century and the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, who parodied his secular cantatas to create church cantatas with new texts and parodied both kinds to build such large works as the Christmas Oratorio and the Mass in B Minor.

   Historians and critics who came of age with Romantic prejudices about artistic originality were once embarrassed when they realized the great extent to which Bach, George Frideric Handel, and other Baroque masters parodied their own works and those of others. More recently, studies have shown that parody usually demanded more effort from the composer than the creation of a new work from scratch. The large repertory of parody masses in particular shows intense reworking and filling out of models.