Elegant Plagiarisms: Classical Themes in Popular Songs

by Donna Arnold  May 17th, 2026

The Great American Songbook is a term describing the canon of the most important and influential popular songs from roughly the 1920s to the 1950s. During this era, popular songs were widely disseminated in the United States via phonograph records, radio, sheet music sales, and live big band performances. They were replete with beautiful melodies. People from all walks of life became familiar with the mainstream top hits of the day. Singers were constantly looking for good material, and in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, an interesting trend arose for composers and arrangers to borrow themes from classical music and create popular songs from them. Most were drawn from the romantic era.

Listeners who were familiar with classical music would probably recognise them, but listeners who were unfamiliar could enjoy the pieces without knowing of the connection. In several cases, major performing artists who embraced such material had beautiful voices and could well have become classical singers had they so chosen.

A fine example is the pop song “Tonight We Love” (1941), which was an adaptation of the piano concerto number 1 in B flat minor by Peter Tchaikovsky (1875).

Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No. 1 – 1st Movement

Classic FM Orchestra, Georgii Cherkin, piano soloist   

Orchestra leader Freddy Martin arranged the music and Bobby Worth wrote lyrics for it. It became a major hit for Martin in 1941.

Freddy Martin

Martin’s arrangement is taken from a very long passage of Tchaikovsky’s original work. He recorded it twice with two different soloists. The soloist on this one is tenor Tony Martin (no relation to Freddy Martin).

Tony Martin – Tonight We Love (1941)  

The pop song “Till The End of Time” (1944) was an adaptation of Frédéric Chopin‘s Polonaise in A flat major, Op. 53 — the “Polonaise héroique” (1842).

Rubinstein plays Chopin: Polonaise op. 53 (live, correct pitch, HQ)   

The pop song was written by composer Ted Mossman and lyricist Buddy Kaye. It was a major hit for Perry Como in 1945.

Perry Como

He said it was his favourite of all the songs he recorded in his long career.

Perry Como – “Till The End of Time” (1945) 

The pop song “Full Moon and Empty Arms” (1944) was an adaptation of the second theme of the third movement of Piano Concerto number 2 in C Minor, opus 18 by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1901).

Bruce Liu – Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18: III. Allegro scherzando

Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Bruce Liu, piano soloist. The relevant passage begins at 1:54 in this recording.   

This pop song was also written by composer Ted Mossman and lyricist Buddy Kaye. It was a major hit for Frank Sinatra in 1945.

Frank Sinatra

FRANK SINATRA – Full Moon and Empty Arms 1945   

The pop song “Stranger in Paradise” was an adaptation of music composed by Alexander Borodin, the Gliding Dance of the Maidens from the Polovtsian Dances in the Opera Prince Igor (1890).

Symphonic Gems: Borodin’s Prince Igor – Polovtsian Dances – Noseda | Concertgebouworkest

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The relevant passage begins at 0:45 in this recording.  

The pop song is from the musical Kismet (1953) by Robert Wright and George Forrest.

In this performance, the soloist is Tony Bennett, for whom it was a major hit in 1953.

Tony Bennett

Tony Bennett “Stranger In Paradise” on The Ed Sullivan Show   

The pop song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” (1918) was an adaptation of a passage from Frédéric Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu in C sharp minor, op. posthumous (1834).

Dmitry Shishkin – Fantasy-impromptu in C sharp minor Op. 66 (third stage)

The piano soloist in this recording is Dmitry Shishkin. The relevant passage begins at 1:10.  

Harry Carroll composed the music and Joseph McCarthy wrote the lyrics for the pop song for the musical Oh Look in 1918. In this clip from Ziegfeld Girl (1941), a movie about the Ziegfeld Follies, Judy Garland sings a particularly emotional rendition of it that depicts her successful audition to become a Ziegfeld girl.

Judy Garland

I’m Always Chasing Rainbows-Judy Garland     

The era that inspired these transformations had faded by the 1960s. However, the use of classical themes in popular songs continues in full force to this day, but now it encompasses many vastly different styles that appeal to vastly different audiences. In contrast, in the years of the Great American Songbook, those early examples would have reached a much broader spectrum of the American public and had a much wider influence than any particular style of popular music does today.

For those of us who love classical music and perhaps are intrigued by those elegant plagiarisms and want to explore them further, opportunities abound. Thanks to recording and film technology, there is a treasure trove of them waiting for us to enjoy.

Donna Arnold is the long-time music reference librarian at the large music research library at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. She answers questions on a wide range of subjects for the university community, national, and international patrons. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Texas. Her many research interests include the Great American Songbook.

BodyMinded Thinking in the Performance of Music

 by Greg Holdaway  April 28th, 2021

© The Vital Gaitway, Center for Body Education

Musicians contribute so much to the personal and cultural well-being of the community and play music because they love it. Given that, it is a shame that for some, a career and/or long-term love of playing is associated with levels of stress and discomfort – sometimes a great deal of stress and discomfort. There are musicians who have become so injured as a consequence of their playing that they have been unable to continue with their beloved music making. Thankfully that is not everyone, but in the ranks of committed musicians, struggling with well-being while performing at their best is more common than you might realise.

That statement is supported by research into musicians’ wellbeing that is growing year by year1. As a result, physical and psychological struggles with playing, particularly high intensity playing, is being increasingly recognised as a professional problem that needs to be addressed.

This series of articles from BodyMinded in Australia aims to provide a practical guide to preventing and addressing playing related injury and stress, and in the process support development of musical potential at all levels of achievement.

If your focus is on performance, rather than dealing with injury, these articles will also provide support. Musicians move in order to make music, and as an embodied sense of how to cooperate with your own structure and your instrument takes hold, you will find your instrument becoming an integrated extension of the sense of yourself and the music will flow increasingly with ease, power and facility2.

And finally, after years of providing professional development training for music teachers, I’m aware of how deeply teachers take their responsibility for the well-being of their students. Creatively teaching safe body-use as a part of music lessons will help to prevent the kinds of difficulties that often arise when a musician becomes more serious and begins spending many more hours playing.

Treating the instrument as an extension of the self is common amongst long-term instrumentalists. I had a student in a workshop one day who, when I said “hello”, leant sideways to reply to me. Curious about that, I moved to the other side of the person and asked another question. Sure enough, he leant to the other side in order to answer! The next day he came to a musician’s class, with his instrument. A large tuba, which he sat with on his lap…

© K.C. Strings Violin Shop

Let’s get started with a practical illustration. Many instrumentalists experience shoulder and neck stiffness or discomfort, or experience heaviness in the arms after playing for a while. Here is a simple question: where do your arms attach to your body? Take a moment to point or touch that part of your body. Did you point to the outside of your shoulders? This is most usual representation.

Now feel your collarbones, at the top front of your chest. Feel along towards the centre until you find the bump where the collarbone attaches to the breastbone. This is the only bony joint where the arm bones attach to the rest of the skeleton. You can feel this by using one hand to feel how your collarbone moves as you lift the other arm. Can you feel it? When your arm moves the whole shoulder girdle (collarbone and shoulder blade) are involved. The arms are suspended from the spine, via those shoulder and neck muscles that are sometimes so uncomfortable. The shoulder blades are embedded in muscles that mean they can move a whole lot; up, down, forward, back, always in support of and following the movements of the arm.

This means that when you raise or use your arms for any purpose, your shoulder girdle is involved. The collarbones and shoulder blades are arm bones! See what happens if you try to keep your shoulder girdle held still or back while moving your arms, and then compare that to letting the shoulders move with and in response to movements of your arms. Can you feel the difference?

Arm Shoulder Girdle Movement  

Thinking about this a pianist comes to mind who complained of long-standing shoulder and arm discomfort while playing. Nothing had made a difference, and she had lived with that for a long time. After exploring how much her shoulder girdle can move the instruction became: “let your shoulders move when you bring your hands to the keyboard”. The result, so much relief she burst into tears.

This story illustrates how discomfort may be a consequence of simple misunderstanding about how things work. The BodyMinded process is to practise conscious cooperation with the way things work. This is sometimes stated as: Let everything move that needs to move in service of your activity.

Each article in this series will cover a specific example of BodyMinded thinking in practise, concluding with a general principle that applies to achieving and teaching good coordination as a musician. In this way I hope to assist you with your enjoyment and wellbeing in playing, and support those who are teaching others.

Making Fun of the Master Richard Wagner in Caricature

 by Maureen Buja  June 24th, 2023

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was a revolutionary in German music and in opera. For opera-goers, the advent of Wagner onto their stages was cause for comment, particularly in the caricature sections. In images, the cartoonists could take aim at all they saw as false or inflated in the music and person of the composer.

The French caricaturist André Gill (1840–1865) had a style that depicted enlarged heads on tiny bodies. He drew Wagner determinedly breaking a listener’s ear by hammering a note into place.

Gill: Wagner, 1868

8 years later, Gill took on “The tetralogist” Wagner by showing him relentlessly banging a pot and being served apple cider by a monkey. Wagner, in the caption, dismisses the French “The French are a people of monkeys” and the cartoonist saying that the ape people now have the art of the scream, which will easily compete with Wagner. Wagner was quoting Voltaire, who called the French a mix of monkeys and tigers (Wagner: Art and Politics, 1868), but the French quickly took the quote out of context.

Gill: Le Tétralogue Wagner, 1876 (L’Eclipse, September)

Another caricature helpfully shows how to create a shadow image of Wagner, although it does require holding your hands in seemingly impossible positions (and the note that the beard should be made with a piece of folded paper).

Trewey: Silhouette of Wagner, 1877

Kreutzburger: Silhouette de Wagner (after Trewey), ca. 1877

The overwhelming use of brass and percussion in Wagner’s scores led to several caricatures including this one showing Wagner beating his own drum for Tannhäuser.

Blass: Wagner, inventor of the bass drum with musical grapeshot, indulging in his favorite exercise

Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) depicts an audience that has been forced ‘par ordre’ to listen to an hour of Wagner. They slouch, they fall asleep, they endure, battered by a hail of notes, wielded by an authoritative hand.

Daumier: A Munich. Après une heure de Wagner par ordre!!, 1868 (Le Charivari, July 8, 1868)

The downside of this is a complaint that Sleep (Morpheus) brings to Zeus – carrying his sack of poppies on his back, he’s out of job, replaced by Wagner.

Cham: Morpheus is out of a job, 1861

Another caricature, after the death of Wagner, shows him arriving in heaven and thanking the angels for the receptions but complaining that there aren’t enough trumpets and drums – you’ll never get a production without them!

Wagner in Heaven, 1883

In a caricature after the death of Wagner, the theatre director Pierre Gailhard (1848–1918), director of the Paris Opera, and the French conductor Charles Lamoureux (1834–1899) bombarded Paris in 1891 with Wagner. They are dressed in ‘the livery of Wagner’, with ‘W’ embroidered everywhere. Wagner is depicted between the two mighty horns as a ghostly shadow. Written under the cannon is ‘Ritt’, director of the Paris Opera, for whom Gailhard worked.

B. Moloch: The New Siege of Paris in 1891

In another depiction of the Opera, Pierre Gailhard and Eugène Ritt (1817–1898) are shown on the peak of the Paris Opera holding a drum and a trombone (more brass and percussion!). Between them, holding a two-handed saw is Wagner. This caricature followed the premiere of Lohengrin at the Opèra.

Gilbert-Martin: Le Nouveau Couronnment de l’Opéra, 1891 (Le Don Quichotte, vol. 18, no. 399)

Another assault with brass, but this time depicting the field of battle as Bayreuth. Wagner is shown with the support of Hans Richter, in the foreground, the conductor at Bayreuth. Between Wagner and Liszt on the top left is Cosima Wagner. Below Wagner is Wilhelm Jahn, director of the Vienna State Opera, and the bass-baritone Emil Scaria, who sang in the premiere of Parsifal. We also have the dragon from Siegfried and Brunnhilde’s horse Grane just above Cosima. Other personalities down the left side include the German Emperor Louis II, the composer Johann von Herbeck, the Rhinemaiden Lili Lehman, actor Josef Lewinsky, and pianist Anton Rubinstein.

Klie: The Battle of Bayreuth, 1876

We’ll close with some of the greatest entry music of all time.

Nikolay Medvedev’s Fusions

 by Maureen Buja  September 21st, 2026

In this recording on SOMM Records, Russian pianist Nikolay Medvedev (b. 1986) takes three composers, the Ukrainian Nikolai Kapustin and the Americans George Gershwin and Earl Wild, and presents us with a powerful and flowing examination of that wonderful fusion of classical pianism and jazz.

Nikolay Medvedev (photo by Dusia Sabol)

Medvedev opens with Nikolai Kapustin (1937–2020) and his Piano Sonata No. 2, and we can hear immediately how the composer fuses the classical form of the sonata with stylistic elements from jazz – this is not a classical-sounding piano sonata by any means! Although so much of his work sounds like it’s improvised at the keyboard, the composer fervently declared that music had to be written down: ‘All improvisation, as far as I am concerned, is written down, and it is all the better for that; it is allowed to mature’.

Nikolai Kapustin (photo by Schott Music / Peter Anderson)

This is followed on the recording by George Gershwin’s Three Preludes. Gershwin (1898–1937), who wanted to write music for both popular theatre and the concert hall, had the dream of writing his own set of 24 Preludes for Solo Piano, as so many composers before him had done. His first Three Preludes were published in 1927; he wrote 5 other works intended to be part of his final 24, but by the time of his death in 1937, only the first three had been published as a set.

The Three Preludes were all part of Gershwin’s mix of classical and jazz that he first brought to the world in his Rhapsody in Blue.

Carl van Vechten: George Gershwin, 1937 (Library of Congress, LCCN 2004662906)

A selection from Kapustin’s 8 Concert Études, Op. 40, again gives us Kapustin’s unique merging of the classical (the étude) and jazz. These were not intended to be played as a set, and so Medvedev gives us 5 of them. I. Prelude gives us Latin rhythms. II. Reverie is less international jazz than Ukrainian-influenced. VI. Pastorale puts the listener somewhere between Scott Joplin’s ragtime and Gershwin’s jazz from Porgy and Bess. VII. Intermezzo takes us into the world of stride piano, and the études close with VIII. Finale, a number full of fast drive and motion.

American pianist Earl Wild (1915–2010) made his name not only for his virtuoso performances but also for his piano transcriptions and arrangements of both jazz and classical music. For this recording, Medvedev has chosen Wild’s 7 Virtuoso Etudes after George Gershwin, published in 1954 and 1973, and both revised in 1975, for multiple fusions: jazz, the etude, and the paraphrase, combined with Gershwin in the hands of Wild.

Wild had heard Gershwin play both the Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F, and when he created his Virtuoso Etudes, he used music from all facets of Gershwin’s career: the fun of I Got Rhythm and the heartbreak of The Man I Love.

Earl Wild

The recording closes with one more work by Kapustin, his Variations, Op. 41, from 1984. Rather than a variation set, it’s more like an ongoing variation on a theme that never seems quite to end. It’s a delight of light pianism and requires virtuosic hands to keep it all in motion.

Nikolay Medvedev brings a technical skill to these works that raises them from popular to virtuosic. Particularly in the Wild pieces and the final Kapustin Variations, it would be easy to lose track of the essence of the work in the midst of all the fireworks, but Medvedev keeps it all together in style.

Fusions: Nikolai Kapustin, George Gershwin, Earl Wild

Nikolay Medvedev, piano
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD 0724

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‘55’ Katia & Marielle Labèque

 by Frances Wilson  September 23rd, 2026

For more than half a century, pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque have held a distinctive place in the musical landscape. Celebrated for the brilliance and precision of their ensemble playing, they have also pursued a career marked by an unusually wide-ranging curiosity. From Mozart, Schubert, Debussy and Ravel to Stravinsky, Messiaen, Philip Glass and Bryce Dessner – and far beyond the conventional boundaries of classical music into jazz, minimalism and popular culture – the Labèque sisters have consistently resisted being confined by repertoire, genre or expectation.

Katia and Marielle Labèque (Photo by Umberto Nicoletti)

Their latest release, 55 (released in June 2026), celebrates an extraordinary 55 years of recording. It features a collection of 25 newly recorded tracks, including several world premiere recordings, plus 30 drawn from an impressive archive spanning 1970 to 2024. The result is not a conventional career retrospective, but a fascinating survey of the repertoire, composers, and ideas that have shaped the sisters’ artistic lives.

The story begins and ultimately comes full circle with Olivier Messiaen. Katia and Marielle were just 17 and 19 when Messiaen asked them to record his monumental two-piano work Visions de l’Amen, himself overseeing the recording. More than five decades later, the final track of 55 returns to that beginning with the work’s concluding Amen de la Consommation. It is an eloquent way to close the circle, reminding us how deeply contemporary music has been embedded in the Labèques’ artistic identity from the very start.

There are familiar works for piano duo and piano 4-hands – by Debussy and Ravel, Dvořák and Bizet, Brahms and Fauré – but alongside these sit the experimental and minimalist worlds of Luciano Berio, Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, John Cage, Howard Skempton and Bryce Dessner, before returning, via Stravinsky, to Messiaen.

55 is organised in three sections – Wild is the Wind, Of a Bright Garden and Points of Light – moving freely across musical periods and styles; for example, Nina Simone‘s Wild is the Wind, heard in a transcription for two pianos and played with a relaxed expansiveness, sits alongside Margaret Bonds and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.  

It is gratifying to see a particular emphasis on women composers, including works by Hélène de Mongeroult, Grażyna Bacewicz, Dora Pejačević, Margaret Bonds and Lili Boulanger. For Katia and Marielle Labèque, bringing these voices into the collection is not merely an exercise in historical correction but part of the same spirit of curiosity that has always driven their music-making: a desire to seek out connections, contrasts and repertoire worth hearing.

Above all, 55 reveals remarkable artistic continuity. Across recordings separated by decades, one hears the qualities that have long distinguished Katia and Marielle Labèque: rhythmic vitality, clarity, colour, imagination and an almost instinctive understanding of one another at the keyboard. At the heart of this collection is the wonderful sense that these two musicians remain as inquisitive and adventurous as ever – still discovering music, still making connections and still asking where two pianos and four hands might take them next.

55 is available on Deutsche Grammophon.

Javier Perianes (Born on September 24, 1978) When Silence Speaks

 by Georg Predota  September 24th, 2026

The Spanish pianist Javier Perianes was born on 24 September 1978 in Nerva. He graduated in piano studies from the Conservatorio Superior de Música in Seville and received additional guidance from Richard Goode, Alicia de Larrocha, and Daniel Barenboim.

Winning first prizes at the Concurso Internacional de Piano Premio Jaén and the Concurso de la Fundación Jacinto e Inocencio Guerrero launched his international career, and his Harmonia Mundi recordings have received critical acclaim.

To celebrate his birthday, let us take the opportunity to sample his recording of Música Callada by Catalan composer and pianist Federico Mompou.

Javier Perianes

In an interview published by Miami Clásica on 10 October 2011, originally in Spanish, Perianes was asked how he approached Mompou’s Música Callada. “It is music based on silence, which is the great accomplice of musicians.” Mompou took the term from a poem by St. John of the Cross, and it basically means “music that does not sound.”

“To approach it, you need inner silence and to be free of prejudices. It seems easy, static, but the concentration of emotion is devastating. The recording was made in one day, in a single sweep, which is how I believe it should be approached.”

Mompou is best known for his solo piano music, characterised by elegance, direct melody, and the deep, haunting emotions of folk music. The meditative qualities of his music seem to conjure ritual and ancient mystery.

A Weak Heartbeat

Federico Mompou, 1955

Música Callada, which roughly translates as “Music of Silence,” is a cycle of 28 short piano pieces organised in four books. Composed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was Mompou’s last work for solo piano, and the composer considered it a high point of his career.

A key to understanding this music is a poem by the Spanish-Christian mystic St John of the Cross (1542–1591), published in his Cántico Espiritual.

The quiet night,
before the break of dawn,
the music of silence,
the resounding solitude,
the meal that refreshes and awakens love.

De la Cruz provides commentary on the passage reading, “This is silent music, for it is quiet and still knowledge, without an audible voice; and thus, in it, one enjoys the sweetness of music and the tranquillity of silence. The soul says that the beloved is silent music.”

These thoughts are echoed by Mompou, who explained, “This music has neither air nor light. It is a weak heartbeat. One cannot ask it to travel more than a few millimetres through space, but it has the task of penetrating the deepest recesses of our soul and the most secret regions of our spirit.”

“This music is silent because it is heard inwardly. Restraint and reserve. Its emotion is secret and takes sonic form only in its resonances beneath the great cold vault of our solitude. I hope that my Música callada, this newborn child, will bring us closer to a new warmth of life and to the expression of the human heart, always the same and always renewing itself.” (Fundació Frederic Mompou)

Making Silence Audible

Javier Perianes, Música callada

In his 2006 recording, Javier Perianes approaches this music with extraordinary delicacy but without grand sentimentality. His performance has an emotional directness that suits the ephemeral character and lets the poetry emerge silently.

It almost sounds like Perianes is making silence itself perceptible, as if making listeners aware of the space from which the sounds emerge. The clarity of his playing uncovers the tension beneath the surface. As such, it has been suggested that Perianes evokes the music’s spiritual dimension with great consistency.

Under Perianes’ hands, Música callada becomes purely contemplative music, aiming to convey the point of indifference between the music and the listeners.