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“The Future Is Medieval”: Orality And Musical Borrowing In The Middle Ages And Online Remix Culture, Claire E. Mcleish

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis re-situates sampling and the mashup in a broader tradition of musical borrowing and oral practice. Musical creators in the West borrowed throughout history; the variety and quantity of this borrowing remains dependent on the proprietary status of music. Copyright was first applied to music to protect printed scores, and is thus ill equipped to accommodate works that borrow recorded elements. Taking Ong’s concept of “secondary orality” as applied to hip hop by Tricia Rose, this thesis connects techniques of musical borrowing in the Middle Ages with those in the late-20^th and 21^st centuries through several close …