Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A new musical composition built out of an already existing one, most often a new melody overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. An important part of the development of bebop. Contrafacts are not to be confused with musical quotations, which comprise borrowing rhythms or melodies from an existing composition.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • His duos attracted the attention of later musicians; three movements from his Missa ‘Quem dicunt homines’, two from his Magnificat secundi toni and the ‘Pleni’ of the Missa super ‘Si dedero’ (the last with the contrafact text Semper eris pauper) were printed in didactic collections of two-voice pieces such as Il primo libro a due voci (Venice, 1543) and Diphona amoena et florida (Nuremberg, 1549).

    Archive 2009-05-01 Lu 2009

  • I wash my feet before going to bed contrafact: one complete thought p. xxv, Contrafact Potes and Poets Press, Elmwood, CT 1996

    Erin Moure reads Norma Cole Lemon Hound 2009

  • So I guess the standard blues I-IV-V-IV progression is the most widely used contrafact of all?

    Them Changes - Anil Dash 2007

  • If the contrafact is “one complete thought” so the poem’s fact is perhaps: several and beckoning.

    Erin Moure reads Norma Cole Lemon Hound 2009

Comments

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  • Oh I'm gonna confuse it all right.

    June 6, 2022