Contrafactum

Quality 0.50 · 2 views · Updated 2 months ago

In music, the substitution of text

title: "Contrafactum" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["translation"] description: "In music, the substitution of text" topic_path: "general/translation" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrafactum" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary In music, the substitution of text ::

In vocal music, contrafactum (or contrafact, pl. contrafacta) is "the substitution of one text for another without substantial change to the music". The earliest known examples of this "lyrical adaptation" date back to the 9th century in Gregorian chant.

Categories

Types of contrafacta that are wholesale substitution of a different text include the following:

Significantly different lyrics in another language

While a direct translation that preserves original intent might not considered a "substitution", the lyrics of the following songs redone in another language have a substantially different meaning:

  • The melody of the French song Ah! vous dirai-je, maman (English: Oh! Shall I tell you, Mama) is used in English for "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", the "Alphabet Song", and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", while all of the following use the melody: the German Christmas carol "" (Santa Claus is Coming Tomorrow) with words by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, the Hungarian Christmas carol "" (Fluffy white snow is falling), the Dutch "" (Kortjakje is Always Sick), the Spanish "" (Little Town Bell), the Greek "Φεγγαράκι μου λαμπρό (Fengaráki mou lampró)" (My Bright Moon), and the Turkish "Daha Dün Annemizin" (Yesterday Our Mother).

  • "Autumn Leaves" (French "Les Feuilles mortes", literally "The Dead Leaves") – French by Jacques Prévert (1945), Music by Joseph Kosma(1945), English by Johnny Mercer (1950).

  • "Comme d'habitude", music by Claude François and Jacques Revaux, original French lyrics by Claude François and Gilles Thibaut, rewritten as "My Way" with English lyrics by Paul Anka. Before Anka acquired the English-language rights to the song, David Bowie had written a different set of lyrics to the same tune, titled "Even a Fool Learns to Love".

  • "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" (English mid-1800s), from French "Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre" ("Marlborough Has Left for the War", 1700s).

  • The "Wilhelmus" (or "het Wilhelmus"), parts of which form the national anthem of the kingdom of the Netherlands, suffers from the same fate. It is based on "The tune of Chartres", specified by the Beggars Songbook of 1576–77 as that of a French song about the siege of the city of Chartres by the Prince of Condé and the Huguenots in the beginning of 1568. This song, with the title "Autre chanson de la ville de Chartres assiegée par le Prince de Condé, sur un chant nouveau", formed the base of "het Wilhelmus".

Poems set to music

An existing tune already possessing secular or sacred words is given a new poem, which often happens in hymns, and sometimes, more than one new set of words is created over time. Examples include:

  • The words of What Child Is This? were fitted to the tune of the folksong "Greensleeves".
  • The Charles Wesley hymn text Hark! The Herald Angels Sing was fitted by William Hayman Cummings to a tune from Mendelssohn's Gutenberg cantata Festgesang.
  • The hymn tune "Dix" has been given several sets of words, among them As with Gladness Men of Old and For the Beauty of the Earth.{{cite web | url=http://www.hymntime.com/tch/tun/tun-d.htm | title=Tunes by name | publisher=Cyberhymnal | access-date=2008-06-04 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120318154619/http://www.hymntime.com/tch/tun/tun-d.htm | archive-date=2012-03-18
  • Monteverdi's "Quel augellin che canta" (4th madrigal book), was transformed into "Qui laudes tuas cantat", using the sacred poem texts by Aquilino Coppini.
  • In Japan, the Scots song "Auld Lang Syne" (lit. "Long Time Ago", "Old Times") has a new set of words in the song "Hotaru no hikari" (lit. "The Light of the firefly"), and is used at graduation ceremonies. Another Western song, also reworked with different lyrics around the same period (late 19th century) and used at graduation ceremonies, sometimes confused with "Hotaru", is "Aogeba tōtoshi".
  • A poem given the title " of Fort M'Henry" was set to a popular British tune and eventually became the current anthem of the United States.

Self-reworking

A lyricist might re-cast his/her own song (or someone else's song) in the same musical but with new lyrics. Examples include:

Parody

Intentional parody of lyrics, especially for satirical purposes, has been the core of the following musical acts:

Writers of contrafacta and parody tried to emulate an earlier song's poetic metre, rhyme scheme, and musical metre. They went further by also establishing a close connection to the model's words and ideas and adapting them to a new purpose, whether humorous or serious.

Humorous contrafacta might be called "parody" even without being especially satirical, for instance:

Other

This outline should be left out of view until it can be filled in.

Pre- and early medieval era

High and late medieval era

Post-medieval and modern era

The Star Spangled Banner* vs *To Anacreon in Heaven''?

Modern parody and filk

The United States national anthem The Star Spangled Banner is a contrafactum setting of the traditional English song To Anacreon in Heaven. The well known birthday song Happy Birthday is similarly a contrafactum setting of an older (and now less well-known) song Good Morning to All. However, in the modern era, contrafactum is mostly used in parody songs (Weird Al Yankovic is probably the best known contrafactum parody composer) and in specialized genres such as filk music.

References

References

  1. (2001). "Contrafactum (from medieval Lat. contrafacere: 'to imitate', 'counterfeit', 'forge')".
  2. (Spring 2001). "Hymnody: A Development of the Middle Ages". Sacred Music.
  3. (2013). "'Autumn Leaves': Intricacies of Style in Keith Jarrett's Approach to the Jazz Standard". Indiana Theory Review.
  4. Cerchiari, Luca. (2012-07-10). "Eurojazzland: Jazz and European Sources, Dynamics, and Contexts". UPNE.
  5. Florimond van Duyse, "Het oude Nederlandsche lied. Tweede deel", Martinus Nijhoff / De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, The Hague/Antwerp, 1905{{vs. (December 2022)
  6. (1984). "Sacred Contrafacta of Monteverdi Madrigals and Cardinal Borromeo's Milan". Music & Letters.
  7. "John Wiley & Sons: 200 Years of Publishing – Birth of the New American Literature: 1807–1826".
  8. Clague, Mark, and Jamie Vander Broek. "[https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/120293/star_spangled_banner_14.pdf Banner moments: the national anthem in American life]"
  9. (22 November 2020). "'More Truth than Poetry': Parody and Intertextuality in Early American Political Song". MUSICultures.
  10. [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/as-american-as-tarte-aux-_b_1625590 As American as tarte aux pommes! Celebrating the Fourth with some American Music]

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

translation