The Case of the Mischievous Cufflinks

September 10, 2024

I’m sure most of us would agree that plagiarism, the use of another’s work, words, or ideas without attribution, is not a good thing. Actually, the word “plagiarism” comes from the Latin word for “kidnapper.” I like that. If the poet Waldemar Strumbleknauf wrote something especially moving or inspirational or funny, I could kidnap it, and call it my own. Or if the composer Tandalaya Goldfarb writes a brilliant work for solo violin, I, kidnapper, might announce it at my next fiddle recital: “Folks, I’ve just composed a brilliant little thing that’s simply going to wow you.” Of course, this would be morally reprehensible, unethical, and downright bad. But it can get worse. What if I kidnapped the music and lyrics of, say, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” or Taylor Swift’s “Love Story?” With massive amounts of money on the line, I could be sued for a fortune. The ex-Beatle George Harrison was sued for plagiarism, his 1970 hit song “My Sweet Lord” being literally identical to the Chiffons’ 1963 hit “He’s So Fine.” He then had to pay the song’s writer, Ronnie Mack, $587,000.

But all this aside, there is one situation in which plagiarism is perfectly acceptable, even admired, and that is when people steal from themselves. The music world is rife with examples. Johann Sebastian Bach used the Preludio from his E major solo violin partita in one of his cantatas. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart turned his woodwind octet into a two-viola string quintet. Igor Stravinsky crafted a trio version of his Histoire du Soldat for clarinet, piano, and violin. Hard to say whether these were acts of inspiration, or a way to make a quick and easy buck.

In the mid-70s, the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim contacted our Guarneri String Quartet with the idea of doing an entire program of Ludwig van Beethoven’s works and his transcriptions of them. Yes, Beethoven was one of those who stole shamelessly from himself. Daniel had in mind Beethoven’s light-hearted Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 14 No. 1, played by Alfred Brendel, followed by Beethoven’s transcription of the sonata for string quartet now in F Major and played by the Guarneri. It would be the only time we performed the string quartet version, which as a transcription is almost never included in the string quartet cycle. The program continued after intermission with our rendition of the radical Grosse Fuge, the last movement of Beethoven’s late string quartet Opus 130, followed by his transcription for four-hand piano played by Alfred and Daniel.

The concert, which took place in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, was memorable for its exploration of Beethoven’s creative process. But an utterly insignificant detail of the evening has stuck with me. Listening in the wings as Alfred and Daniel finished a brilliant performance of the four-hand Grosse Fuge to great applause, I witnessed the stage door open and both pianists enter the wings laughing uproariously. “Our cufflinks got caught,” they exclaimed. “Yeah, right,”I said to myself, shaking my head in disbelief. “No, really, our cufflinks got caught,” they insisted.

I do not play the piano, but I always wondered whether the caught cufflinks were merely a silly excuse for a couple of missed notes, or had the improbable really taken place—two cufflinks interlocking. Not long afterwards, I told the cufflink story to a pianist friend of mine who had performed the four-hand version of the Grosse Fuge. Indeed, he said, the pianists’ hands were often at very close quarters and it was quite possible for Alfred and Daniel’s cufflinks to have gotten caught.

I rarely thought of the cufflink incident as time went by. Why would I? But several years ago, while performing at the Krzyżowa Music Festival in Poland, I ran into Alfred Brendel. We had hardly exchanged greetings when he suddenly smiled impishly and said, “Remember when Daniel and my cufflinks got caught together?”

Forty years had passed since the Beethoven concert in Queen Elizabeth Hall. Alfred and I had each performed easily hundreds if not thousands of concerts in the interim, with innumerable details big and small attached to them. Yet we had both remembered that cufflink incident. At the risk of making light of the Grosse Fuge (which Igor Stravinsky described as “an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever”), I try to imagine an animated cartoon version of a Grosse Fuge performance in which the cufflinks come to life and create mayhem by dancing between the poor pianists fingers.

Still, the question remains: did Alfred and Daniel’s cufflinks really become entangled, or was it merely an excuse for a wrong note or two? I made up my mind long ago, but what do you think?