[2] Although the practice of borrowing preexisting polyphonic textures dates back to the 14th century, these earlier manifestations are closer to the technique of contrafactum than to the parody of 16th-century music.
[2] In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Michael Tilmouth and Richard Sherr write of the genre: The essential feature of parody technique is that not merely a single part is appropriated to form a cantus firmus in the derived work, but the whole substance of the source – its themes, rhythms, chords and chord progressions – is absorbed into the new piece and subjected to free variation in such a way that a fusion of old and new elements is achieved.
[2]Many of the most famous composers of the 16th century, including Victoria, Lassus and Palestrina, used a wide range of earlier music in their masses, drawing on existing secular as well as religious pieces.
Examples include J. S. Bach's reuse of three cantatas in his Christmas Oratorio,[4] and of many movements in the Mass in B Minor, which, to a large extent, he compiled from his own prior works.
[7] The parodic elements of Bach's "Cantate burlesque", Peasant Cantata are humorous in intent, making fun of the florid da capo arias then in fashion.
[2] However, Tilmouth and Sherr comment that although these works exhibit "the kind of interaction of composer and model that was characteristic of 16th-century parody", they nevertheless employ "a stylistic dichotomy far removed from it".
[2] The same authors comment that the use of old music in the scores of Peter Maxwell Davies similarly "engenders a conflict foreign to the total synthesis that was the aim of 16th-century parody".
"John Brown's Body", the marching song of the American Civil War, was based on the tune of an earlier camp-meeting and revival hymn, and was later fitted with the words "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord", by Julia Ward Howe.
[22] In the 1940s Spike Jones and his City Slickers parodied popular music in their own way, not by changing lyrics, but adding wild sound effects and comedic stylings to formerly staid old songs.
[29] Stan Freberg created parodies of popular songs in the 1950s and 1960s, mocking the musical conventions of the day, Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel".
[30] The bandleader and pianist Paul Weston and his wife, singer Jo Stafford, created the musical duo, "Jonathan and Darlene Edwards", as a parody of bad cabaret acts.