The piece we're hearing now is by the 20th century composer Charles Ives, who is known for its intricate sound collages that wove together fragments of existing music into his original atonal compositions.

In this piece, Ives frequently quotes Beethoven's famous Fifth Symphony. You know, this one. Now see if you can spot this motif in Ives' Piano

Sonata.

It's a direct quote placed in a completely different context, leading to an entirely different

musical outcome. Even though Beethoven's melody appears throughout the entire piece, you never

say Ives was ripping off or stealing from Beethoven because the motif is so clearly transformed.

Ives recontextualizes Beethoven's motif, dressing it up in modern clothes, creating a fascinating

musical conversation between the past and present.

Now fast forward 100 years and this instinct to recontextualize and transform fragments of existing

music has evolved into one of the most important musical innovations of the 20th century.

Sampling.

Sure, the technology has changed. Musicians now manipulate

recorded audio instead of rewriting notes, but the underlying principle is the same shared by Charles

Ives and countless musicians before him. Indeed, sampling today has become its own fully realized

art form, complete with its own distinct styles and sub-genres, each with its own techniques,

and its own Beethoven's and Ives. And as we've witnessed all season, Daftpunk are among

the most skilled, innovative, and tasteful producers to ever touch a sampler. But even within

their vast and impressive sample repertoire, one song stands above the rest, a song that's

not only among the most technically impressive achievements in their own catalog, but one of the

most ambitious and virtuosic feats in the entire history of sampling. Created in collaboration with

another sampling legend Todd Edwards, it's a track built from over 40 sample fragments drawn from roughly 25

different sources, pushing the longstanding art of musical quotation to its absolute limits.

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