The next concert presented by the Community Arts Music Association (CAMA) puts the remarkable Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, led (not conducted) by violinist Augustin Hadelich, on The Granada Theatre stage at 8 p.m. Monday.

Orpheus will be serenading us with George Frideric Händel’s Concerto Grosso Opus 6, No.5, HWV323 (1739); the “Divertimento” from Igor Stravinsky’s Le baiser de la fée/The Fairy’s Kiss (1928, 1950), as arranged by Dmitry Sitkovetsky; Piotr Tchaikovsky’s Valse-Scherzo in C-Major, Opus 34, TH58 (1877); and Ottorino Respighi’s suite, The Birds (1928).

This is a full course meal of a program, with many references and cross-references, some of which I catch, but most of which I merely suspect.

For instance, there is an obvious link between Le baiser de la fée and the Tchaikovsky work, since Stravinsky based his ballet on some piano pieces by Tchaikovsky, whom he once called “the most Russian of us all.”

Then there is the connection — obvious to the ear, but light on a paper trail — between the Händel and the Respighi. And so on, since music is a tapestry of continuous, interwoven threads trailing all the way back to Orpheus.

Whenever I feel I have been neglecting Händel — one of my most admired masters — for too long, I generally get back into his good graces by listening to some of the concertos in Opus 6, that even dozen of mysteries and miracles.

“The hack writer borrows,” T.S. Eliot wrote, “the great writer steals.”

On Eliot’s authority, then, I have to admit, that Händel’s undeniable greatness is based, in part, on a considerable amount of thievery.

I have yet to get around to examining the works of the noted Italian composer, Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710), but when I do, I am sure I will encounter many lovely airs and passages, familiar from their use in Händel’s works, especially his operas, oratorios and keyboard music — which we would probably never have heard if not for Händel’s appropriations.

Händel was, in any case, the most Italian of all German composers (except, perhaps, Heinrich Schütz), and he never outgrew the tunes and the styles he acquired in Italy as a young man in his 20s.

Respighi was, of course, himself an adept second-story man, and the first movement, as well as the last, of The Birds are unabashed arrangements of Pasquini pieces.

Talk of appropriation leads naturally to Stravinsky. Discussing his opera, Oedipus, with Robert Craft, he referred to the use he had made of scraps from other composers, and said: “I have made these bits and snatches my own, I think, and of them a unity. ‘​Soule is form,’​ Spenser says, ‘and doth the bodie make.’ (And I would apply that quotation to Le baiser de la fée as well. Listening to a concert of the saccharine source material for that work the other day, I almost succumbed to diabetes.)”

The Tchaikovsky may make you uncomfortable; it does me, for all its brilliance. It is an uncharacteristically skittish and brittle piece, the serenity of the opening bars is very short-lived, and those who expect it to settle down again are bound to be disappointed.

Single tickets to Orpheus range from $38 to $108, and they are available from The Granada box office, 1214 State St. in Santa Barbara, by phone at 805.899.2222, or click here to purchase tickets online.

— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.