Jason

No, it's just a two-minute piece. I did it as a practice exercise, the goal being to compose in several different styles. Thanks for listening.

Thanks, airmanjerm: I look forward to some good discussions. 'Tis a pleasure to be among you all, and I look forward to listening to your music as well.

I'm sorry, but I still don't hear the supposed "rip-off". At best there's only a passing similarity between these two works. With all due respect to those toting the "plagiarism" line, I don't hear anything more than a vague likeness between these two pieces--nowhere near enough to use extreme words like "stealing" and "plagiarism" (which are essentially criminal terms). Actually I believe this was the third or fourth thread I responded to. I'm not trying to attach any sort of judgement to these discoveries. it's just interesting to me to hear what pieces have influenced JW. it used to bother me but not anymore, now it's just fun to try and pick them out FANS are often very touchy about the semantics but i think it's inevitable: young people, especially if they're not from overly musical households, often listen to music as STAR WARS and assume that Williams invented this music from the scratch, in a vaguely classical idiom. If you keep on discovering the world of music you come to a point where you realize that the amount of 'homaging' is probably much higher than you would have dared to guess. Then either comes the betrayed-lover routine or the lion-momma-protects-her-babies routine - as evidenced in these threads. In the end, if you are an experienced composer you tackle this much differently, Williams probably never imagined to what extent people would put his music under close scrutiny but drew from the composer's and styles he personally loved without bothering too much about anyone connecting the dots. I think he would have been delighted at someone discovering Shostakovich by way of THE FURY (or whatever), and not at all mind that people found these connections. That you can phrase these findings in vastly different tones is another matter, of course. I agree with you, publicist. No artist creates in a vacuum: we're all influenced by those who have preceded us. The difficulty I have is when people use irresponsible words like "stealing" and "plagiarism," which are practically accusations of criminal behavior (to say nothing of how disrespectful they are). Your terminology--"homage" and "tribute"--is both more accurate and more respectful. Great points! Really? I thought Star Wars and Superman sounded similar: both, after all, feature a main theme in which, in the opening fanfare, the tonic jumps to the dominant fifth (the main difference being that in Superman the tonic is repeated once before the jump). This tonic-dominant relationship is also present, in another syntax, in Close Encounters; and it can also be heard in the main theme of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Because of this, I have long considered this combination of notes a Williams trademark--though now that I think about it, maybe it only applies to his 1980s scores.....

You can't really say that about the very first composers in human history. Now there you have me.

I always thought Scherzo for Motorcycle was more reminscent of Walton's Scherzo from the first Symphony. There are many more, much more striking examples showing that even JW can get his inspiration from other music. However, I don't like the tone of this thread. JW is no thief. I agree. The words "steal" and "plagiarize" are both inaccurate and disrespectful. Williams has been influenced by other composers, which can be said of every composer who ever lived. No one creates in a vacuum--everyone draws on past works. A few similar notes here and there doesn't mean anyone "stole" anything. You might just as well say John Steinbeck "stole" The Grapes of Wrath because 4,000 words of his 100,000-word novel also appeared in someone else's book. The whole "he stole this, he stole that" nonsense should be relinquished--and nowhere more so than in a forum devoted to John Williams.

Some of these examples go way beyond 'totally random association'. If you listen to especially Prokoviev and Shostakovich or Copland (and Dorak) you notice that Williams used them as template. The opening to Shostis 5th is not just a bunch of dramatic chords, it's an idiomatic writing for strings and Williams honors this in THE FURY. Some of these examples go way beyond 'totally random association'. If you listen to especially Prokoviev and Shostakovich or Copland (and Dorak) you notice that Williams used them as template. The opening to Shostis 5th is not just a bunch of dramatic chords, it's an idiomatic writing for strings and Williams honors this in THE FURY. Publicist, I'm not hearing the similarity. Can you please post a link to the John Williams piece you refer to?

There is some great talent in this forum! I have enjoyed many of the pieces I've heard here. It's a pleasure to be among such gifted artists. Here is a mini-"suite" I recently composed in Notion 4, practicing a few different styles: https://soundcloud.com/jason-w-childress/orchestral-mini-suite Well done, everyone! Keep up the good work....

Thanks!

I listened to these with interest, but noted only a vague similarity between these pieces and John's. Clearly words like "stealing" and "plagiarism" are inaccurate. Williams is of course influenced by his predecessors, same as any composer. Many musicians and composers in this forum are no doubt familiar with the experience of creating something "original," only to discover later that it was influenced by something now mostly forgotten by the conscious mind. There are 12 tones in the chromatic scale. That's not an infinite spectrum of note combinations. To say "John Williams stole the E.T. theme" is sort of like saying two people with a 12-block set of letter-blocks "stole" each other's word because they put the letter-blocks together in the same way. It happens.

I'm new to the forum, so please forgive me if there's already a thread like this (and please direct me to it). I'm an amateur composer myself (I use Notion 4), and I'm wondering whether there are other composers in this forum. I am a huge fan of John Williams, and his influence can (I think) be clearly heard in my work; but I also love Alan Silvestri, Bill Conti, Danny Elfman, Maurice Jarre, Laurence Rosenthal, and others. I would be happy to meet other composers on this forum who also love John Williams--especially if you feel he influences your style.

I don't know if this qualifies as "weird" or not, but I figured out two of John Williams' compositions by ear and composed them in Notion 4. They were: "March of the Villains" from Superman "Throne Room/End Credits" from Star Wars (They can be heard here if anyone's interested.) This was a fairly fanatical thing to do, but what I learned from John in the process made it more than worth it. I love his style!

Gnome in Plaid said: He's nothing particularly special. Synecdoche, New York was decent, but nothing else he's done has been very good. I loved Brion's work on Magnolia: tense, brooding, melancholy strings quietly playing throughout the film, slowly building tension toward the bizarre climax at the end. Perfect music for a masterful film. I'm glad Williams took first place...especially considering not a single person roots for him in the Comments section at the bottom. With the readers of the site so apparently unimpressed by Williams, I wonder how he won.