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John Williams & the issue of originality


Beethoven

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Neil, I'm not sure if I should be insulted, at the thought of being insulted with Prequel terminology, or whether I should just laugh at the stupidity of his choice of insult.

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I agree, renaissance music does sound the same because it’s dreadful.

Well, I can't let this one go by. Renaissance music is not all dreadful. Is there a particular piece or composer you think is dreadful? Most Renaissance music is beautiful... orderly... fairly uncomplicated to digest... and really fun to play. And if you want to really get into it, you can have hours of fun looking for word-painting in madrigals. Or David Munroe - have you ever seen a tape of him playing shawms? Hysterical. It can't be dreadful if he's having that much fun playing it!

There are of course Renaissance-era composers who aren't Josquin and Palestrina - some truly dreadful, but others truly magnificent. Give them a chance.

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Neil, I'm not sure if I should be insulted, at the thought of being insulted with Prequel terminology, or whether I should just laugh at the stupidity of his choice of insult.

And to think, I was going to allow some bitch-slapping. Joe, you truly are the better man.

Neil

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Listen to Dvorák’s symphony no. 9 – the last movement (Allegro con fuoco). It starts out similar to the Jaws theme and then sounds a little like the Throne Room music from Star Wars. Have a listen to a sample on amazon:  

link

Also, the music that ends E.T. (saying goodbye) sounds similar to Richard Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration.

Most of E.T. was inspired by Howard Hanson's music although I'm a big fan of his and cannot fan any direct lifts from Williams. More stylistically similar than literal translation of his music.

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Evolves, that’s a nice way of saying plagiarise. A lot of John Williams’s music has evolved then.

Everyone's music has evolved from other music, not just Williams. Even John Corigliano gets accused of "pastiche" plagiarism and the like, simply because he references different styles of classical music within his own. But you should really come to terms with this and get the image of the composer in the ivory tower out of your head. The better composers, when you hear them in interviews, are more humble than this. Even those who are accused of total originality freely speak of their influences. Stravinsky explored tango, a genre of music, in his own way. But because it was a genre, he had to include certain familiar trademarks of the style. This did not make it plagiarism, any more than Williams' composing in a "heroic" style.

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3 notes is not much of a similarity, as I've said. What is more important is 3 the notes put together with some orchestration similiarites jane eyre and ce3k have.

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Well i have to post this, and i hope neil lets me (it is a mp3 48kbps so it is below decent quality). It is a tune for an old Spanish doccumentary series about wildlife ('El Hombre y la Tierra' - 'Man and the Earth') by Anton Garcia Abril, made in the 70 more or less.

I have always heard similarities with 'The Hunt' from The Lost World from 1997.

I hardly doubt Williams has heard the doccumentary ever, yet he composed a similar thing for somewhat similar scene (and there were some jeep/land rover shots, mud... in the doccumentary opening too). This is coincidence, so a 3 note or little more can be.

I hope im not the only seing the similarity :/

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Beethoven,

I am a JW fan, but don't consider myself to be blindly so. You seem to discount what I and others have said on this thread by assuming that we are overenthusiastic fans - this is just an easy way to disregard our views as the opinions of people who are too blinded to see the truth. You have not made a case for plagiarism by JW; there is a difference between plagiarism (which is dishonestly passing off someone else's work as your own), and being inspired or paying homage to the work of another.

I think it's silly to focus on the similarity of the 3 or 4 notes in CE3K that are similar to something that was composed previosuly by someone else. Instead, since you are apparently such a great JW fan, you might want to consider some of the other thousands of notes in that score which were composed by JW - IMO one of JW's best scores.

Of all of the billions of notes of music that have been composed over the past few hundreds of years, there are bound to be some similarities from time to time between various compositions - this doesn't necessarily mean that JW is plagiarising the works of others...

You hear the similarity and automatically assume the worst; you might want to consider JW's track record over the past 4 decades and give him the benefit of the doubt - he's earned it...

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Holst´s The Planets, or to be more precise the sub-piece "Mars, the bringer of war", includes the Imperial March. And so on, and so forth. But film music seems to borrow rather heavily from classical as a genre, it´s not just Williams.

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Yes yes,as I've said all those pieces Williams inspired himself from sound better than the original ones anyways,so what's the point of these threads?

K.M.Who doesn't need any classical music when he has most of Williams music to listen to

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All right, I think you guys are being kind of hard on Mr. Beethoven. Look, this statement is not to accuse Williams of being a hack or anything. I've been obsessed with his music ever since I was nine or ten. Music is probably my favorite thing in the world, and Williams has influenced me more than any other composer. But, Beethoven's right in that some of you are so extremely partial about his music that you deny instances when he has stolen other composers' music, and you do this because automatically you think of stealing as a bad thing. And I do mean that Williams has STOLEN whether that be a good thing or a bad thing; personally, I think it's perfectly okay because I think he's turned the music he's taken into something his own, even something better. But the point is you cannot deny the facts:

The theme from Born on the Fourth of July is a reference to Barber's Violin Concerto, Movement 2.

Star Wars Main Title --> King's Row Main Title (Erich Wolfgang Korngold)

Duel of the Fates --> Dvorak's New World Symphony, Movement 3 (loosely)

Schindler's List --> Mahler's 8th (loosely)

These are the most obvious to me, but others can probably think of other instances.

I'm not saying this to accuse Williams, I'm saying this just because it's TRUE! And yes, it's very easy for this to happen in film music because the film composer's job is to create for the viewer associations in order to clarify the story, characters, situations, etc, and classical music carries with it a plethora of associations for people. Williams knows when and how to use music, and as I said, I really think he makes it into something his own and into something great. The Star Wars Main Title is one of the most memorable and wonderful film themes ever written, and anybody would rather listen to it than the King's Row theme.

Williams himself has humbly stated that he is standing on the shoulders of hundreds of years worth of musical geniuses. It's true that music builds upon itself, and composers HAVE to steal from other composers and then make it into something new and many times better. Williams always does this.

If you haven't compared and contrasted the themes I posted above, I challenge you the most biased of Williams fans just to give them all a try. It doesn't mean you'll be forced to think less of the Maestro; it will simply give you more insight into his composing process.

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I wouldn't say "loosely" for his uses of Barber and Korngold. Those are very obvious. But I definitely wouldn't use a word as condemning as "rip-off" either. He stole but in the good way that composers are supposed to steal.

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Well the obvious ones i have never seen mentioned...

I know the Barber and Korngold violin concertos very well and never made a link. Curious. I'm going to pay extra attention next time whilst keeping Born On The 4th Of July in mind.

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It was more the mood and instruments likeness than note by note.

Just posted it as coincidence in style over a simliar matter...

So that thing with equal notes can happen without being a rip off...

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Has anyone tried the attachment?

Aw i wanted so hear other people opinions :P

I listened too, and can't really spot anything "specifically" similar. Yes it has a similar "thread" as such, but not as similar as you seem to hear. Then again, i am someone who thinks Johnny's Main Theme from the "Lost World" as it really builds up, sounds eerily similar to James Horner's "Combat Drop" piece from his "Aliens". Still today i think it sounds similar. Others dont see the similarity. More than anything i think people can hear similar structure.

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"Russian Dance" from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite

"Making the Plane", from Home Alone.

Let's just say Williams was 'inspired' by the former.

It's supposed to sound exactly like that.

~Sturgis

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Luke Skywalker, you are really confusing me. How can you not hear the Star Wars theme in Korngold's King's Row Main Title? It is EXTREMELY OBVIOUS to ANYBODY. LOL come on! Just listen to it.

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"As a plagiarist, Handel claims special attention. Other men's musical ideas crowded upon his receptive mind as lavishly as did his own, and he seems to have turned them very largely to account. A later age, with a more scrutinizing eye and analytical craze than his own, has discovered that Handel has justly entitled himself to the reputation of being a musical pirate, as bold and barefaced as was ever abroad." - Frederick J. Crowest, "The Living Age" (July 28, 1894)

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5 notes. Just the first 5 notes is like the korngold, it's certainly not chance, both are fanfaric trumpet themes. But I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say rip off.

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Harmonically, rhythmically different, it is hard to disbelieve that Williams chose the notes of Lukes theme based on the following factors.

5th - The masculine interval

Descending Triplet - Standard fanfare figure

Octave Up - Brilliant Bb register and "reaching" heroic implications

repeat 2 and 3 for thematic identification and suspense

etc.

He may have heard Kings Row, but he may also have come up with it on his own. Either way, they don't sound the same. They sound similar.

There is also a moment in Harry Potter when they arrive at the train, when we hear the same intervals, but I doubt he was making a Star Wars or Kings Row reference there.

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