OT: John williams and james horner ripping Holst?

[Adam Frechette]

Um,
I was just remembering a cue from Star Wars where its sounds awfully familar to Gustav Holst\'s \"Mars, The Bringer of War\". Also, The Land Before Time (score by James Horner) where it sounds like he was ripping the playful \"Mercury, the Winged Messenger\" by Holst. Am I wrong?

[karimelm]

[karimelm]

On the original Star Wars, Lucas originally temp tracked the score with Holst and other classical music (much like Kubrick did with 2001). Williams convinced Lucas to use the Wagnerian leitmotif music style (thank god!) to better adapt the themes to individual characters and their plights. To me, there are parts of the score that sound much like Stravinsky’s Rite and Prokofiev.

For the most part, Hollywood still uses late romantic technique because of its directness to emote. Holst’s Planets is an excellent score to review for film scoring. It uses great variety of technique, color, and tone painting and is just plain effective. I also remember reading an article that shows the similarities between the Star Wars music and Wagner operas.

In my opinion, Star Wars and Holst are both fantastic scores in their own right though there are certainly similarities and I believe these were conscious. I think there are many, many Holst clones in film scores. Holst has created what I see as very effective and descriptive mood music and it certainly conjures emotions as soundtracks do.

[N8]

I think hans zimmerman was influenced by holsts Mars on the gladiator soundtrack. Listen to it and you will HEAR!

[N8]

nowadays its hard to make music without sounding a little like somthing else....We\'re running out of notes sequences!! But maybe thats what they said 200 years ago. images/icons/grin.gif

[Mike Hestness]

I have always thought that the throne room scene at the end of Star Wars IV sounds similar to the third movement of Dvorak\'s 9th Symphony.

~ Knute

[BlueScreen]

Hi Adam.

Here is a link to the article karimelm metioned in which the author does a marvellous job showing how Williams drew inspiration from Wagner\'s Ring cycle.

Star Wars and the Ring Cycle (\"http://home.no.net/wagner/starwars.html\")

Also, Mike, I think you win the prize for mentioning Dvorak\'s 9th. Check this out--

Star Wars-Dvorak sample (\"http://www.jitterbug.com/origins/music.html\")

Hans Zimmer has been roundly criticised for appropriating \"Mars, the Bringer of War\" to such a large extent for the battle scene in Gladiator. Everyone borrows from everyone, but, come on. When it\'s note-for-note, or nearly so, you have to cry foul.

[Marsdy]

I watched ET yesterday. It\'s a lovely score but I\'d swear JW has listened to a lot of Bernard Herrmann at some point!

On an unrelated note. Given that so many briefs for projects specifically say stuff like \"I want it to sound like....\" rather than \"do something exciting and fresh\", it\'s no wonder so much gets re-cycled!!!

[Tokyo Joe]

Although Williams has indeed been influenced by Wagner and Shostakovich amongst others, the opening measures to Star Wars sounds almost EXACTLY like Erich Wolfgang Korngold\'s theme for KINGS ROW.

[Simon Ravn]

Marsdy, yes, and when Williams got the assignment to write \"A.I.\" for Spielberg, Williams was heavily influenced by the works of Helmut Lotti - it shows clearly in tracks like \'The Mecha World\' and \'The Blue Fairy\'.

[MarkW]

I was able to ask Hans about this when I interviewed him for SOS, and his response was:

\"It actually didn\'t start off as a Holst thing; I was actually thinking about Shostakovich much more when I was writing. But I think what happens is that it\'s a certain language Holst used, which you use for those martial-type things. Prokofiev did it too, if you listen to the Scythian Suites and stuff like that, it\'s just a certain sound. And the Holst thing is in 5/4 — I was trying to write waltzes! So everybody\'s going \'Oh, it sounds like Holst!\' Well, I think I\'m taking that at as a compliment. I wasn\'t trying to crib from him, you know!\"

Hans is an incredibly intelligent guy, and I thought this was a really interesting response.

Mark.

PS. Loved the Star Wars link! :-)