Shameful Tales From the Movie-Scoring Trade

[Monsieur Croche]

Also, I've never heard the Britten piece. You make it sound like its inconceivable that a person could be a serious musician or composer without having heard it. Apparently I haven't been living in a city, or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Horner#Early_life

If you are a classical musician and composition student, when Horner was, at least, it is near impossible that he did not know of, hear, and look at and/or own a score of the Britten Requiem.  Evidently, training at UCLA, having finished a master's degree in theory and composition and at least having started work on a doctorate, remaining in the Los Angeles area the remainder of his life, qualifies him as living in isolation from the classical music world and kept him naive of the music of Prokofiev, Britten, Copland, etc. for the entirety of his sixty years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMHJlkYlzKE

Yeah, right.  Sorry, dude, the odds this composer did not know exactly what he was lifting, and from whom, are beyond slight.  This kind of lifting/stealing with minor [or greater] variants is penny-common within the commercial film-score industry.

The contemporary classical composer will tend to go out of their way, discarding or re-writing anything which sounds too 'similar to,' to steer clear away from having their work sound like another composer's work, whether it is an actual passage, or because it sounds too much like another composer's identifiable general style.  this includes not using or borrowing what have become too well-known iconic gestures which were penned by others [that is relative and on a case by case basis].  Any of those instances usually occasion a radical re-think and re-write, or a complete disposal and 'back to the drawing board.'  That is the ethic within the classical milieu.

The kind of patently obvious swiping that goes on in the film-scoring industry carries with it no approbrium in that community; within the classical community it garners naught but opprobrium, the thought being, as Karl Henning put it a while back in this thread, ''He ought to write his own stuff.''  I'd add to that, ''If you can not write your own stuff, don't even think to pretend to play the game.''

The facts are, whether as per the director's directive, or of their own volition, a number of film composers are writing some of their own stuff [enough, to be sure, and some of it fine film scoring, indeed] while still often heavily relying upon re-writing other composer's stuff or writing a parallel piece which sounds quite like an existing other. 

Most film going fans and film-score fans don't care. Some, if and when they discover there is an original source, stay and explore the original classical rep and then less and less often visit the film score which led them to that classical piece.

I mean, really, whaddya want -- Prokofiev, Copland, Britten, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Carl Orff, etc. ad infinitum -- or the cheap spin-offs?

[Karl Henning]

As a result of this discussion, though, I am listening closer to that 2-minute stretch of the Aliens Main Title, and there is skill in there;  there is some ingenuity in the adaptation from the De profundis from the Op.135.  When I have a chance, I'll diagram it out.

(I mean, if you like, we can take it as read that this is a potentially fallacious idée fixe of mine;  certainly, we can allow a plausible deniability to the enterprise.  I think, though, that the similarities between the Horner and the Shostakovich being closer than the Horner to the Dies irae, if we allow the chance that he was not cribbing from Shostakovich, there is no compulsion to call it any reference to the Dies irae.  Not unless that's what he says he was doing . . . .)

[Pat B]

I know. But the processes of reasoning I'm talking about have nothing to do with standard of proof. I'm merely pointing out the serious logical fallacies involved in assuming that because two things resemble each other, the second must be a copy of the first.

I've no problem with the notion that copying raises ethical issues. But the fact remains that similarity is not in and of itself proof of copying.

In the late '90s there was an American band called Fastball. Their one hit sounded exactly like Urge Overkill but was super-catchy. I bought their album. One of the other songs sounded exactly like R.E.M. Another sounded exactly like The Replacements. Literally every song sounded like some other band -- and no two songs sounded like the same other band. (Some of the other bands themselves have been criticized as derivative, but they do have identifiable-to-me sounds.)

I had no ability or desire to prove that they were aping others, as opposed to sounding similar to others coincidentally. But that doesn't mean I have to respect them artistically.

Horner did a lot of stuff, not just this snippet from Aliens, that sounds suspiciously similar to something that came before. I can't prove that they were copies as opposed to coincidental similarities, but that doesn't mean I have to respect him.

The Shostakovich comparison is not really apt. The Fifth Symphony does refer to -- copy, if you prefer -- a melody from Carmen but at no point does it sound like Bizet, which is why it's hard to identify, though it's unmistakable once you're clued in. Part of his Fifteenth was lifted from William Tell but I believe that was intended as an obvious quotation that the audience would recognize.

All of this is just my opinion. If your opinion is that James Horner is as original and respect-worthy as Shostakovich (or that Shostakovich is as unoriginal as Horner) or anywhere in between there and me, you are certainly entitled to that.

[Karl Henning]

The Shostakovich comparison is not really apt. The Fifth Symphony does refer to -- copy, if you prefer -- a melody from Carmen but at no point does it sound like Bizet, which is why it's hard to identify, though it's unmistakable once you're clued in.

This is a game Shostakovich often played (and it is at four or five planes higher than Horner's activities, which are not ethically comparable), subtle (or sometimes, not so subtle) recontextualization.  He played the game sometimes with the music of others, sometimes with his own (the plaintive descending phrase which appears in the Fifth Symphony, the scherzo of the Fourth, and in the last of the Pushkin Romances, e.g.)  A delicious moment in one of the quartets, which feels to me like a cheerful allusion to the Mahler First.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I haven't gone through all of this long thread, but I haven't seen a distinction drawn between music in the public domain and music in copyright (and that doesn't matter whether the music is well-known or not). Carmen of course is public domain and thus can be used however anyone wants; Shosty 5 or 14 isn't. During early Hollywood years it was common for film composers to appropriate classical themes wholesale for the movies: Schumann's Happy Farmer appears in The Wizard of Oz, as does Mendelssohn's Scherzo op. 16/2. When watching Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels recently I heard Mendelssohn's Spring Song, and Tchaikovsky's None But the Lonely Heart seems to crop up in every lachrymose Hollywood love scene.

If a classical work is borrowed for the movies, even if in the public domain, it's reasonable to ask if the music is lifted wholesale, used as commentary, or transformed somehow. Woody Allen makes great use of the Schubert G major quartet for the murder scene in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Terrence Malick uses the opening to The Moldau to represent two young boys growing up in Tree of Life, and at the end of that same film uses the Kyrie from the Berlioz Requiem as a commentary on death and eternity. In all these examples the borrowings are overt, and the performers are credited even though the music is in public domain.

One especially clever example (which should particularly interest one poster here) is the parody of the first movement of Mahler VI in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits. For me the film as a whole is a clever idea that overstays its welcome, but the use of Mahler is a very inventive reworking.

[aukhawk]

Not to mention, in Shostakovich's quote-rich 15th Symphony, alongside the William Tell Overture, the 'fate' motif from Wagner's Ring.

All this reminds me somewhat of the celebrated case of George Harrison's huge hit song My Sweet Lord, which used the 3-note riff (complete with inflexions) heard 17 years earlier as The Chiffons' He's So Fine - hard to prove a 3-note 'coincidence' is not just that - "In the ruling, the judge stated that he believed Harrison had not intentionally copied the song, but more than likely experienced an episode of cryptomnesia." (From Wikipedia on music plagiarism)

The contemporary classical composer will tend to go out of their way, discarding or re-writing anything which sounds too 'similar to,' to steer clear away from having their work sound like another composer's work, whether it is an actual passage, or because it sounds too much like another composer's identifiable general style, it is back to the drafting board; this includes not using or borrowing what have become well-known to iconic gestures which were penned by others.  That is the ethic in that realm.

If this is the case, it must surely be to the great detriment of contemporary classical music.  It is as though, most of the best stuff has already been done, and now we have rules which only allow a composer to pick at the edges and peer down the cracks.  The end product is the result of largely non-musical decisions, and surely the music itself is fatally compromised.

[Karl Henning]

One especially clever example (which should particularly interest one poster here) is the parody of the first movement of Mahler VI in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits. For me the film as a whole is a clever idea that overstays its welcome, but the use of Mahler is a very inventive reworking.

Dadgummit, I need to know the Sixth better. And I think your view of Time Bandits fair.

[Karl Henning]

All this reminds me somewhat of the celebrated case of George Harrison's huge hit song My Sweet Lord, which used the 3-note riff (complete with inflexions) heard 17 years earlier as The Chiffons' He's So Fine - hard to prove a 3-note 'coincidence' is not just that - "In the ruling, the judge stated that he believed Harrison had not intentionally copied the song, but more than likely experienced an episode of cryptomnesia." (From Wikipedia on music plagiarism)

It's not just the three notes, nor the fact that that 3-note gesture is repeated, nor even that two alternating chords are the same (one cannot copyright a chord progression), but that then there is an exactly comparable harmonic shift and new rising melodic gesture at "I really want to see you" (in the case of the Harrison) or "I don't know how I'm gonna do it" (in the case of the Chiffons).  That ruling strikes me as fair.

[Karl Henning]

"I don't know how I'm gonna do it" (in the case of the Chiffons)

At 00:18 here—

http://www.youtube.com/v/rinz9Avvq6A

[Karl Henning]

A counter-example of (first) making it right, and subsequent artistic rectitude:

Clarke, Kubrick, and Ligeti: A Tale

[Florestan]

Bottom line let the copyright holders sue those who have infringed upon them.

The rest is silence. 

[relm1]

My take on this is Horner is a cribber AND is still a great film composer.  These are not mutually exclusive.  Even when cribbing, his individual style and formidable talent is apparent.  I hold a classical composer to a higher standard than I do a film composer because the goal is not the same even though the talent and skill might be.

[Monsieur Croche]

A counter-example of (first) making it right, and subsequent artistic rectitude:

Clarke, Kubrick, and Ligeti: A Tale

Oh, why not toss Alex North into that mix, lol. He was paid, but only found out that his commissioned, completed, and delivered score for that Kubrick film was not being used -- any of it -- when he first saw the completed film 

[Cato]

Oh, why not toss Alex North into that mix, lol. He was paid, but only found out that his commissioned, completed, and delivered score for that Kubrick film was not being used -- any of it -- when he first saw the completed film 

A taste of the rejected score:

https://www.youtube.com/v/uuCqfvbxsJs

[(poco) Sforzando]

A taste of the rejected score:

Which only goes to show, ethics aside, that Kubrick was artistically justified to proceed as he eventually did. Can you seriously imagine 2001 without the two Strausses, R. and J., or for that mater Ligeti?

[Karl Henning]

Which only goes to show, ethics aside, that Kubrick was artistically justified to proceed as he eventually did. Can you seriously imagine 2001 without the two Strausses, R. and J., or for that mater Ligeti?

And one of the rare instances where the exposure really was value greater than a fistful of rubles.

[Karl Henning]

My take on this is Horner is a cribber AND is still a great film composer.  These are not mutually exclusive.  Even when cribbing, his individual style and formidable talent is apparent.  I hold a classical composer to a higher standard than I do a film composer because the goal is not the same even though the talent and skill might be.

Good post. Arguably, it's because I've got "skin in the game," but a corner (a bay window, really) of my mind bridles at the moral relaxation afforded to film scorers. The mischievous contrarian in me wants to point out that in Die Hard, e.g., Hans Gruber is both formidably talented, and a contemptible villain: the two are not mutually exclusive 

[Karl Henning]

Bottom line let the copyright holders sue those who have infringed upon them.

The rest is silence. 

Grey is the new off-white? 

[relm1]

Good post. Arguably, it's because I've got "skin in the game," but a corner (a bay window, really) of my mind bridles at the moral relaxation afforded to film scorers. The mischievous contrarian in me wants to point out that in Die Hard, e.g., Hans Gruber is both formidably talented, and a contemptible villain: the two are not mutually exclusive 

Yep and as you know I have skin in the game too hence our mutual passion/disdain for this topic.    0:)

Before he died, I considered Horner a hack cribber but after he died I re-evaluated my position and realized just how good he was when he does his thing and upgraded my opinion to his being a greatly talented composer who was prone to cribbing and frequent self quotation but still extremely effective and sometimes maybe gorgeously so.

[Karl Henning]

Yep and as you know I have skin in the game too hence our mutual passion/disdain for this topic.   > 0:)

Before he died, I considered Horner a hack cribber but after he died I re-evaluated my position and realized just how good he was when he does his thing and upgraded my opinion to his being a greatly talented composer who was prone to cribbing and frequent self quotation but still extremely effective and sometimes maybe gorgeously so.

The Main Title for Aliens is a beauty. It's sort of "three things strung together," and one of those things is the Shostakovich knock-off, but it does its job expertly.