Some of you may have noticed moments in a film score that are strikingly reminiscent of a piece of classical music you heard once before. Or vice versa. The most notorious of these is probably John Williams infamous “Jaws” theme, which is almost taken verbatim from the beginning of the fourth movement of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony”. More obscurely, one may find the same obsessive rising minor seconds in the opening of the orchestral overture of Mendellsohn’s “Elijah”.
I sometimes wonder about this. Isn’t it glaringly obvious that we are hearing the exact same music in two very different pieces? Read the rest of this entry »
