From ancient Greece to John Williams: music has always been the same

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? Did the composer purposefully quote a favorite passage? Did he realize he was doing this? Most likely he did. I am not trying to discredit the composer who does this. I am merely pointing something out that I believe is fundamental in music. Music has the distinct and wonderful quality of being both new and fresh, and yet the same as it always has been. Composers invariably hail back to the great masterworks, salute the giants of the past. Not only do I think this is acceptable, but I think it is both unavoidable and wonderfully refreshing.

Musical quotation itself–the technique of taking an exact passage of music and replicating it in a new piece–has been widely utilized by many great composers, especially in the 20th century. You see it most often with folk idioms. Bartok traveled around eastern Europe–Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria mostly–in search of native melodies which he would incorporate into various string quartets, piano pieces and orchestral works. An astoundingly large amount of Stravinsky’s music is infused with obscure Russian folk melodies. The great American composer Charles Ives quoted American folk tunes so often in his music, that he has very nearly become known just for this. (If you ever get a chance listen to Ives’ “Central Park in the Dark” or “The Unanswered Question” with the lights out.)

What makes this technique of musical quotation so intriguing is the way that a composer will use it to his own ends. Listen to the scherzo movement of Mahler’s second symphony. Then listen to the third movement of Luciano Berio’s “Sinfonia”. It is one of the largest full-scale quotations you’ll see, as the composer brilliantly takes Mahler’s entire scherzo and uses it as a backdrop for one of the movements of his Sinfonia. He also quotes snatches of Claude Debussy’s “La Mer”, Maurice Ravel’s “La Valse”, Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and various quotations of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and others. Over it all eight amplified voices recite texts of Samuel Beckett. The effect is something quite magical and unique, at times both humorous and macabre.

But does music quotation ever become plagiarism if it is not acknowledged? Is there a line to be drawn here? Should the composer always tell us who he is quoting? That is purely based on context, I am sure. Perhaps in some instances, if asked, it is at least polite to give credit where it is due. I am inclined to think that this is not entirely necessary though. After all, where would music be if it did not hail back to the old masters? What would we have to build on if we didn’t look to the greats of ages past? Who are we kidding? Has anyone ever really created something completely ‘new’ and never thought of before? Would there even be any new music if it wasn’t taken from something already set down in the canon?

I for one have caught myself ‘accidentally’ jotting something down from a piece I heard, thinking it was my original idea only to find out much later that it already existed. It’s a very disappointing feeling. Can you believe I thought for years that I had actually composed the melody “Amazing Grace”! Hard to believe, isn’t it? I was crestfallen when I discovered I had only heard it sung one night at school when I was very young. The impact of the melody must have been so great that it stayed in my head, I forgot where I had heard it, and eventually I concluded that I must have concieved it myself. Unfortunately, I think this happens with a lot of composers. And it is often difficult to distinguish between what we make and what we heard from someone else.

In a way though, I think it is a wonderful thing. Music gets inside us, imprints itself on our brains, takes form in our imagination, and it gets down into our very souls. Some of the best new ideas are really just old ideas reworked, used in different ways to say different things. Sometimes when I find the grain of an idea for a new work, it is something I had heard once long ago; it is way back in the dusty corners of my memory and it resurfaces only when I accidentally play a chord on the piano or hear a very provocative phrase of music in the scene of a movie. I make it my own.

This is what I love about music. It gives itself freely to us all, and it doesn’t mind being used over and over again. It comes from everywhere. It doesn’t mind being revitalized, reinvented and recycled; and yet it never loses itself, it never becomes what it isn’t. It is always the same.

(There is far too much to write about here, and there is so much I want to say about it. More specifically, I would like to do a post later on comparing certain beloved film scores with great classical pieces of the past. I already mentioned “Jaws”. I will try and include recordings of everything I cite. It may take a while to scrounge up though. You may be astounded at the shocking similarity between some of the them.)