OT: Themes borrowed from other music

michael_m

We’ve all heard them - themes lifted from older music without necessarily crediting the original composer, but every once in a while some really bizarre connections come to mind for me.

Last night I was listening to Mahler’s 7th Symphony, and realized it contains the tune used for the chorus of ‘I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’. Considering they were composed not too far apart, I think there was some borrowing going on.

Anyone else find odd things like this?

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

In the 1940s, writing pop songs based on classical melodies was a fad. Much of film music of the 1930s and later was shamelessly lifted. A couple more pop songs in the 60s from classical. The Rocky theme in the 70s.

abf

The pop charts in the 1950s, 60s and 70s were also full of "borrowed" melodies.

Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic" is Chopin's "Prelude in Cm".

Eric Carmen's "All By Myself" is Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor, Op 18".
And "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" is the third movement (Adagio) from Rachmaninoff's "Symphony Number 2". Apparently Mr. Carmen believed Rachmaninoff had lived many centuries before, that is until the Rachmaninoff estate contacted him for breach of copyright.

The Toys' "A Lover's Concerto" is J. S. Bach's "Minuet in Gm".

The opening bars of Procol Harem's "Whiter Shade of Pale" is not a copy, but is based on J. S. Bach's "Air On The G String".

Paul Simon's "American Tune" is not American, it's J. S. Bach's "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded" from "St. Matthew Passion" which itself was based on "Mein G'müt ist mir verwirret” composed by Hans Leo Hassler.

Bob Dylan's catalog is filled with Irish folk song melodies. (And of course many of his lyrics were directly lifted from poems. During the 2011 showing of his visual art at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC it was discovered that eighteen of his paintings were exact copies of other people's already published photographs.)

The Carter family hardly wrote any songs themselves. A. P. Carter traveled around the countryside collecting folk songs and copyrighting them under his own name.

Don't even get started on Jimmy Page.

LinearLineman

“I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” 1917… Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu op.66

What’s the Andrew Lloyd Webber Puccini rip off again?

michael_m

Definitely know a lot of the more recent ones, but hadn’t noticed it before recorded music was widely available so much. Attributions were often given, even if just noting that something was a traditional song or dance.

Yes, the Lloyd-Weber one…I think that was about the only one that ever made it to court with him wasn’t it?

GovernorSilver

Deleted due to duplicate info

GovernorSilver

A more recent song that quoted Beethoven straight up, in keeping with the "moon light" theme

ervin

@abf said:
The pop charts in the 1950s, 60s and 70s were also full of "borrowed" melodies.

Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic" is Chopin's "Prelude in Cm".

Eric Carmen's "All By Myself" is Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor, Op 18".
And "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again" is the third movement (Adagio) from Rachmaninoff's "Symphony Number 2". Apparently Mr. Carmen believed Rachmaninoff had lived many centuries before, that is until the Rachmaninoff estate contacted him for breach of copyright.

The Toys' "A Lover's Concerto" is J. S. Bach's "Minuet in Gm".

The opening bars of Procol Harem's "Whiter Shade of Pale" is not a copy, but is based on J. S. Bach's "Air On The G String".

Paul Simon's "American Tune" is not American, it's J. S. Bach's "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded" from "St. Matthew Passion" which itself was based on "Mein G'müt ist mir verwirret” composed by Hans Leo Hassler.

Bob Dylan's catalog is filled with Irish folk song melodies. (And of course many of his lyrics were directly lifted from poems. During the 2011 showing of his visual art at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC it was discovered that eighteen of his paintings were exact copies of other people's already published photographs.)

The Carter family hardly wrote any songs themselves. A. P. Carter traveled around the countryside collecting folk songs and copyrighting them under his own name.

Don't even get started on Jimmy Page.

Wow. Thank you, professor. 👏🏻

Daveypoo

McD

Steven Speilberg forced John Williams to quote "When You Wish Upon a Star" for the end sequence of "Close Encounters". William's does his best to keep the Director happy but not hitting Disney over the head with the reference: Disney uses this melody with it's Logo displays. Williams uses the trick of having every note played by a different instrument so you have to analyze the score to see the collection of notes as a melody.

I think re-purposing and quoting prior art is a valid artistic choice. Intellectual Property entanglements do a lot of damage on the industry of music and streaming has made a lot of these issues less urgent because not one is getting rich except for the CEO's.

This article discusses the controversy of Lloyd-Weber's tribute to Puccini's Tosca in his "Cats" melody "Memory": the only decent tune in the whole abortion, IMHO:

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2018/10/the-phantom-of-the-obvious

michael_m

@McD said:
I think re-purposing and quoting prior art is a valid artistic choice. Intellectual Property entanglements do a lot of damage on the industry of music and streaming has made a lot of these issues less urgent because not one is getting rich except for the CEO's.

I agree to a point, especially for the more fundamental elements of music. When someone sues because a piece uses the same 4 chord sequence or 4 note baseline it's bullshit, as those have been used over and over for decades, but I think it's valid sometimes if an artist makes millions by directly copying a complex composition by another artist.