Film composers who reuse their soundtracks

[George White]

Just been watching a lot of Italian crime stuff, and noticed Riz Ortolani's theme for Eric Roberts miniseries Vendetta - Secrets of a Mafia Bride,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Sx0P2MLuA owes something his theme for  1973 Godfather plagiarisation Il Consigliore with Martin Balsam and Tomas Milian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD9vMLGj_EQ, which itself is a reworking of his theme for 1972's the Valachi Papers with Charles Bronson.

John Barry is notorious for this.
Out of Africa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBWO4HPh8k0
Starcrash - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-0XZYBiPw
Other bits of the Starcrash soundtrack are interchangeable with Moonraker and The Black Hole, all of which he churned out at the same time.


Also, High Road to China includes a suite that is basically the instrumental version of the Merle Haggard theme from Barry's soundtrack to Legend of the Lone Ranger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10dcQfO-sUQ

[NoSleep]

Probably more likely that the film director got permission to reuse those bits because they already thought they would be perfect for their film and then got the composer in on the project for a couple of extra bits.

Not exactly the same, but there's certain devices/effects that Ennio Morricone uses in his film scores over and over without directly repeating himself. Apart from the stuff that  Quentin Tarantino culled from Morricone's previous film scores (Inglourious Basterds) and using some unused bits of previous work he had done for other films (The Hateful 8 features bits from the soundtrack of John Carpenter's The Thing that Carpenter never got around to using).

I've also discovered bits of Morricone being used in old Hong Kong-made martial arts films.

[Tikwid]

Jed Kurzel.

Snowtown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHUa50Ka8wo
Alien Covenant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh_o19X5D2g

[Glebe]

Alien is a case of the composer's music getting reused without his knowledge... from Wiki:

Another source of tension was editor Terry Rawlings' choice to use pieces of Goldsmith's music from previous films, including a piece from Freud: The Secret Passion, and to use an excerpt from Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2 ("Romantic") for the end credits.

Scott and Rawlings had also become attached to several of the musical cues they had used for the temporary score while editing the film, and re-edited some of Goldsmith's cues and re-scored several sequences to match these cues and even left the temporary score in place in some parts of the finished film.[53] Goldsmith later remarked that "you can see that I was sort of like going at opposite ends of the pole with the filmmakers."

Love the eeriness of the music in this scene... here's the full piece from the Freud score.

[magval]

Maybe franchises don't count but Elliot Goldenthal did brilliant music for Batman Forever and there's an awful lot of it re-used for Batman and Robin. There's very little new music in the latter and the exiting themes haven't been re-recorded - they're the same exact versions as in the previous movie.

A weird one is the main theme from Broken Arrow popping up in Scream 2 and 3 as the theme for David Arquette's character. There couldn't have been much time between those two films like.

[olliebean]

Am I going to get a slap for pointing out John Williams re-used part of the Lost in Space theme for Jurassic Park?

[goinggoinggone]

Maybe franchises don't count but Elliot Goldenthal did brilliant music for Batman Forever and there's an awful lot of it re-used for Batman and Robin. There's very little new music in the latter and the exiting themes haven't been re-recorded - they're the same exact versions as in the previous movie.

While most of it is probably original, Goldenthal re-used some of his industrial riffs from Alien 3 ; you hear them when Robin goes crusing in the Bat-mobile and gets in a fight with a gang of thugs.

[hummingofevil]

Moreover, Danny Elfman's Batman Themd  being used (or at least forms the basics of) the Animated Series and more.

[VelourSpirit]

Michael Giacchino used a similar motif from his Star Trek theme (https://youtu.be/ZQ6avFOpmlM?t=39) in his Doctor Strange theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Gkdme2bck)

[magval]

Moreover, Danny Elfman's Batman Themd  being used (or at least forms the basics of) the Animated Series and more.

He composed that specifically for the cartoon though, and it's a new piece of music.

[Shit Good Nose]

Elfman's been using the same piece of music ever since he left Oingo Boingo, hasn't he?

James Horner seemed to do pretty much do variations on the same theme for most of his career as well.

[magval]

While most of it is probably original, Goldenthal re-used some of his industrial riffs from Alien 3 ; you hear them when Robin goes crusing in the Bat-mobile and gets in a fight with a gang of thugs.

This is very interesting. I've not seen Alien 3 in years. Could you point out where in that film the material that turns up in Batman 3 is?

[Catalogue Trousers]

I like James Horner's film scores a lot, but he can be very self-plagiarising.

Exhibit A - the tracks 'Genesis Countdown' and 'Stealing The Enterprise' from the second and third Star Trek films - Wrath Of Khan and Search For Spock, you Philistines. They're basically exactly the same piece.

Okay, you say, but maybe he did that for a certain thematic unity. Fair point.

At which juncture, I say to you -

Go and listen to his leitmotif for Khan in Wrath Of Khan from 1982. Then listen to his Klingon music from Search For Spock in 1984. And THEN follow that with his motif for the titular xenomorphs in Aliens in 1986.

Uncanny.

[Satchmo Distel]

Ennio Morricone's "Come Maddalena" and "Chi Mai" were originally recorded for the film Maddalena in 1971. Gorgeous concert performance of the latter here here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-N9MmzRluU

Chi Mai 1971 version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n83VRAWDjAA

Both tracks were redone as disco arrangements in 1977:

https://www.discogs.com/Ennio-Morricone-Disco-78/release/1332248

The disco version of "Come Maddalena" was used for a BBC chess programme in 1978.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09zymfLwBoc

Chi Mai turned up in the movie The Professionals and in The Life And Times of David Lloyd George, both in 1981. But my favourite arrangement is for two guitars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idlh_kxb59c

[goinggoinggone]

This is very interesting. I've not seen Alien 3 in years. Could you point out where in that film the material that turns up in Batman 3 is?

It's the scene where Ripley goes looking for what's left of Bishop in the prison scrapheap and is almost raped by some of the prisoners.  It's pretty effective in a down and dirty kind of way and gives an already grim scene, more of a visceral edge.

[Fisher Goes Berserk]

I've noticed this a lot too. I think it's a combination of a few things:

1) A conscious desire on the part of the composer to have a signature sound;
2) A less conscious reliance on tried and tested techniques, leading to musical 'tics';
3) The constraints of the visuals (especially for mainstream films, a composer is going to be expected to conform to particular tropes);
4) Where a film is part of a franchise, the need to use a main theme (or variations on that theme).

There are definitely a handful of film composers whose work you can spot a mile off: Barry, Morricone, Horner, Williams, Elfman, Rota, Thomas Newman etc. I think that's a combination of those first two points.

John Barry is one of my favourite composers, and whenever I'm going through a phase of listening to lots of his work, I'm amazed at how much of it is in C major, especially his more romantic themes. I don't mind it though, it feels like his work develops. I always feel that the score to Indecent Proposal is a development of the score to Somewhere In Time, for example. The instrumental choices and keys are similar, but Indecent Proposal seems much more subtle. Those kinds of similarities can also be useful for tedious musicology nerds like me, as it helps identify how particular chord sequences dropped out of fashion, stuff like that.

Another observation on Starcrash: the rhythm of the main melody is very similar in places to that of the main theme from Born Free. Barry's melodies can often be described as lyrical, even the ones that don't have lyrics. Perhaps he made a point of writing 'singable' melodies so that lyrics could be added if desired.

This is a decent read:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SCORE-Interviews-Film-Composers/dp/1879505401

[magval]

Eric Serra turned in very similar scores for Leon/The Professional and Goldeneye. His reliance on certain types of percussive effects gives his music a voice, almost.

[Fisher Goes Berserk]

Another John Barry reuse that I love: that gorgeous, lazy rally between C major and Bb major in the main theme from Midnight Cowboy resurfaces a couple of years later in 'The Children' from Walkabout. The instrumentation is totally different (in the first one it's performed by a band, and in the second one by choir) but somehow, I identify it so strongly with him.

He takes two simple chords and uses them to kick my heart over. Alchemy.

[George White]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d43UiFh7tk The theme to Something to Hide, sung by Buddy Greco, soundtrack by Roy Budd

The theme to Tomorrow Never Comes, sung by Matt Monro, soundtrack by Roy Budd  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4sI9qp2SM8

Also, Budd's soundtrack to the Internecine Project