John Williams and his "Inspirations"

[St_Eddie]

Not to diminish the work of John Williams but did you know that an awful lot of his compositions are "heavily inspired" by other musician's work?

John Williams Borrowing From Other Composers

John Williams Vs Gustav Holst

Prokofiev - Williams

On a Golden Pond - Across the Stars

Compare this section of Mozart's Rondo in D major with the opening to this theme from Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are a ton of other examples.  Again though, I must stress that I'm not posting this to discredit John William's work, for he is an exemplary film composer.  I just find it interesting that he so freely repurposed other musician's compositions and I feel that more people should be aware of that fact, lest they think that he's entirely original.  He's kind of like the Quentin Tarantino of film composers but much like Tarantino, I feel that cinema would be all the poorer for his absence.

[Sin Agog]

He even stole his name from that classical guitarist.

[mojo filters]

The origins of John Williams' original Star Wars theme are clearly heard in Erich Korngold's score for the much earlier film King's Row:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AJwa9mX0bxA&t=12s

[St_Eddie]

The origins of John Williams' original Star Wars theme are clearly heard in Erich Korngold's score for the much earlier film King's Row:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AJwa9mX0bxA&t=12s

Aye, that was in the first video which I linked to.

[idunnosomename]

To be fair, classical music would a lot poorer if this didn't happen. Mozart's first 8 piano concertos are essentially rearrangements of other composers' work. All overly litigious crap in pop music is detrimental to how music works.

I believe also a lot of the old movie theme was used as a temp track and Williams was just supposed to "do something like it"

Dune Sea undulating semitones is possibly also a homage, as Jaws owes a lot to the Rite of Spring too