Bull. Vader’s theme comes from it, the final battle theme comes from it, as do a number of elements (the sandpeople theme is another one, that pops into my head as I relisten to Holst). Take a listen to the Star Wars soundtrack again. Williams borrows just huge amounts from Mars. He doesn’t necessarily take entire movements from the piece, but he’ll take a section (say a few measures in lengths), expand upon them slightly, or simply repeat those portions over and over again. Nor is it him simply slipping in a bit here and there as a wink, its quite clear that he’s using those sections from Holst as the centerpiece of his composition. The final moments of Mars are damned near identical to Williams score for the destruction of the Death Star. Enough so that were Holst still around he’d be able to sue for copyright infringement.
We’ve had threads on Williams before and the Dopers with musical cred have all weighed in on Williams being rather blatent in his cribbing. (“Hack” featured in a number of the comments as I recall.)
I watched Star Trek II: The Vengeance of Khan three times at the movies. When it came out on VHS, I saw it a half-dozen times before returning it to the Video store. As you would expect, I see it now whenever it appears on the tube. So I know the movie well.
So when I got a free cd of “Excerpts from Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg” I was surprised to recognize one of the themes as one used by Williams during the coffin on the planet sequences.
Uh, its Wrath of Khan, the soundtrack was composed by James Horner, and the big piece of music during the funeral scene is Amazing Grace, which starts out with Scotty playing it on the bagpipes, and then switches to an orchestrial version once they crap Spock out into space.
Which is more lame about Star Trek, that Scotty is an engineer just because he’s Scottish, or that we’re supposed to accept that of course he knows how to play bagpipes, because after all, he’s Scottish?
Scotty became Scottish because James Doohan wanted him to be. When he went for the audition, he asked about the character, and they told him they hadn’t really defined anything about him, other than he was an engineer. To which Doohan said, “Well, if he’s an engineer, then he’s got to be a Scot!” and thus he was.
[SDMB cliché] Wow, all this talk about John Williams’ stealing melodies for his film scores and I can’t believe this hasn’t been mentioned yet - “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” theme song “borrowed” from the early 1960’s Kent cigarette melody.[/SDMB cliché]
Also at You Tube, there’s some videos relating the original melody is from classical music.
But be that as it may, it seems Mr Williams “borrowed” it from someplace.
Similar chord structures–even identical ones, esp if they are simple–do not “borrowing” make.
I can see that the melody has a couple of similar (but identical only for three quarter notes in one measure) phrases. But it would take a lot more than this to convince me any kind of borrowing had occured.
Regarding Mars Bringer of War, I see even less similarity between that and the Imperial March. Indeed, the two have quite different tones, and as far as I can tell, no similarity in melody. There is that driving rhythmic string thing going on underneath in both cases, but again, a single similar characteristic doesn’t “borrowing” make.
I know he was inspired by “Mars Bringer of War” and that I can believe, but what he wrote is so different that I can’t see how it could be characterized as “borrowing” or even worse “cribbing.”
Well, I don’t, and I’ve had musical training, too. Maybe my standards for “borrowing” and “cribbing” are different from yours, but I don’t see it, aside from inspiration. Dammit, Holst doesn’t phrase the same way Williams does. To say that Williams is just grabbing chunks of Holst and passing them off as his own is just wrong,.
But the Star Wars examples adduced in this thread don’t even count as “variations on a theme.” There are no shared themes.
Inspiration I can buy–especially since it appears Williams himself never made any bones about there being an inspirational influence–but “cribbing” “borrowing” and “varying a theme” I am simply not seeing.
As I recall, E.W. Korngold always credited his source -he would write a score, and list it as "Theme by Mozart, arrngement by Korngold). This seems to be an entirely honest way of presenting one’s work. But to shamelessly steal (with out crediting the source) seems wrong to me.
Anyway, the ‘stealing’ being talked about is a metaphor for his shameless misappropriation of themes, rhythms, soundworlds and so forth, often presenting them as something far more one-dimensional and banal than the original.
