I was listening to Faure’s Sicilienne on the radio, this afternoon and noticed that several significant and recurring phrases of the melody (enough to form “sentences”) appear without much modification in the theme music for Harry Potter, particularly HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and more particularly in the scenes such as the opening on the darkened Privet Dr. and in Diagon Alley.
Now, I am aware that Mr. Williams frequently borrows older material. I also know that Mozart, Saint-Saens, Grieg, Dvorák, Smetana, and any number of other masters frequently borrowed themes and melodies from their predecessors.*
Please, if you wish to deride Williams, open your own thread. He is not the specific point of this discussion.
So, following the various trials of George Harrison and Michael Bolton/Andrew Goldmark and similar recent events, the questions are (assuming that I have correctly identified a borrowing and that it is not the result of an overactive imagination):
- Would Faure sue Williams, today?
- Should Faure have sued Williams, today?
- Is “borrowing” a time-honored way for composers to pay tribute? Or is it theft?
In the broader sense: where is the line drawn between homage and plagiarism?
*(A couple of years ago, as part of their 30th anniversary celebration, NPR’s All Things Considered ran a piece, tracking the occurrences of their 8-note, sing-song musical signature. They found the same melodic phrase used by just about every single significant composer between 1650 and 1825, with a couple of later composers using it as well.)
Is this a class action suit? Let’s bring in Holst and Wagner. 
I would think this kind of action would be a bad thing. Even though Williams uses perhaps more direct quoting than he probably should, he seems to have enough going on upstairs to make his music characteristically distinct.
I’m not too upset about his quasi-plagiarism because somehow I just feel he’s doing it more as an homage, perhaps subconsiously. I’ve composed a few themes myself that I later discovered were more-or-less quotations of existing pieces. I never developed them further.
An experienced composer has such a store of musical phrases in his or her head that it’s probably quite an effort to not write bits of something you’ve heard before. The difference is that Williams doesn’t seem to mind so much when it’s obvious.
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Dunno. But in general artists appear to be much more sue-happy these days than in Faure’s day and age. Part of this is due to the fact that there is much more money at stake these days.
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Dunno. I’m not familiar with the Williams tune you mention.
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In earlier centuries it was common to use melodies of other composers as the basis for new pieces. Bach reworked several Vivaldi violin concerto’s for organ. Schumann wrote Exercises on a theme by Beethoven, Brahms wrote Variations on a theme by Haydn, Rachmaninoff wrote Varations on a theme by Chopin. Note that all of this was openly done, clearly attributed.
Reworking of a theme was all fair game and rather considered a tribute. In baroque days the theme was not as important; the composer showed his skill by what he could do with the theme. Nowadays people seem to think that the theme is the one and all of the composition. There is a move to stricter enforcement of smaller ‘works’, which also shows itself in the sentiment that a mere idea should be the subject of copyright (which is not true as a point of law). A theme or melody in itself can be subject of copyright, though.
Given these developments in legal and artistic viewpoints on taking over a melody, these days the homage, if it is with a melody, should be openly, and preferably with prior consent of the rightholder.
If you mean, when is a melody only inspired by another melody or a blatant rip-off of the latter, there is no general rule. Bear in mind that there is a lot of music and melodies, which makes it unavoidable that there is some resemblance between different musical pieces.