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Posted: |
Dec 2, 2022 - 7:12 AM
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By: |
c8
(Member)
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Horner didn't need vindication. Listening to the wide body of orchestral music reveals a few things:
1) Orchestral composers, by accident or intent, use in their own works passages, motifs, etc. used well by other composers. Take Shostakovich's 15th Symphony as an excellent example. The first movement incorporates haunting, foggy quotes of Rossini's William Tell Overture. I'm sure Shostakovich's intent was not just for atmosphere, but as the theme for one of the US's most successful programs of the time (The Lone Ranger), remarkably subversive on his part. There was, regardless, narrative reason and intent but not credit.
2) Orchestral composers, by accident or intent, reuse their own work from time to time. Shostakovich had the DSCH calling card if you want an example of a signature. Take also for example Copeland's 3rd symphony. The 4th movement is nothing more than a reuse of (and expansion on) Fanfare for the Common Man. Beethoven also flirted with the "Ode to Joy" in numerous pieces before using it in its entirety in the 9th Symphony.
3) The "danger theme" was not just used by Rachmaninoff in his first symphony. Most notably its also Wotan's motif in the Ring Cycle (especially Die Walkure). I also heard it prominently in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (its been so long since I listened I can't point to where). Its even in other film scores (ex. Tyler's Timeline, though that score was so full of temp track bleed from STII I bet that's where it derived from). I hear it in music all the time. Dies Irae it is not but it seems like it has a similar sort of track.
4) Horner isn't the only film composer who loves to quote. Williams gets away with it nearly scott free, but, my socks went nearly flying off listening to the first movement of Sibelius' 5th symphony. But no one says ET is somehow any less a score. Mahler's 9th and Star Wars, Dvorak's From the New World and Dual of the Fates/Jaws, etc. No one sees Williams as a lesser composer while some of his most iconic themes and motifs are also derived from the classical world.
At the end of the day Horner's music always makes me feel emotion of some sort; he never leaves me cold. Even if Horner adopted others' work, he always would rewrite it into his own voice. He wasn't one to put someone else's work on the stands verbatim. Its all a part of that emotional tapestry. In his head, I'm sure he saw the quotes as a way to connect ideas through the orchestral body. Everything we've learned about Horner since his death seems to show he didn't see music or his work like most people did. We must enjoy his work as it stands (and I absolutely do).
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Posted: |
Dec 2, 2022 - 8:03 AM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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Horner didn't need vindication. Listening to the wide body of orchestral music reveals a few things:
1) Orchestral composers, by accident or intent, use in their own works passages, motifs, etc. used well by other composers. Take Shostakovich's 15th Symphony as an excellent example. The first movement incorporates haunting, foggy quotes of Rossini's William Tell Overture. I'm sure Shostakovich's intent was not just for atmosphere, but as the theme for one of the US's most successful programs of the time (The Lone Ranger), remarkably subversive on his part. There was, regardless, narrative reason and intent but not credit.
If you’re using Shostakovich to justify Horner, I’m afraid it’s a false equivalence. Very few people are going to hear the William Tell overture in the 15th symphony and not recognise it. It hardly needs to be credited. But how many people will hear the beautiful bitter sweet keening strings in “Clear and Present Danger” (around Greer’s Funeral) and identify it as part of the third movement of Shostakovich’s 5th symphony, more or less note-for-note? It’s the passing off of other people’s work as your own that makes the difference, morally if not legally.
On numerous occasions Shostakovich built folk tunes into his work, but it was to represent a certain mood or event to his listeners in the mid-century Soviet Union, which was not only a significant source of comfort and hope to millions of repressed people suffering under the Soviets, but extraordinarily courageous, given that retribution could have been massive and fatal. There was no passing off involved, because the people would recognise the tunes. If we don’t know the folk tunes in 2022 it’s irrelevant if you’re talking about intent.
To be fair to Horner, other composers have used Shostakovich’s music without credit as well; Joe Hisaishi, Bill Conti and Benjamin Frankel, amongst others - but as a one off. Horner made somewhat more of a habit of it.
But don’t get me started…
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Posted: |
Dec 2, 2022 - 8:16 AM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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Horner didn't need vindication. Listening to the wide body of orchestral music reveals a few things:
1) Orchestral composers, by accident or intent, use in their own works passages, motifs, etc. used well by other composers. Take Shostakovich's 15th Symphony as an excellent example. The first movement incorporates haunting, foggy quotes of Rossini's William Tell Overture. I'm sure Shostakovich's intent was not just for atmosphere, but as the theme for one of the US's most successful programs of the time (The Lone Ranger), remarkably subversive on his part. There was, regardless, narrative reason and intent but not credit.
If you’re using Shostakovich to justify Horner, I’m afraid it’s a false equivalence. Very few people are going to hear the William Tell overture in the 15th symphony and not recognise it. It hardly needs to be credited. But how many people will hear the beautiful bitter sweet keening strings in “Clear and Present Danger” (around Greer’s Funeral) and identify it as part of the third movement of Shostakovich’s 5th symphony, more or less note-for-note? It’s the passing off of other people’s work as your own that makes the difference, morally if not legally.
On numerous occasions Shostakovich built folk tunes into his work, but it was to represent a certain mood or event to his listeners in the mid-century Soviet Union, which was not only a significant source of comfort and hope to millions of repressed people suffering under the Soviets, but extraordinarily courageous, given that retribution could have been massive and fatal. There was no passing off involved, because the people would recognise the tunes. If we don’t know the folk tunes in 2022 it’s irrelevant if you’re talking about intent.
To be fair to Horner, other composers have used Shostakovich’s music without credit as well; Joe Hisaishi, Bill Conti and Benjamin Frankel, amongst others - but as a one off. Horner made somewhat more of a habit of it.
But don’t get me started…
To my knowledge Horner openly acknowledged he was consciously or subconsciously influenced by the work of his peers.
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Posted: |
Dec 2, 2022 - 8:48 AM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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I appreciate and respect the strong feelings here, and the points made. But they are not the same as mine.
All art builds on what came before, of course. At some point only about six hundred years ago, perspective was first formalized in painting, and we would be foolish to condemn every artist to use perspective since as a plagiarist. Melodic ideas, compositional techniques, orchestrational devices, all of these are out there to be embellished and reinterpreted and repurposed by future composers.
And yet I find the “everybody does it” brand of whataboutism to be disingenuous. We can find fragments all over the place in the classical repertoire and shout (as some do) “That’s where Williams/Goldsmith/Herrmann/whomever ‘got’ that!” Some are likely lifts, some are probably coincidence, and reasonable people can disagree on this. But I have rarely heard lifts as direct (in both frequency, length of quote, and often pretty much identical orchestration) as I consistently do – over and over and over and over – in Horner’s work. (At least not among major film composers.) And yes, that includes the Sibelius reference above, in which you can hear a snippet of E.T. but nothing like the extended long-line use of (to use but one of dozens of examples) the Khachaturian Gayane ballet as the main title of Aliens.
Honestly, it’s like an accountant who’s found to have embezzled a million dollars from clients using as his defense “But Gary down the hall took a ream of paper home, and nobody cared!” It’s not really the same thing, is it?
So if one asks where can the line be drawn, to paraphrase John Oliver, my answer is “Well, somewhere!” You may draw it in a different place, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend that there isn’t vast wiggle room as to where that line can be drawn.
Yes, Horner was influenced by other composers, and validly so! I happen to really love this quote from John Williams from a couple of years ago: “People say they hear Wagner in Star Wars, and I can only think, It’s not because I put it there. Now, of course, I know that Wagner had a great influence on Korngold and all the early Hollywood composers. Wagner lives with us here—you can’t escape it. I have been in the big river swimming with all of them.” And of course he’s right! Art of any import lives with us.
But to me, that’s still not the same as taking the theme from Amarcord and plastering it on top of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Think of it this way: Edward Hopper’s painting “Nighthawks” is of course iconic, and has influenced many many artists of all kinds in the last eighty years. Some are drawn to his use of a single light source, others to the desolate quality, the apparent hopelessness of the people depicted, and on and on. And all of those things are there to be built upon (and have been) by other artists! But if somebody uses those techniques to create a painting of four people in an urban diner at night, well, that artist hasn’t used Hopper as an influence, he’s merely recreated it.
And if you say to me “Yes, I know, but it makes me happy, and I want to put it on my wall,” my answer is “Great!” But I hope you can see how I might consider it a shameless rip-off.
I am a television writer. Every week, thinking about some story problem, I’ll bring up to the other writers something similar from a great show of the past, and how it was handled. But when I bring it up, it’s never to say “Let’s do exactly what they did!” And if somebody suggests doing that, we’ll say “No, that’s what they already did.” Understanding the works that have come before is part of the job, but to me, knowing not to simply duplicate them is equally important. Even if it could work well again!
Of course, like my invented Hopper rip-off, if it works for you, that’s all that needs to be said. But I hardly think that invalidates the dismay others of us feel when an artist tries to pass off (inevitably without acknowledgment) an undisguised lift from some other artist as his own.
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But to me, that’s still not the same as taking the theme from Amarcord and plastering it on top of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
The HISTK issue is really my only problem with Horner's "borrowing" and I honestly love how he used Powerhouse (and, to a lesser extent Armacord), even if it was a rip off. There is no excusing trying to pass it off as his own though, when clearly it wasn't and that's hard for me to reconcile as a Horner fan. It's a bit of a conundrum in what was otherwise an exemplary career.
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This thread seems relevant to HISTK.
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=116353&forumID=1&archive=0
Make your own judgement with the evidence provided. This one has a chance of not being entirely Horner's fault.
That does seem to "legally" clear up the issue of Armacord but it doesn't change the fact that Horner knew what he was doing and it had to be changed at the last moment, nor does it really explain what happened with Powerhouse. If the names were added to the cue-sheet after the fact, it seems more like Horner AND Disney got caught with hands in the cookie jar and made amends, which is different than doing the right thing in the first place.
And, to be clear, none of this changes the fact that I adore the score and Horner's work.
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I appreciate and respect the strong feelings here, and the points made. But they are not the same as mine.
All art builds on what came before, of course. At some point only about six hundred years ago, perspective was first formalized in painting, and we would be foolish to condemn every artist to use perspective since as a plagiarist. Melodic ideas, compositional techniques, orchestrational devices, all of these are out there to be embellished and reinterpreted and repurposed by future composers.
And yet I find the “everybody does it” brand of whataboutism to be disingenuous. We can find fragments all over the place in the classical repertoire and shout (as some do) “That’s where Williams/Goldsmith/Herrmann/whomever ‘got’ that!” Some are likely lifts, some are probably coincidence, and reasonable people can disagree on this. But I have rarely heard lifts as direct (in both frequency, length of quote, and often pretty much identical orchestration) as I consistently do – over and over and over and over – in Horner’s work. (At least not among major film composers.) And yes, that includes the Sibelius reference above, in which you can hear a snippet of E.T. but nothing like the extended long-line use of (to use but one of dozens of examples) the Khachaturian Gayane ballet as the main title of Aliens.
Honestly, it’s like an accountant who’s found to have embezzled a million dollars from clients using as his defense “But Gary down the hall took a ream of paper home, and nobody cared!” It’s not really the same thing, is it?
So if one asks where can the line be drawn, to paraphrase John Oliver, my answer is “Well, somewhere!” You may draw it in a different place, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend that there isn’t vast wiggle room as to where that line can be drawn.
Yes, Horner was influenced by other composers, as validly so! I happen to really love this quote from John Williams from a couple of years ago: “People say they hear Wagner in Star Wars, and I can only think, It’s not because I put it there. Now, of course, I know that Wagner had a great influence on Korngold and all the early Hollywood composers. Wagner lives with us here—you can’t escape it. I have been in the big river swimming with all of them.” And of course he’s right! Art of any import lives with us.
But to me, that’s still not the same as taking the theme from Amarcord and plastering it on top of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Think of it this way: Edward Hopper’s painting “Nighthawks” is of course iconic, and has influenced many many artists of all kinds in the last eighty years. Some are drawn to his use of a single light source, others to the desolate quality, the apparent hopelessness of the people depicted, and on and on. And all of those things are there to be built upon (and have been) by other artists! But if somebody uses those techniques to create a painting of four people in an urban diner at night, well, that artist hasn’t used Hopper as an influence, he’s merely recreated it.
And if you say to me “Yes, I know, but it makes me happy, and I want to put it on my wall,” my answer is “Great!” But I hope you can see how I might consider it a shameless rip-off.
I am a television writer. Every week, thinking about some story problem, I’ll bring up to the other writers something similar from a great show of the past, and how it was handled. But when I bring it up, it’s never to say “Let’s do exactly what they did!” And if somebody suggests doing that, we’ll say “No, that’s what they already did.” Understanding the works that have come before is part of the job, but to me, knowing not to simply duplicate them is equally important. Even if it could work well again!
Of course, like my invented Hopper rip-off, if it works for you, that’s all that needs to be said. But I hardly think that invalidates the dismay others of us feel when an artist tries to pass off (inevitably without acknowledgment) an undisguised lift from some other artist as his own.
Expertly argued, Sir. Nuked the apologists from space*. Kudos
* Even if that wasn't the intent, still very nicely done.
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Posted: |
Dec 2, 2022 - 9:40 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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This is the topic that will NEVER die, at least not for as along as I live. Blame it on Solium for putting it in a Horner context, even if his video didn't have anything to do with that.
James Horner had a unique voice of his own; one that could be recognized within seconds. So he needs no defense. He's as original as it gets, and one of film music history's ultimate masters, no contest. He quoted sometimes, sure, and he was well aware of it. When I interviewed him in 2013, he himself talked about a "Brahmsian lullaby" when we talked about THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS.
But the collapse that I feel many film music fall into, is the be-all, end-all aspect of originality. If it isn't super original and something you've never heard before, it's not worth one's time. As it happens, I subscribe to the notion that musical pleasure can be derived from a number of things beyond originality. In fact, that's one of the criteria that I put least emphasis on. I did a thread on this very topic 21 years ago (somewhat marred by my student-heavy show-off knowledge at the time) that touches on this very thing:
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=1842&forumID=1&archive=1&pageID=1&r=206#bottom
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