How Many Borrowed Melodies Can You Identify?
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    OK... going through the Antiphonale 1912 looking for a Magnificat, and found this. Except for one different note, the Hymn Hominus Superne Conditor is the first line of Beethovens 9th.

    (see antiphonale 1912, pg 159
  • don roy
    Posts: 306
    that may not be a concious ripoff. after all the first few notes of regina caeli (the simple chant) found their way into the opening of the song "it had to be you".
  • awruff
    Posts: 94
    Plus we'd have to look up what version of the chant hymn Beethoven knew - it could have been pretty far from the reform version of 1912.
    awr
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    o well, i don't care for beethoven... i guess you realized this by now. there are only 12 tones... what is the liklihood we are going to find a reappearing of a sequential arrangement of notes somewhere else?!
  • Hugh
    Posts: 198
    I think it pales in comparison with the shameless plagiarising of the first two lines of the immortal theme to the "Brady Bunch" in the vastly inferior "Here I Am Lord".
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    hahahahahaha.... i don't care for the brady bunch either ... now i will have to go listen to their theme song...

    hey, some of those theme songs in the first half of the 20th century had some meat to them...

    my favorite is gilligans island, for sure.

    of course, we all know that 'gather us in' is a rip off of the edmund fitzgerald...

    and John Williams ripped off Holst for his movie bound space music tracks...

    where are the other RO's?
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 756
    Time was when composers were happy to make use of others' ideas and to have theirs used. Modern notions of intellectual property have changed our attitude to that kind of thing. I don't believe this improves the musical universe (though it does earn some people who aren't composers large sums of money).
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    By modern, I think you mean old fashioned. IP has seen its days already. I hope we can return to a time when composers freely borrowed and shared. The mistake called IP ended up forcing a kind of musical innovation that is completely alien to the art of composition, and hence, for the first time in human history, we saw the creation of scads of new music generated after international copyright that was innovative to point of absurdity: that it broke from the whole of tradition in every single respect and the larger the break the better to the point that anything was considered music. Borrowing became illegal, so this is probably what one might expect but it pretty well killed public interest in serious music.

    Word limit on Mr. Z's response: 200.
  • RobertRobert
    Posts: 343
    "Camptown Races" sounds a bit like the beginning of the communion "Unus Militum"... but in this case the composition of the popular song predates (by a few years) the composition of the chant!
  • Donnaswan
    Posts: 585
    And just think how many composers borrowed from themselves!!!! :)

    Donna
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    If they didn't....they would not sound like themselves, no?
  • bgeorge77
    Posts: 190
    Oh When the Saints = In paradisum (Requiem)
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    wow... that is too funny (and a little scarry) bgeorge.
  • bgeorge77
    Posts: 190
    Yeah, I think it's kinda neat, Oh When the Saints is the song that New Orleans people play when they're taking the body to the grave, in Jazz Funeral style. Given New Orleans' Catholic history, and given that In Paradisum serves the exact same function, I feel it's probably not a coincidence that the melodies are similar.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    You are probably right on the dime there! A perfect rip off.
  • bgeorge77
    Posts: 190
    Hmmm... rip off? I like to think of it as a homage. Or a parody, in the best sense of the term.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Hmmm

    Homage is a positive slant

    Do yo really mean parody?

    Main Entry: 1par·o·dy
    Pronunciation: \ˈper-ə-dē, ˈpa-rə-\
    Function: noun
    Inflected Form(s): plural par·o·dies
    Etymology: Latin parodia, from Greek parōidia, from para- + aidein to sing — more at ode
    Date: 1598
    1 : a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule
    2 : a feeble or ridiculous imitation
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Altered name of thread to be more favorable toward "borrowing".
  • bgeorge77
    Posts: 190
    I mean parody in the sense of "parody mass", wherein bits and pieces of one song are reformulated for another.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    You can keep the whole tune exactly the same in every note, and still change it greatly. Exhibit A: "With My Love on the Road" -- a tune first published in Joyce's Old Irish Folk Music and Songs in 1909, but a bit older than that -- as played in a 1964 accordion set, over at the British Library. It was later used as a hymn tune under a quite different name.

    http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=025M-C0903X0177XX-1400V0.xml

    I'm sure you'll recognize it quickly. Nothing is different and everything is different. :)
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,217
    At last count, IIRC, Latin Liturgy Ass'n had about 80 "borrowings" of the theme from the Dies Irae. Disney used it in the Lion King movie when the daddy-lion was about to assume room temperature (1st violins...)

    And of course, Rachmaninoff used it a bunch.
  • Hugh
    Posts: 198
    I reckon "The X-Files" purloined its theme from the Communio "Per Signum Crucis" at "libera" : la mi re mi sol mi.

    Not complaining this time - it was a useful pedagogical device for my choirs back in those days.
  • marajoymarajoy
    Posts: 781
    Kyrie (Missa de Angelis) = I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    Wow... That is really a significant 'lift' of the source, Marajoy.
  • Mr. Z
    Posts: 159
    From the pen of Jeffery Tucker:

    Word limit on Mr. Z's response: 200.


    I only need two.

    You're daft! ;-()
  • Mr. Z
    Posts: 159
    " Sing of the Lord's Goodness" by Ernest Sands - it sounds just like "Take Five" by Paul Desmond - recorded by Dave Brubeck of course.
    Thanked by 1KARU27
  • Steve CollinsSteve Collins
    Posts: 1,021
    Although the entire piece borrows thematic material, Peloquin's "Gloria of the Bells" is a take on the Gloria VIII "de Angelis". But the "Amen" is note for note. It took me some time to hear it because the rhythmic style of Peloquin's version pretty much obliterates the flow of the original chant
  • mcaustin60
    Posts: 1
    OK here's one for you. "In Christ Alone" for the longest time sounded so familiar, then I realized it was Bill Joel's "And So it Goes" with the melodies sometimes moved by a third.
    Thanked by 1Nathan_the_Organist
  • OlivierOlivier
    Posts: 58
    When my children were younger, we used to occasionally participate in a local homeschoolers' co-op, which was made up mostly of evangelical protestants. One day, as soon as we were in the car leaving, my then-eight-year-old let loose her disgust with a song her group had been made to sing, Jesus Loves the Little Children, not for its lyrics but for the tune being "a total rip-off" of God Save Ireland. Turns out they are both set to the tune of a Union song from the American Civil War. I had never noticed the similarity!
  • CatherineS
    Posts: 690
    We joke that Exaltabo te (offertory for 11th week post pentecost) reminds us of the Jetson's theme.
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    De Profundis = Far over the misty mountain, from The Lord of the Rings' knock-off
  • Nathan_the_Organist
    Posts: 434
    mcaustin60, that's hysterical!
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Is the My Little Pony tune credited for the modern Mass which is based on it?

  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    Paul Simon consciously lifted his American Tune from the chorale associated most strongly with O Sacred Head.
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