Jim

Leonard Rosenman wrote music for the cartoon version of The lord of the Rings; some of which is repeated in one of the Star Trek series; can't remember which one now though!

Good morning boys.

Bobj

The music is not identical but has anyone noticed that Malcolm Arnold's score for Dunkirk (1958) and The Heroes of Telemark (1965) are very similar indeed.

Ascoyne D'Ascoyne

I don't know these films but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if what you say is true. Quite apart from the fact that Arnold had a very recognisable "voice" to his music the demands that the pressure of work must have placed upon him probably meant that he borrowed from his own work if inspiration was running a bit thin. This sort of borrowing was quite common in the 17 and18th centuries when composers (including Bach and Handel) writing "for the moment" rather than posterity often re-cycled their own (and, sometimes, other composers') works in order to meet a deadline. Arnold, writing 40 or more years ago, would have been blissfully unaware that old films would be, in years to come, recorded and stored in people's homes and that they would notice that he had fulfilled his commission by slightly dubious means!

Mozkiwi

If I might add to this thread... I haven't compared the two scores, and it could be because of the composer, Hans Zimmer... but The Gladiator and parts of Pirates of the Caribbean sound identical to me!

Marky B

I thought Arnold's music for The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness and The Heroes of Telemark were very much similiar.
Ta Ta
Marky B

I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas - how he got in my pyjamas,I'll never know

D Cairns

There's another phenomenon that leads to musical repetitions. Films are often given "temp scores" using existing film music, so that they can be previewed to audiences without awkward silences. Often the directore becomes so attached to the temporary music that nothing offered up by the composer can match it for him, so he uses the temporary version. ALIEN contains a couple of music cues from Jerry Goldsmith's earlier score for FREUD, and THE TRUMAN SHOW is scored entirely with extracts from earlier Philip Glass soundtracks. THREE KINGS is a bit of a hotch-potch also.
The very successful film composer James Horner has sometimes been accused of plagiarism, as in TITANIC where his score for the ship leaving doc was thought by some to closely resemble Goldsmith's score for the launching of the Enterprise in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.

Guenther

Telemark is certainly Malcolm Arnold's least inspried 1960s film score. The theme is basically the same as in Inn of the Sixth Happiness. Dunkirk has a similarity to the music he wrote for War in the Air.

Guenther

The Prisoner of Zenda
The Stewart Granger version uses the score from the Ronald Colman version.
Music by Alfred Newman adapted by Conrad Salinger for the 1952 version

Cape Fear
The remake has Elmer Bernstein adapting the music of Bernard Herrmann from the 1962 film.

Psycho
Danny Elfman and Steve Bartek adapting the music of Bernard Herrmann from the 1960 classic for Gus van Sant's film.

christoph404

While watching the entertaining " Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" with Sam Rockwell my ears pricked up to the strains of the John Barry main theme from "The Quiller Memorandum" while Rockwell is versed in the art of Cold War dirty tricks......interesting.

penfold

Having now heard it again, thanks to the Criterion release of 49th Parallel, The Volunteer reuses the main theme from A Canterbury Tale...

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

silverwhistle

Re: "temp scores", I think something like that happened with the score for Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. Although there is a fair amount of original music by Harry Gregson-Williams, there are also tracks lifted from Thirteenth Warrior, Hannibal, one of the Blade films, and some chunks of Bach. Sadly, they only used a couple of bits of genuine in-period music, one of which only turned up in the Director's Cut. But that pretty much sums up the film: for all the claims of "accuracy" by the makers, it was quite a farrago.

"Trust me, I'm a doctor...!"