Is it me?

[Alan Howe]

I was wondering whether any friends suffer from the same (musical!) problem as me, i.e. when listening to a particular composition, hearing an apparent reference to another piece of music which nobody else seems ever to have commented on? Example: has anyone ever spotted an apparent appearance of Till Eulenspiegel in the finale of Gernsheim 4? Or is it me? 

[JimL]

I'm always finding stuff like that, albeit not always verbatim quotes.  For instance, after finally picking up the Taubert/Rosenhain CD from Hyperion the parallels between the ends of the first movements of the Rosenhain and Anton Rubinstein's PC 1 are glaringly evident to me (solo clarinet, surprise final fortissimo - not exact, but I wouldn't be surprised if Rubi was familiar with the Rosenhain.)

[FBerwald]

I think I have already pointed this out before.
Kabalevsky Piano Concerto No. 3 - Second movement (II. Andante con moto) sounds exactly the same as Dvoraks famous Humoresque No 7 in G Flat Major - second (Piu lento) section. Anyone else notice the similarity?

[TerraEpon]

I recently listend to Khachaturian's 2nd Symphony and I swear there was a bit that sounded straight out of a Herrmann score -- Vertigo I believe. of course, the Khachaturian was written first...

[Mark Thomas]

No it's not just you, Alan. I suppose that some similarities are deliberately placed there by composers, more are the unconscious recall in one composer's score of something he heard, or read, by another and which impressed itself upon his subconscious, and most are pure chance - a function of the fact that composers writing contemporaneously are subject to the same influences, writing within the same artistic aesthetic.

My two examples: I hear the melodic echoes of "The Blue Danube" in a couple of places in the scherzo movement of Rufinatscha's Sixth and there's an almost direct quote (melody, harmony, orchestration) in the slow movement of Tchaikovsky's Fifth of a passage in the corresponding movement in Raff's Tenth. I offer no explanations in either case....

[John H White]

I can certainly detect an affinity between the Scherzo of Spohr's 5th symphony and the late Victorian Music Hall song, "Two lovely black eyes". Maybe the writer of the latter piece had heard a performance of the Spohr symphony many years earlier at , say, the Crystal Palace, then one of London's principle concert venues.
   My transcriptions of both these works can be found on the Noteworthy Scriptorium.

[Alan Howe]

...and there's an almost direct quote (melody, harmony, orchestration) in the slow movement of Tchaikovsky's Fifth of a passage in the corresponding movement in Raff's Tenth. I offer no explanations in either case....

That's grand larceny, surely?

[eschiss1]

It's probably nothing, but the end of the third movement of Steinberg's 1st string quartet in A major (1907) (available in recording and parts on IMSLP) sounds for ... 30 seconds? more?... not quite sure... very similar to an almost corresponding moment (give or take orchestration!) in a symphony written by Nicolai Myaskovsky (symphony no.2, op.11, C-sharp minor) written a few years later- except for key, and the fact that the Myaskovsky follows the extended and elaborated cadential passage with a gradual increase in tempo attacca into his finale (a section that anticipates a theme and themelet prominent in the latter.) Myaskovsky knew Steinberg's music, or at least he did awhile later when he arranged several Steinberg works (symphony no.3, a tone-poem, at least) for piano 4-hands I think, and when he dedicated his own 11th symphony to the other composer.  No idea if he knew Steinberg's quartet, though.

Another example- Schmidt's 4th symphony, an important cello melody (main slow section, slow 'movement' if you like, main theme) - and an earlier work by Hans von Bülow - was discussed without a firm conclusion in this forum awhile back...

[Mark Thomas]

Alan wrote:

That's grand larceny, surely?

On Raff's behalf, I'd rather remember that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

[chill319]

When I first encountered Mahler, I was put off by the prominence of phrases or periods that sounded like quotes of earlier composers. Case in point: I just couldn't understand why in a monumental work like the first movement of symphony 8, the composer would quote the maudlin "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" tune from Chopin's opus 66. The fault, of course. was in my ears, not in Mahler's (or Chopin's). Still, the resemblance posed a barrier to proper listening.

Schubert's quotes in D.944 of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" finale, to the contrary, never presented any such barrier to me. Probably for the same reason that Clementi's overt but subtle uses of "God Save the Queen" in his symphony 3 strike me as simply brilliant.

[jimmosk]

May I (not so) humbly present the all-time grand champion at this (disallowing PDQ Bach and the other comedians): José Alberto Kaplan. http://www.cchla.ufpb.br/compomus/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66:cd-jose-alberto-kaplan-obras-orquestrais-patrocinado-pelo-fic-governo-da-paraiba&catid=14:cdsregistros-de-audio&Itemid=10

Just listen to his Piano Concerto!  Or his Abertura Festiva! (you can hear them on that page)

Does anyone happen to know the story behind these pieces? For instance, has JAK himself written an artistic statement about them?

-J

--
Jim Moskowitz
The Unknown Composers Page: http://kith.org/jimmosk/TOC.html
My latest list of unusual classical CDs for auction: http://tinyurl.com/jimsCDs

[TerraEpon]

I dunno recognize anything in a quick scan of Abertura Festiva (which using Google Translate he seems to say is a fantasy on pre-existing themes, with transformed motifs or some such)....but the PC, wow. Almost sounds like the type of knock off one would hear in a cartoon, just enough to be legal but close enough to be obvious. And all three movements too!

[jimmosk]

The overture's eerie precedent is Copland's El Salón México.  Still haven't recognized anything familiar about the violin concerto though.

[dafrieze]

I don't remember the Chopin tune in the Mahler Eighth (I've even sung in the latter piece - I'm one of 200 people in the chorus on the Ozawa recording), but I can't hear the beginning of the final movement of the Mahler Third without thinking of "I'll Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places." 

[eschiss1]

I don't remember the Chopin tune in the Mahler Eighth (I've even sung in the latter piece - I'm one of 200 people in the chorus on the Ozawa recording), but I can't hear the beginning of the final movement of the Mahler Third without thinking of "I'll Be Seeing You in All the Old Familiar Places."

Usually just makes me think of Beethoven op.135/iii.
To add one more example, Medtner wrote a piano sonata in C minor, "Skazka-Sonata" (Folktale-sonata is one possible translation; not Fairytale, though, please), his op.25/1 in C minor, around 1910-11. The second of the three sections opens with a melody in E-flat - Bes G... As Bes Es which may "remind" a lot of people, for its first four notes especially and allowing for the different rhythm, of a famous tune in the same key from Rachmaninoff's Paganini Variations (written, of course, several decades later. The two composers were very good friends, of course.) (It reminded my father, though, of a popular tune from around the time the Medtner was written... can't remember the name offhand unfortunately!)

(It is btw dedicated to Alexander Goedicke, whose edition of the score it is that is uploaded to IMSLP.) Anyhow!