I was listening to some excerpts from John Williams' apparently incredible score to FAR AND AWAY when I stumbled upon the 30-second preview of the Enya song at the end of that CD, "Book of Days". And I just sat breathless. I was hearing the theme from TITANIC.

Now, I might be coming late on this debate, and it might have been raised before (if so, I'm thoroughly sorry), but James Horner's theme to TITANIC is sensibly the same melodic line as Enya's "Book of Days".

I just couldn't believe it.

Any thoughts?

Horner not only reprises most of his soundtracks from the past 5 years, he also made sure to take Book of Days and simply re-arrange the melody a bit. Stylistically it's similar. Melodically even more so. The thing where it says "Music composed and conducted by James Horner" should also read "Theme composed by Enya".

There's no doubt about it.
EVERY composer imitates to some extent, or produces homages to another composer, but Horner (and I LOVE his music!) STEALS!

I have Book of Days and I'm going to go back now and listen to it to see how close the crib is, but it wouldn't surprise me in advance if it is indeed a crib. How Horner keeps his career going with all this theft is a mystery. Or rather, now I understand how Horner keeps his career going.

There is a passage on film music in Jerry Lewis' book The Total Filmmaker. Jerry uses temp tracks and tells the composer, "I want this music." His 'composer' has to mimic the thing just to the edge of where the copyright people would come down on him for stealing.

Horner is this kind of guy, an arranger really, but one who also makes the director feel good by allowing him to skip the step where the director has to say turn on the gas, copy this stuff. Horner shows up and the director knows he'll get the sound he can trust, the dirty deed is silently done, and the director never had to say anything.

Horner is a musical hitman, a musical concentration camp guard turning the tap in such a way that the overseers can say, "I didn't know what he was doing." Meanwhile, Enya is out all the royalties that Horner and Celine Dion made by plagerizing/popularizing her sound in a major hit film. People hearing Enya for the first time probably go, that sounds like Titanic.

Horner's been thieving for years, but c'mon he does it so well!!

More power to ye!

I also listened to Enya far before Titanic, and after hearing the music used in the trailers, I first thought to myself, "Oh, that's another John Beal 'interpretation'. Horner's got a year to write this score, he's GOTTA come up with something original!" Cut to December 18th, 1997. First cue: Aw, man! Bagpipes AGAIN?!?

Track 2: Oh, there's The Spitfire Grill.

Track 3: Holy **** , it's ****ing Enya! That wasn't BEAL, it was HORNER! He's claiming he wrote that!

And so on and so on..........

NP- TPM Ultimate

quote:

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
Still, if you listen to Horner's The Devil's Own score, composed before Titanic I believe, you will find a lot of the same Irish/Celtic sounding approach there as well.

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Ummm,
Just because its Irish sounding music doesn't mean it is ripping off Enya. Celtic music has existed for hundreds of years. It's traditional and very fitting. I mean, think about it. Titanic was built by the Irish, hence the Celtic sound. The reason why he chose an Enyaish sound was because her new-ageish sound was in style at that time, and she had just released a new album a year before. Also, Braveheart was about the Scottish, hence the Celtic sound. And Devil's Own? Well...you see my point. You can't just associate any Celtic music with a single artits. Especialy because of its historical significance.

I just wanted to say that I thought The Devil's Own was a better score (though, the theme is almost too good to be original---that's me the pessimist writing).

Shaun

Oh, and Rocco, thanks for offering up the whole story of Horner getting hired--so I guess it is true after all. Horner's an ambulance chasing brown nose. See, I did it again, I just can't seem to give this guy a break.