Broadway composers who quote themselves

[Josh Freilich]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 11:05am

Not saying this is a bad thing, which it is NOT, but it's something I would like to bring up on these boards.

Richard Rodgers (I found this out last night: listen to "Come with Me" from Boys of Syracuse, and then listen to "Oklahoma" -- THEY'RE SO SIMILAR!!!)
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Alan Menken
William Finn (no matter what, he always puts in a staccato eighth-note figure in all of his shows)
Cole Porter
John Kander (listen to the end of "Thataway!" in Curtains, and see if that doesn't make you wanna go "The gun the gun the gun the gun the gun, both reached for the GUN!!!")
Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (they put one or more key changes in EVERY SINGLE SONG they wrote)
...well, almost everybody

Think of some guys!

[yankee_fan907]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 11:20am

First of all, what you mentioned would not be composers "quoting" themselves.

Secondly, within musicals, there are these things called themes where all the music is related because it is part of a work called a show.

Finally, each writer has their own unique style which usually can be heard by listeners.

[tazber]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 11:41am

I think he means when composers have similar sounding songs in different shows.
That being said, it's inevitable that each composer may recycle some of their own work unintentionally as it's their voice.
Actors frequently do similar things as do all artists.

[Link Larkin Wanabe]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 12:00pm

And then there is composers blatantly ripping off other composers, such as Stephen Schwartz ripping off Menken's music (and his own lyircs) from the cut Pocahontas song "If I Never Knew You" which IS the same song as "For Good" from Wicked. You could seriously just interchange those songs every other night and it would make no difference.

Akiva

[KQuill]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 12:06pm

Did anyone notice how in Company when Bobby sings "Joannne", it's the same interval as "Johanna" from Sweeney? Thought perhaps Sondheim was "quoting" himself?

[gumbo2]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 12:31pm

Yeah, the beginning of the song Time from A New Brain has the exact same opening piano sound as the beginning of Anytime from Elegies: A Song Cycle. They are literally identical.

There are a few piano things in Parade that sound very, very similar to things in The Last Five Years...and Jason Robert Brown just loves those block chords in general.

[[e-mail]]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 12:50pm

I don't know if he directly copies, but everything Frank Wildhorn sounds the same to me.

And since when does "quoting" include using key-changes? Just about every Broadway composer after 1960 tends to do that in most of their music.

[CastAlbumFan]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 1:07pm

If you're talking about referring to their own songs The Gershwins, Cole Porter and Gilbert and Sullivan often made sly digs at the songs they've composed. Listen to "Slap That Bass" on the CRAZY FOR YOU cast recording. George and Ira make a reference to their song "I Got Rhytym".

Updated On: 4/8/07 at 01:07 PM

[Josh Freilich]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 1:54pm

Each writer has its own unique style.

That's exactly what I'm trying to say. And CastAlbumFan, I couldn't have said it better myself. They have their own style, and they like to make sly digs at songs they wrote.

I should also bring up Boublil and Schonberg, because all their songs sound the same. I don't know why, but there were some parts in Miss Saigon that were unmistakably Les Miz-like.

[Fenchurch]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 2:44pm

I think there's a difference between a composer having a palette of sonorities from which they write their music (Sondheim has specific sonorities that he uses OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, which isn't to say he is bad, but even if I wasn't familiar with almost everything of his that's been recorded, I would still be able to pick something out that he'd written without having heard it before)

There are other composers that quote people other than themselves, either as homage or pastiche.

I don't necessarily think there's room for a value judgement here, although one could say that certain composers have shown that they have a VERY limited palette to choose from (listen to the end of Wildhorn's "Once upon a dream" and then to the end of "When I look at you") and that certainly says something, especially if they've been prolific.

[Jon]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 2:53pm

You are talking about self-plagiarism.

Jerry Herman: The refrains of IT TAKES A WOMAN and WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS.

Sondheim: the phrase "I am in love - hopelessly in love" from PASSION and "Here you want a bean? Have another bean..." from INTO THE WOODS.

[jg4892]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 2:54pm

linklarkin- those two songs do not sound the same...

[CastAlbumFan]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 2:59pm

Well, when we talk about self-plagiarism Jule Styne basically copied the "Witches Brew" number of HALLELUJAH, BABY! from FADE OUT, FADE IN's "Call Me Savage".

[TomMonster]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 4:48pm

Oh well, there are only 12 notes...some are bound to be repeated...

[defyingravity11]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 5:36pm

Sondheim with most of Passion and Into the Woods.

[Josh Freilich]

Posted: 4/9/07 at 8:30pm

Something Just Broke (Assassins) = Almost everything from Passion

[jv92]

Posted: 4/9/07 at 8:33pm

Sondheim's Merrily We Roll along has similarites in different spots to almost all of his stuff pre-'81. For example, the cacophony in "Hey Old Friend" sounds almost exactly the same as the cacophony of the friends shouting at Robert in "Side by Side by Side."

[Julian2]

Posted: 4/9/07 at 9:12pm

I don't know what phrase or song it was, but I was listening to a friend's recording of Merrily and there was something that sounded EXACTLY like "Art isn't easy!" from Sunday in the Park with George.

[jv92]

Posted: 4/9/07 at 9:23pm

We all know that Putting it Together is a variation on The Day Off from The Rumors Section to Finishing the Hat.
Updated On: 4/9/07 at 09:23 PM