Egregious indeed. One time after a meeting I was attending ended I started talking about the score to Star Wars, and a guy looked at me and went, "T'cha, it's a great score. It has to be considering it's basically stolen from Stravinsky." I looked at him funny and said it wasn't, then he told me the next time we met to bring the score and he would show me where it was copied from Holst and Stravinsky. I did, but he didn't prove anything other than his astounding ability to waste my time. All of his arguments were vacuous and impotent, because they could be used against any work regardless of quality. My counter argument dealt with how Williams may have been inspired by those works, but he clearly put his own spin on it.
I love his description of what the main title symbolizes. Basically he has an open fifth, which symbolizes reaching up toward a goal, then the descending triplet which is gathering strength for a second try, and then the triumphant lift to the octave above the first note, symbolizing victory. Then the phrase is repeated as an assurance of achievement. It's a stroke of genius, in my opinion, because it reflects so many aspects of the two trilogies and can be applied to many situations and scenarios, big or small, such as the following: Luke destroyed the Death Star, then was beaten by Darth Vader, but then he overcame that and redeemed his father, which saved the galaxy from tyranny and oppression because if he hadn't reached out to Vader, he probably would never have killed the Emperor.
My respect for that score is part of the reason I love to arrange parts of it for the piano, my chosen instrument. In fact, I recently completed work on The Throne Room/End Titles and will be posting the sheet music as soon as I finish adding the dynamic markings: [link]
Will Anderson always astounds me, because I listen for reused tracks in TV shows. They're used all the time in many shows, but every episode of MLP has a different score, and the motifs for each character actually have some variation that seems to parallel their character growth. The one for Twilight Sparkle for instance actually changed quite a bit between the first and second season, and I can't wait to see what he does with it for the third.
I love his description of what the main title symbolizes. Basically he has an open fifth, which symbolizes reaching up toward a goal, then the descending triplet which is gathering strength for a second try, and then the triumphant lift to the octave above the first note, symbolizing victory. Then the phrase is repeated as an assurance of achievement. It's a stroke of genius, in my opinion, because it reflects so many aspects of the two trilogies and can be applied to many situations and scenarios, big or small, such as the following: Luke destroyed the Death Star, then was beaten by Darth Vader, but then he overcame that and redeemed his father, which saved the galaxy from tyranny and oppression because if he hadn't reached out to Vader, he probably would never have killed the Emperor.
My respect for that score is part of the reason I love to arrange parts of it for the piano, my chosen instrument. In fact, I recently completed work on The Throne Room/End Titles and will be posting the sheet music as soon as I finish adding the dynamic markings: [link]
Will Anderson always astounds me, because I listen for reused tracks in TV shows. They're used all the time in many shows, but every episode of MLP has a different score, and the motifs for each character actually have some variation that seems to parallel their character growth. The one for Twilight Sparkle for instance actually changed quite a bit between the first and second season, and I can't wait to see what he does with it for the third.