Fargo and Mahler - 'original' soundtrack rip-off
Jeff Russo's music score for the second episode of the second series of Fargo stole a fair chunk of material from the opening bars of Mahler's 2nd Symphony. The first half of the music was used again in episode 4.
Phrase by phrase comparison from 1:06
In an interview with SlashFilm, the series creator Noah Hawley admits to having sent the composer lots of Mahler cues as a reference:
"I shared a lot of Mahler cues, concertos and compositions with the composer because it felt like in a way the Germanic-ness of the Gerhardts"
http://www.slashfilm.com/noah-hawley-fargo-season-2-interview/
Then in a Reddit IAMA, composer Jeff Russo was asked repeatedly about his favourite classical composers (Beethoven, Bach, no mention of Mahler) the inspiration behind the music of Fargo Season 2 (the characters and the mood apparently - no mention of lifting wholesale from Mahler).
As a reddit user recently wrote about it on the /classicalmusic subreddit:
"he should either make his own music inspired by the Mahler or they should just use Mahler, I get that composers for TV/Film have a time limit but you really cant call what they are using an "original score"
Phrase by phrase comparison from 1:06
In an interview with SlashFilm, the series creator Noah Hawley admits to having sent the composer lots of Mahler cues as a reference:
"I shared a lot of Mahler cues, concertos and compositions with the composer because it felt like in a way the Germanic-ness of the Gerhardts"
http://www.slashfilm.com/noah-hawley-fargo-season-2-interview/
Then in a Reddit IAMA, composer Jeff Russo was asked repeatedly about his favourite classical composers (Beethoven, Bach, no mention of Mahler) the inspiration behind the music of Fargo Season 2 (the characters and the mood apparently - no mention of lifting wholesale from Mahler).
As a reddit user recently wrote about it on the /classicalmusic subreddit:
"he should either make his own music inspired by the Mahler or they should just use Mahler, I get that composers for TV/Film have a time limit but you really cant call what they are using an "original score"
It's not a 'rip-off'. This is how classical music has worked for the last hundred years. See Berio's Sinfonia, for example, where the third movement is heavily modelled on the third movement of Mahler's second symphony. Mahler himself quoted from Wagner - see the use of motifs from Tristan und Isolde in the fifth symphony, for instance. Or, for that matter, see the use of Rossini in Shostakovich's fifteenth symphony.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't 'stealing'. The beginning of the Resurrection symphony is so well known, so recognisable, that they're assuming that at least some of the viewers will recognise it. No composer with half a brain would imagine that they could possibly get away with passing off Mahler's music as their own.
I'm sorry, but I totally disagree. Yes, classical composers have quoted / ripped off each other since the dawn of time. Or music. Or whatever. Yes, Mahler's 1st starts out like Beethoven's Ninth. Yes, Mahler also borrowed from his contemporary Bruckna. Blah blah blah.
DeleteBut to put film and television composers in the same category as classical masters is a little misguided. This isn't classical music - this is non-diegetic film music that has to be created in very short time.
Your assertion that this isn't stealing, and that no composer with half a brain would imagine they can possibly get away with it is also wrong. Stealing from classical composers for film scores is rampant, and they CAN expect that most of the audience won't know. They're not doing knowing quotes because they're expecting an audience in 2015 is well-versed in the Viennese school of composition.
Was John Williams expecting the audience to know about Korngold's work, and this was somehow adding an extra layer of meaning? No, he was hoping to hell no one realised he'd lifted the themes directly.
https://youtu.be/V47enEvsafQ
Ennio Moricone, Bernard Herrmann... etc. They've all done it. Stop crying. And we've got more videos coming on the same topic, so feel free to watch free videos elsewhere.
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ReplyDeleteFor Unknown:
ReplyDeleteA composer does what he wants. If you disagree, fuck off