Hey, this movie’s soundtrack sounds like…

Please join on this entry and add your own discoveries. I intend to add to it as I think of new examples – and perhaps gussy up the writing a bit too.

This is music geek stuff so it will either generate nothing, dead silence… or it may end up being something that search engines send a lot of music geeks to.

It is not uncommon to hear classical music in a movie. However, beyond identifying Beethoven or, more frequently – a Russian, like Stravinsky in a soundtrack, it is more fun to recognize a sound cue that is reminiscent of something else.

It's no accident when it happens and might be for any number of reasons.

1. The guys writing this stuff, the Williams, Korngolds, Hermanns, Newmans – they all know, (or knew) music as well as anyone and so are having musical fun with the job.
   
2. When a movie is edited, temporary music is used to demonstrate the mood and final effect desired. Frequently, to the chagrin of many composers, the director falls in love with the temp score and thus asks for, "Something that sounds just like this, but different…"
   
3. Face it, there are only so many different ways to score an ominous, or exciting, or (fill in the blank) scene – given a certain type of music. Eventually, something is going to sound like something else.
   

For people that aren't familiar with "classical music", but who did like a soundtrack score, this is a great way to get turned on to new (old) music.

I'm going to start a list with some easy ones. Please add in the comments and I'll add to the list.

Click on the links in the first example to actually hear the sections. I'll start with three easy ones.

Frequently, Gustav Holst's The Planets is used in a movie. Even though it wasn't that originally, it does make for great movie music. The following however is just a bit of a sound alike. Both scores are "original":

THE PLANETS (Mars, Bringer of War) - Gustav Holst


STAR WARS (Death Star explodes) - John Williams

1. Basket Chase from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ballet of the Chicks from Pictures at an exhibition. I'm not picking on John Williams. He just writes so many scores in the classic style that it's inevitable his name will come up frequently. Mussorgsky is also frequently mimicked in film scores.

2. Erich Korngold "hinting at" Puccini's Tosca. I have always thought that Tosca (and most of Puccini's other operas) are the ultimate Cinematic experience. Even though they aren't cinema, the tenets of cinema are purely there. I just learned that Korngold said the same thing, which makes me happy. If one is to have a thought that is not original, it is at least nice to have it validated positively. Korngold was a serious classical composer so -- he sometimes mimicked himself! I hear hints of Puccini in a lot of what Korngold does. A specific is the Adventures of Robin Hood's "Procession sequence" and the morning mass in the first act of Tosca.
   

About Korngold, I should note - he was very (practically) a contemporary of Puccini and was called by some, "the Puccini of Austria" - so I hesitate to use the word 'mimic' with him.

I know there are some music fans/movie fans that read this so ... get to work. I want Mahler references, I want obscure stuff!

And finally - I'll end with this clip... what is this music from?
Can you picture it? Is it a Hitchcock film? or maybe a Scorsese movie?