Any movies forensic musicologists out there? I think I discovered a thematic reference

[UTUSN]

I lap up "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" any time it's crossing my way, which happened again a week or two ago, so it's fresh in my mind. Or as fresh as anything *can* be in *my* mind.

So today TCM ran "The Roman Spring of Mrs STONE," which I'd never seen and I let it run in the background.

About halfway through, a musical passage/fragment depicted the rising paranoia of an older lover getting overcome by suspicion over a younger love object, and it sounded VERY familiar.

After awhile of trying to place where I had heard something very similar before, I am fairly convinced that it was from Funny Thing, not one of the songs, more like an instrumental/mood passage, where the vestal virgins were doing their frenzy thing.

I have ZERO idea whether this is anything more than coincidence. It could be an inside-baseball reference or tribute; it could be screen composers linked somehow; it could be a sly reference to "Rome" or the underside of love in both features; or it could be plagiarism or NOTHING.

Sorry, I can write a single melodic line in C Major, laboring over it for hours, but not complicated swirls and things. So I'm sure this will go nowhere.

[UTUSN]

1. More bits

Roman Spring 1961; Funny Thing 1966. Too soon for a tribute type reference?

Richard ADDINSELL composer/former; SONDHEIM latter.



Some of the 40+ reviews of Spring in the IMDb waxed fairly lurid over the dissection of unequal love in the novela/movie. It's been covered, surely for centuries before PROUST's Remembrance of Things Past, but some of the comments were kind to Tennesee WILLIAMS and somewhat unkind to Ms LEIGH's real life (while praising her performance although somebody said the story was so similar to what she was going through in love and career that she wasn't acting), so how many lodging keys did Tennessee toss within or without a lace hankie over a balcony to some street love object?!1

[MilesColtrane]

2. I can only speculate, not having heard the music.

About halfway through, a musical passage/fragment depicted the rising paranoia of an older lover getting overcome by suspicion over a younger love object, and it sounded VERY familiar.

Movie and soundtrack composers are often asked to write something obvious or overt for certain scenes by the director.

Certain tonalities have been pegged with certain emotions after their repeated pairing in movies. (Major = lightness, joy Minor=pathos Whole Tone= trances, dreams Diminished= fear, paranoia)

It's possible that the similarity you hear may simply be a result of similar harmony and rhythmic devices being used by both composers.

After awhile of trying to place where I had heard something very similar before, I am fairly convinced that it was from Funny Thing, not one of the songs, more like an instrumental/mood passage, where the vestal virgins were doing their frenzy thing.

I have ZERO idea whether this is anything more than coincidence. It could be an inside-baseball reference or tribute; it could be screen composers linked somehow; it could be a sly reference to "Rome" or the underside of love in both features; or it could be plagiarism or NOTHING.

This is also possible. Both composers could be quoting a bit of a famous classical work as an homage.

From the clues you've supplied, some quotable possibilities that come to mind would be Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (you mention the vestal virgin frenzy and spring appears in the title of of the Helen Mirren movie)

Or, the music could be a snippet of something from Respighi's Roman trilogy (three famous symphonic poems- The Pines of Rome, The Fountains of Rome, and Roman Festivals)

Sondheim, Ken Thorne (who supplied some of A Funny Thing's incidental music), and Richard Addinsell would all be quite familiar with those famous pieces.


If you feel like pursuing this further Mrs. Stone is on YouTube in 8 parts.

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6IbMgCjZ40

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ97ro0GpFY&feature=related

etcetra...

If you can find the exact music for me to listen to, I may be able to identify it.

[UTUSN]

3. Thanks SO much for the insight. Aaron COPELAND was on a clip last night on

Classic Arts Showcase, talking about a critical scene in "The Heiress" with whassername (the "Melanie" from GWTW?) who was stood up in an elopement by a golddigger. Maestro COPELAND said that at the try-out of the movie before its release, the audiences LAUGHED and the movie honchos ran to him and begged/ordered him to compose something that would be the desired mood of desperation instead of the disastrous laughing. He did. The next clip played the scene with his mood music and it was commanding.


And this "The Roman Spring of Mrs STONE" is the original with Vivian LEIGH and whassisname Warren (Shirley's brother), not the remake with MIRREN.


Thanks again for the great points.