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Justin! I disagree about Brahms. Some of his music is a little meandering, but then again some of his other stuff grabs you by the balls! I'm tempted to post a youtube video to back me up!
I recognise Williams' obvious sources of inspiration, but I can't say that the entire Star Wars score is derived from older works. The obvious bit is the end of Mars, and I'm sure lots of other bits of the score are inspired by this piece. But, some of the more abstract pieces like 'Attacking a star fleet', and 'The Asteroid Field' (think thats the one) don't sound particularly like anything that's been written before. (Ok, may be in the same/similar style as the golden age composers, but to me that's definitely a good thing).
I agree that Hermann, and Newman wrote some incredibly emotional, and incredibly competent music. For me, Williams is a bit of a mixed bag of a composer. Some of his stuff is as good as the great film composers (imo) but a lot of it isn't. However, the fact that he wrote the Star Wars score, ET, close encounters proves to me at least, that he is an exceptionally talented composer.
Btw, if you like 'golden age' composers, you should listen to some of Georges Auric's stuff and definitely listen to the score for on the waterfront.
PS. if you're going to talk about film composers ripping off other works, have you heard that podcast about James Horner? He actually lifts whole passages, mainly from Prokofiev it seems.
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