> I believe James Horner is a great film composer. In fact he's one of my
> favorites, second only to John Williams. Then again I've only hear his
> older scores such as The Wrath of Kahn and Willow . On the other hand,
> I agree with the guy a few posts back: EVERYBODY STEALS STUFF! Also,
> although I love movie music as a passion, it is generally not created to
> be a singular entity or to be totally original; if a composer thinks that
> a peice of music he wrote five years ago for another film will fit
> perfectly in a new one, then by all means, let him put it in; however, I
> agree that the composer shouldn't use this method extensively.
> As for the thematic thing, they're both good at writing themes and
> underscore, but I generally think John Williams is just a little bit
> better at both. If you listen to The Wrath of Kahn and compair it to
> The Empire Strikes Back , you will see that The Empire Strikes Back has
> much more variety in its score.
> On a histroical note, the reason the original score for Star Wars sounds
> like Dvorak and Holst is because George Lucas was originally intending to
> create a soundtrack of pre-existing works, but then Spielburg happened
> along and suggested John Williams. Instead of letting the pre-fabricated
> score go to waste, Williams based much of his original score of the other
> material (and we all see what a fantastic finished product it was (no
> sarcasm)).
> And to conclude, weren't we supposed to be talking about how Episode V is
> better than Episode IV, not how Williams is better than Horner and vise
> versa?

Actually, I'd say that John Williams has probably stolen more music than James Horner. The Star Wars Theme is virtually identical to the music from the old Hollywood movie "King's Row", 1942, with music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Also, I could never get over the similarity that the much-celebrated "Imperial March" bears to Chopin's Piano Sonata No 2 in B flat minor, "Marche Funebre" - in the public domain, I believe. But the Vader music is still unoriginal as it's just a simple reworking/variation on the original Chopin melody.