Surprisingly, I haven't yet seen a review of this score that mentions the fact that the four-note clarinet motif that launches the album is a direct quotation from the opening tune (played, you guessed it, by the clarinet) of Copland's 'Appalachian Spring'. In a different key, but intervalically identical.

Williams is a wonderful and gifted composer whose work I've followed and loved for 36 years now, but we're being dishonest if we don't acknowledge the debt he owes to the giants whose shoulders he stands on.