You should realize that borrowing musical ideas from others has been happening all the time. In the Middle Ages and even in Renaissance it was very common, sometimes even welcome, to "steal" others' themes and use them in your own compositions. In Classicism and Romantism every composer was learning from his predeccesors, sometimes borrowing musical ideas from traditional music. Smetana in his symphonic poem Vltava used the Jewish song Hatikvah, and it became worldly famous and most favourite composition of him. John Williams used Hatikvah in his score for Munich as well.

So, I think every composer who wants to compose listenable classical music (you know what I mean has to more or less steal from others. John Williams became a legend of the film music, well, good for him. And for us? I think that his most important goal is to bring people to listening to classical music. And he was successful with me. In my teenager years I listened to his scores a lot and he really brought me to classical music .

> As much as I like Mr. Williams' music (and I have 47 of his CDs), he steal
> far too much from other composers. I am trying to assimilate a collection
> of all the things he has stolen from. So far I have Dvorak's "New
> World" Symphony, Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet," Sibelius'
> "Finaldnia," Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition,"
> "The Rite of Spring" and "The Firebird" by Stravinsky,
> Korngold's theme to "King's Row," Persichetti's 6th symphony,
> Neverending Story, "Death and Transfiguration" by Strauss, and
> Holst's "The Planets." Does anybody out there know of any more
> rip-offs? If you have some more, please email me at Pudgevader@aol.com
> or chat via AIM, my screen name is Composer111285.