[Nick Zwar]

Of course to a large degree the evaluation of originality is a matter of knowledge on the listener side. The evaluation of any piece of art, music or not, depends to a large degree on the knowledge of the listener. That’s why those who write professionally about it should have some substantial background knowledge. You cannot evaluate or appraise art without contextual knowledge.

I think originality is very important, I think that’s obvious. But I also think that “originality” is often misunderstood, especially when it comes to film music forums. People hear a snippet of a melody or theme from something else, or hear that a composer repeats certain elements he has used before, and dismiss a work as “unoriginal”. But “originality” is not a holy grail per se, and “originality” does not mean that every note must be new, never been used before, and every theme unprecedented. That would be ridiculous. Motives, ideas, concepts can and should be recycled and re-worked, originality is not about only using materials no one has ever used before, it’s what you build with them that matters.

A film score can borrow. A film score can recycle motifs, echo melodies, re-use parts and patterns and whatnot. In some sense, music works like a language, and languages thrive on shared words, sentences, and building blocks. If you’d dismiss every novel as unoriginal because it contains the sentence “he said” your shelf would be pretty empty. What matters is not that ever note is “original”, but what the composer builds with them. I love Jerry Fielding’s STRAW DOGS, which is obviously highly influenced by Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. Jerry Fielding freely acknowledged that (would be hard to deny though), but that doesn’t mean STRAW DOGS isn’t an original composition. It is. It’s not a rip-off or plagiarism, it is an original film score that used ideas and techniques from a classical (theatrical) piece of music as a basis for its concept. That is still original.