Monday, June 12, 2006

Zimmer being sued

The prince of modern film scoring, German born Hans Zimmer is being sued by the Holst Foundation over claims that the Oscar-nominated score for Gladiator is a copy of the late Gustav Holst's famous "Planet Suite."

If the foundation win their claim for infringement of copyright they could make millions of dollars, because sales of the film's soundtrack have gone platinum. Despite Zimmer admitting on the album sleeve that he uses "the same language, the same vocabulary, if not the same syntax" as Holst, the music publishers who hold the copyright in Holst's works, J. Curwen & Sons have decided to take legal action.

A Curwen spokesman says, "After a considerable period of discussion between the two parties it has become necessary to ask for the assistance of the courts." The defense lawyer says, "Mr. Zimmer's work on Gladiator is world-renowned and is not in any sense a copy of Mars. Just listening to the two works is enough to tell any listener this claim has no merit."

As for me, I'm intimately familiar with both Holst's magnificent "The Planets: Mars, The Bringer of War" (as I listened to a lot of Classical music before embracing exclusively the music of film scores) and Gladiator which is Zimmer's magnum opus, (thus far) but I can say with certainty that while he has used all the instruments Holst composed for and has them playing as loudly and bombastically as Holst did, the tempo is completely different and is almost alien in difference. The case should be thrown out.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

What is the world coming to when some guy I never heard of is suing some other guy I never heard of over a piece of music I couldn't give a crap about. And to think there are people starving in Africa!!!

Major General Creedon said...

You HAVE heard of Hans Zimmer. You used to sneer at the many Zimmer CD's strewn about my desk when we worked together...

... No come to think of it: you sneered at Dutton for borrowing them.

Anonymous said...

Its his own fault, if he'd spent less time touching himself he'd have heard of both folks in question.
And, whilst its pretty obvious the case should be dismissed (Holst being dead since 1934, so the music 70+ years old), the obvious decision isn't always the one judges go for, what with their somewhat warped realities.

Unknown said...

I wasn't masturbating it was a sexually transmitted disease I contracted for which I had to apply a topical cream!!

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately as you well know Colonel , I was watching a documentary on film music the very day you reported this where Hans goes into great detail how he "Cribbed"(His words not mine)from Holsts The Planets for the Gladiator Waltz and then proceeded to demonstrate how he did it for the Camera!! Exhibit A I think.