It’s been over three years since I last opined here. It is troubling to think about how much time has passed, since I don’t think I’ve been particularly productive as a musician since then. In that time, I’ve written essentially just two pieces and who knows how many 8-bar phrases of vapid melody that will never make it farther than the inside pages of my sketchbook. The first piece was an andante for horn and piano, which may be my only mature work at this point, and the second exists more as a short suite: incidental music for a small play performed in Palo Alto....

The No. 3 (C-minor) etude from Rachmaninoff’s first set of Études-Tableaux, Op. 33 was omitted from the original publication and released posthumously. I haven’t read anything that explains why, but it probably has something to do with one of its melodies making an appearance in his fourth piano concerto, written some fifteen years later. I guess it’s only expected that, as a composer, you would eventually come to realize that a particular figure might shine a little brighter in a different setting....

There’s something about a composer’s fifth. Beethoven, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius. All of their fifth symphonies have become somewhat defining in their legacy as composers and are the pieces we’re told to approach first if not yet familiar with their music. They remain some of the most performed symphonies in the repertoire, and they all boast daunting, large-scale forms. The other day, I was happy to find that I’m not the only one who feels this way....

Sergei Rachmaninoff is remembered for the Paganini rhapsody, the two middle concertos, a prelude in C-sharp minor, and sometimes, a vocalise. The portrait painted by this “Best Of” compilation is of a man who procured steadfast melodies and unrelenting sentimentality till the day he died. Beyond these works too, you won’t find much that deviates from this pattern. Relatively speaking, he didn’t have eras or periods of stylistic evolution like, say, Stravinsky....

So as I said I would, I finally got around to evaluating the claim that Joel McNeely’s score to the novel and video game Shadows of the Empire “borrows” plainly and unashamedly from the ballet The Quest by 20th century British composer William Walton. I’ll say right now that my findings lend a lot of credence to the forum post that inspired my investigation: I think somewhere along the way Joel McNeely thought to himself “Gee, this ballet sounds a lot like Star Wars, so why don’t I rip it off for Shadows of the Empire?...