La Maritza inspired by La Nuit Est Sur la Ville (FH, 1964) ?

No doubt, La Maritza is a beautiful song written for and performed by Sylvie Vartan in 1972. The only problem with the song is that its musical material can be traced to other sources, and not just to Kosma's classic "Les Feuilles Mortes" which, as it turned out, was not original either and was discovered to be plagiarizing, intentionally or not, folklore and classical music of Slavic origins such as Tchaikovsky's "Hamlet" (Overture-Fantasy Op. 67). Indeed it is very hard to believe that Joseph Kosma who received his formal musical education in the Academy of Music in Budapest where he studied with one of the leading Hungarian music educators of the century Leo Weiner and also at the Liszt Academy where he studied with one of the greatest Hungarian composers and one of the founders of ethnomusicology Béla Bartók, after all that, could remain oblivious to some of the rare masterpieces like Tchaikovsky's Hamlet and to the wistful tunes of some famous Russian romances...

However, the real revelation for me was in comparing "La Maritza" to "La nuit est sur la ville" written by Françoise Hardy no later than 1964. Anybody who ever tried to dabble in writing songs would know it in their heart that most of the times it is the first leading notes of the tune that inspire the song writer to keep going. And in that sense the almost exact match of the first two lines of "La Maritza" to "La nuit est sur la ville" tells the real story of the inspiration behind its success.

The court case of Joseph Kosma against Jean Renard just happened to be an unfortunate distraction from the glaring truth and a misleading argument about a less relevant refrain of "La Maritza" parts of which also appear to have significant resemblance to the Russian song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" (1925) known better as "Those were the days" (recorded by the Welsh singer Mary Hopkin and produced by Paul McCartney under the catalogue number Apple 2 in 1968 soon after the Apple label was created).

Serge, The Sylvie Vartan EP containing "La Maritza" was released in 1968.

sundridge18 a écrit:

Serge, The Sylvie Vartan EP containing "La Maritza" was released in 1968.

Thank you, Sundridge. You are right, and I stand corrected.

However, this is four years after "La nuit est sur la ville" has been released by Françoise so the question is still valid. What do you think ?

Unfortunately the resemblance isn't apparent to me. Sorry!

sundridge18 a écrit:

Unfortunately the resemblance isn't apparent to me. Sorry!

Sundridge,

There is no need to say sorry. You are entitled to your opinion, and nobody blames you. But you can't deny the fact that Renard was taken to court by Joseph Kosma (and his relatives) and lost to them on charges of plagiarism. The musical analysis demonstrated undeniable similarities of La Maritza's refrain to certain parts of Les Feuilles Mortes, although, the similarities were interspersed with "ornaments" (insignificant notes).

Here's my analysis of the first two lines of "La Maritza" compared to "La nuit est sur la ville":

E...D....C....B..A.......B....C..E.........D.......C...B.....A.......B...C..F
La Ma..ri...tza c'est..ma ri vière......Com me la Seine....est la tienne

E...D....C....B..A.......-.....-....E.........D.......C...B.....A........-...-..F
La nuit est sur la.............. ville.......Près de moi tran..............quille

As you can see from the symbolic notation comparison the first two lines of the songs are amazingly similar. There are two notes that can be considered ornamental (B and C in each of these two lines of "La Maritza"), and to make the tune sound a bit more apart the ending E and F are made one octave lower and higher respectively compared to "La nuit est sur la ville" but they are still the same notes ! Rhythmically these two lines of both tunes are very close as well. The number of the ornamental notes here is a lot less (at least three times less) than in the case "Kosma against Renard" as presented in court. Btw, in some countries H stands for B, and B stands for A#.

[quote="Serge*"][quote="sundridge18"]Unfortunately the resemblance isn't apparent to me. Sorry![/quote]

Sundridge,

There is no need to say sorry. You are entitled to your opinion, and nobody blames you. But you can't deny the fact that Renard was taken to court by Joseph Kosma (and his relatives) and lost to them on charges of plagiarism. The musical analysis demonstrated undeniable similarities of La Maritza's refrain to certain parts of Les Feuilles Mortes, although, the similarities were interspersed with "ornaments" (insignificant notes).

Here's my analysis of the first two lines of "La Maritza" compared to "La nuit est sur la ville":

E...D....C....B..A.......B....C..E.........D.......C...B.....A.......B...C..F
La Ma..ri...tza c'est..ma ri vière......Com me la Seine....est la tienne

E...D....C....B..A.......-.....-....E.........D.......C...B.....A........-...-..F
La nuit est sur la.............. ville.......Près de moi tran..............quille

As you can see from the symbolic notation comparison the first two lines of the songs are amazingly similar. There are two notes that can be considered ornamental (B and C in each of these two lines of "La Maritza"), and to make the tune sound a bit more apart the ending E and F are made one octave lower and higher respectively compared to "La nuit est sur la ville" but they are still the same notes ! Rhythmically these two lines of both tunes are very close as well. The number of the ornamental notes here is a lot less (at least three times less) than in the case "Kosma against Renard" as presented in court. Btw, in some countries H stands for B, and B stands for A#.[/quote]


And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on and on and on ......... :sleep:

Dick a écrit:

And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on and on and on .........

Hi Dick,

I sense a good deal of healthy sarcasm..

Well, please feel free to be more specific for the sake of the argument - I only maintained that the first two lines of the songs exhibit close similarity and that a talented professional composer would only need a few core notes to inspire him and to develop them into something that sounds like a different tune. This is how George Martin and the Beatles used to create some of their music (Beethoven's Moonlight sonata and its derivative "Because" by the Beatles would be a notorious example).

For those of you who would like to compare the tunes themselves using music sheets please see below (don't forget to transpose the notes before you compare):







( http://www.all-over-the-world.com/FrancoiseHardy/ly/index.html, La nuit est sur la ville)