Song “Over the Rainbow” vs. Mascagni’s Opera Guglielmo Ratcliff (Intermezzo) – A Case of “Plagiarism”?

Everyone knows the main melody of the Intermezzo (Ratcliff’s Dream) from Mascagni’s opera Guglielmo Ratcliff (1895) even if they have never heard of this opera or the composer before, and this is because it is very similar to the song we all know – “Over the Rainbow”, composed by Harold Arlen for the classic film The Wizard of Oz (1939). I have always been interested in music/film similarities, and possible plagiarism claims, and have decided to investigate this further in this ranty post.

To begin with, certain facts do not sit well with me. On the one hand, we have a quite obscure Italian opera and, on the other, one of the most iconic film tunes of all time. Guglielmo Ratcliff is rarely performed, not least because of its voicing difficulty, and it was also overshadowed by the composer’s own work, opera Cavalleria Rusticana, meaning that an average person (especially outside of Italy) would likely not know of it. The Intermezzo was later used in Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), but this occurred about 40 years after the legacy of “Over the Rainbow” had already been cemented. Another interesting fact is that, in essence, Harold Arlen is known for “Over the Rainbow”. He was a prolific composer and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, but he won only one of them – and that was for “Over the Rainbow”. The situation reminds me slightly of Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg being nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Screenplay for film Big (1988) even though their whole so-called “original idea” is essentially an Italian comedy of the year before – Da Grande (1987). At least the Italian audience could clearly see that it was a remake of sorts.

Harold Arlen received a well-rounded musical education. The Harold Arlen website says that his father Samuel Arluck was a celebrated cantor with deep love for classical music and Italian opera, who introduced his son to both classical music and Italian opera at the very young age. It is unthinkable that Arlen did not know who Pietro Mascagni was or never heard of Guglielmo Ratcliff, but I am also quite sceptical about Arlen “subconsciously taking” the melody without realising it, although it is possible. The reason I am sceptical is that ordinary people without musical backgrounds are more likely to be guilty of taking some melody and passing it “as their own invention”, doing so quite innocently, but it is much less likely for professional music composers to do so because their task is to compose original music and if they go wrong with their “originality”, there is much more at stake, including their careers and reputation.

Then, there is a whole story of how Harold Arlen came to write the main melody of “Over the Rainbow”. In his biography of Arlen, Walter Rimler reports that it was the last song of the film to be written (other songs were already in place). Arlen claims he was suffering from a writers’ block for weeks before driving to Grauman’s Chinese (there is even a name for the place) with his wife Anya, who was at the wheel (very important), when the melody “suddenly came into his mind”. Arlen asked his wife to stop the car near Schwab’s drugstore on Sunset Boulevard (another important detail) and then Arlen proceeded to write the melody down “on the manuscript paper he carried everywhere”. Arlen said at that point that “it was as if the Lord said, ‘Well, here it is, now stop worrying about it’”. That is one godsent, genius-level inspiration that came unexpectedly at the strangest of times (or perhaps there was a certain scheduled orchestra program on the radio in that car that evening?) For me it looks like someone asking a suspect whether they have done this or that deed and they proceed to tell their whole biography with all sorts of unrelated details thrown in before they say “yes” or “no”. But, jokes aside, it is still curious why there was a need for a story as to how Arlen wrote the song. Was it necessary so there would be an explanation later of how he wrote it? In a forum I read years ago but cannot now locate, someone said that they read that Arlen later contacted his lyricist and told him that his new melody is “from an opera, but that’s ok” (something that cannot be verified).

As far as I know, there are no other detailed background stories as to how Arlen wrote other songs for The Wizard of Oz (and not like he needed much inspiration as, for example, song “If I Only Had a Brain” was already written for Arlen’s other musical, but never used). And, what a coincidence it is that the Ratcliff’s Dream segment of the opera is all about dreaming, haunting visions, the blurring of fantasy and reality, and family curses, and the part of Dorothy in “Over the Rainbow” is all to do with her daydreaming, trying to escape reality into the fantasy world and also previously having issues with the family.

Schenkerian analysis refers to a method of analysing music based on the theories of Heirich Schenker, demonstrating the relationship of notes to a composition’s deep structure. If one performs this comparative analysis on the scores of Mascagni’s Intermezzo and Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow” then one would discover some major melodic and harmonic similarities, including in registral opening (the same ascending leap/interval, followed by descending linear progressions that culminate in a downward progression), descending motions after the initial ascent, and the same prolongational techniques. Of course, pop music is different from classical, and it uses different rules, but this fact is also quite damning because the mere fact that we can instantly recognise “Over the Rainbow” in a completely different musical tradition, in classical Intermezzo (Ratcliff’s Dream), even when played in a different tempo, is already telling us that the main elements of both compositions (I mean, its integral melodic line) are essentially the same.

I think the similarities are all the more glaring (at least to my sensitive ears) when you hear the instrumental version of “Over the Rainbow” (see above) rather than the version sung by Garland in the film. Naturally, classical music is more complex, and there is a reduction of the dramatic force of the integral melodic line in “Over the Rainbow” to emphasise hope over tragedy, but it is still easily recognisable (if you are thinking about something else while listening to the two recordings above, you can actually get confused which one you have on). In his biographical work, Walter Rimler refers to the song “Over the Rainbow” when he says that composer Arlen “had come up with a handful of notes that have meant more to people than those of any other song”. Well, the issue here, of course, is that it seems that those “handful of notes” had already been in existence, composed by someone else.

🎵 What do you think of this similarity?

N.B. Some also noted the similarities between “Over the Rainbow” and Signe Lund’s Concert Étude in F major (second theme), but I think that Ratcliff’s Dream is a closer work to “Over the Rainow” because there, in contrast to Lund’s work, the whole melodic line seems to be present without changed “rising” beginning, and of course, Ratcliff’s Dream is an earlier work than Lund’s piece.
The book consulted to write this post – The Man That Got Away [2015] by Walter Rimler (ironically, the title of Arlen’s biography (after the famous song)).
The header picture is etching Guglielmo Ratcliff, Act III, scene II.