In the spirit of April Fool’s day I have started a series on this blog called Uncanny Musical Similarities. In this post and subsequent follow-ups, I will highlight some very funny and mysterious musical coincidences in which different musicians have somehow converged on the same idea.

The format will be as follows: I will post two Youtube videos of the music side by side and indicate the time snippets during which the similarities happen. For better clarification I will also include a picture of the motif or idea that’s common in both compositions alongside the videos.

Important:

  • I am in no way implying any sort of plagiarism with these comparisons! That would defeat the purpose of this series. So I will not be comparing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2” to Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself”. The point is to bring attention to the absurd coincidences we sometimes encounter in music, and in life!
  • Samples, tributes, and homages don’t count. It has to be a genuine coincidence! So I will not be comparing King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” with Kanye West’s “Power”, nor will I be comparing Martika’s “Toy Soldiers” with Eminem’s “Like Toy Soldiers”.
  • Standards and folk tunes don’t count, since music that use them are all referring to a common starting point–not a coincidence.

To kick off the series, I present a cross-genre coincidence:

Marsalis & ProkofievCommon Motif

Branford Marsalis Quartet - Dance of the Evil Toys (motif at 1:41, repeats throughout)

and…

Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No. 3 (motif at 15:50, repeats a few times in movement 2)

As a bonus, here’s an intra-genre coincidence:

Chopin and BrahmsA basic reduction of the common passage, different keys and meters are used in the pair of examples below

Frederic Chopin - Etude Op. 10 No. 7 (passage at 0:23, only appears once)

and…

Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dance No. 5 (passage at 0:48, appears multiple times)

I will continue the series as I find more examples (which can be very hard!). So updates on a regular interval is probably out of the question.