I was listening to the radio the other day and heard a version of the Ave Maria, aka “Hail Mary”, sung as a concert aria by Sumi Jo who performs it on this video.
The piece was composed by Vladimir Vavilov around 1970, although it is often misattributed to the Giulio Caccini. What struck me listening to it, however, was the similiarity of its chords to one of my favourite jazz standards, All The Things You Are, which was composed in 1939 by Jerome Kern. I’m not a trained musician but I think I have a reasonable ear for harmonies. I suppose it comes from listening to so much jazz. Anyway, this one is really very obvious.
The chords for Vavilov’s first 8 bars are:
Am | Dm7 | G7 | CM7 | FM7 | Dm | B7 | E
While Jerome Kern gives us
Am7 | Dm7 | G7 | CM7 | FM7 | F#m7 B7 | EM7 | EM7
I rest my case!
I’m not necessarily saying that Vavilov copied Jerome Kern. It is possible for two people to arrive at the same idea independently. I wrote a post a while ago about the similarity between a piece by Ravel and one by John Coltrane.
