"Candide" and "Bartered Bride" Overtures

[Caliban]

Listening to these is quick succession on "Breakfast" this morning, the similarity between the two struck me forcibly. I wonder if anyone has ever analysed them side by side. With all due respect to the personage depicted in my avatar, it sounds as if he got the score of "Bartered Bride" and recomposed it in modern U.S. musical theatre style....

[rauschwerk]

Good Heavens! Apart from a generally lively character, I can't see any resemblance between the two pieces. The first subject in the Smetana is presented fugally, whereas in the Bernstein it is not. Both are in a kind of sonata form, but in the Smetana the development is replaced by new material. The Bernstein has no development section. I cannot hear any similarity in the actual themes.

[Caliban]

Good Heavens! Apart from a generally lively character, I can't see any resemblance between the two pieces. The first subject in the Smetana is presented fugally, whereas in the Bernstein it is not. Both are in a kind of sonata form, but in the Smetana the development is replaced by new material. The Bernstein has no development section. I cannot hear any similarity in the actual themes.

Not even the swirling bustling initial main theme/material? (I hadn't spotted the Smetana was fugal ) I'm probably talking nonsense, they just sounded similar to me. I haven't done any kind of analysis...

[rubbernecker]

I also used to think there were certain similarities, especially with the syncopated full orchestral theme that follows the fugal subject in the Smetana, but there aren't.
They are just both very vivacious pieces.

Rest assured Caliban, that while your avatar may have been a musical magpie, he was not a thieving one.