I noticed that the opening horn call of John Fould's
Keltic Overture (Op 28) is very similar to a call in the first (discarded) version of Bruckner's 4th Symphony.
It cannot be a case of Foulds copying Bruckner (the first performance of the 4th occurred in the 1980s - and I'm not sure that the score was ever published and Foulds died in 1939).
For comparison I've spliced together the Bruckner and Foulds here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/94rmqtghrr4nlec/Bruckner%20%26%20Foulds%20compared.mp3?dl=0 (the Bruckner recording is a bit ropey, sorry)
I presume that as Foulds didn't copy Bruckner then probably they both were influenced by a third work. My guess is that work may be by Wagner (Parsifal is the most likely, I think). Can anyone definitely identify the source, please?
Interesting point! Foulds was a bit of a musical chameleon, as you can hear from the four wonderful Dutton discs, the two Warner discs and the Chandos
World Requiem. He's one of my favourite neglected British composers. As to the Bruckner link, it may justly simply be coincidental (as you say the first version of the 4th was unknown at the time), but (as was Havergal Brian) Foulds was well aware of the repertoire and, as a fine cellist, played a great deal of it with the Hallé Orchestra under Hans Richter. So perhaps there is a link to Wagner, but then horn-calls are pretty much tonic-dominant...
:)
