(via Antonín Dvořák – “Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, B. 178 (From the New World)”)

Year: 1893

Album: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor (New World Symphony)

Does the beginning sound like the Jaws theme song? It should. The story goes that John Williams stole that suspenseful two-note change from Dvořák’s most beloved work. The Czech Dvořák wrote this piece while living and composing music in New York City as the director of the National Conservatory of Music, and it became one his most successful pieces right away when it premiered at Carnegie Hall. Dvořák returned home after a few years of being homesick for beautiful green Bohemia, but New York’s influence, and his newly found love for black and Indian melodies, gave us this moving piece of music that was so good that Neil Armstrong took a recording of the symphony with him on mankind’s first trip to the moon. But the Jaws shout-out is cooler. Just kidding. Maybe.