Symphony No. 41 (Mozart) written only a few weeks before Mozart's, also has a fugato in the finale, the theme of which begins with two whole notes. Sherman has pointed out other similarities between the two almost perfectly contemporaneous works. The four-note motif is also the main theme of the contrapuntal finale of Michael's elder brother Joseph's Symphony No. 13 in D major (1764). According to Franz Mozart, Wolfgang's younger son, the symphony was given the name "Jupiter" by Johann Peter Salomon, who had settled in London in around 1781. The name has also been attributed to Johann Baptist Cramer, an English music publisher.
Symphony No. 2 (Borodin) himself, and is considered to be one of his greatest. It has many melodic resemblances to both "Prince Igor" and "Mlada", which were two theatrical works that diverted Borodin's attention away from the B minor symphony between 1869–75. According to the account of Borodin's friend Nikolay Kashkin, the symphony's striking and abrupt opening theme originated from the abandoned chorus of Polovtsians, and the Soviet biographer Serge Dianin notes that there is a common thread present in all three pieces. According to Dianin, "it is for this reason that we find certain similarities in the themes Borodin uses in these works."