0:41-0:52 is the selection in question ("silently the senses/abandon their defenses" in Music of the Night). I'm a fan of both, but you can't deny the similarity there!
@@jenspflug7473 if you really want to hear the similarities, there's a video of Jose Carreras singing MOTN with the original lyrics. The ironic thing is the part that sounds most similar is when he gets to "hearing is believing "
@@jenspflug7473 I agree with you, this hardly sounds similar at all. A personal vocal deviation on how it's sung by a particular singer isn't grounds for a lawsuit. Sounds like Puccini's cultured heirs were hurting for cash and a decent ear.
The central melody of Music of the Night is certainly Puccini's, but Lloyd Webber does a wonderful arrangement of it. The James Bond theme was written by Monty Norman, but James Barry did a superb arrangement of it. Barry kept trying to establish in court that the melody was his, but every time the court found in Monty Norman's favour.
NonInflatable it is a wonderful arrangement, but when you rip someone off give them credit. Say he was inspired by this piece, don't try to pass it off as your own. He did the same thing to Pink Floyd Echoes
Perhaps Lloyd Weber stole some lines,However he never had anyone like Barioni singing so beautifully as he does here. Barioni is truly a tenor gifted with a most beautiful quality of voice.
0:43-0:55 Sounds like the "Turn your face away from the garish light of day" and "Silently the senses abandon their defenses." The bridge of Music of the Night is almost identical in fact. Webber should have given Puccini some credit, but Webber didn't exactly copy the whole song word for word. The melody is only the same in those verses, too.
Music of the Night's first part is from Schubert's Liebeslauschen, and this is obviously where he got the other part. The whole thing is a rip off, though Liebeslauschen's ripoff was at least a little less overt.
Lorry C - In answer to your question, it's considered plagiarism, on the striking of the eighth consecutive similar note with a work, currently under copyright, as many Puccini operas yet are. And you are correct. Mack the Knife is merely a translation of the Brecht/Weill original. Not THAT great a translation, but it works.
@schrire39 I saw Miss Saigon many years ago now but I still remember the similarity of the early music sung by the Sacristan in Tosca to one of the main themes in Miss Saigon.
Beautiful aria, beautifully sung. It is to the credit of the Puccini's estate that they sued Andrew for plagiarism. (Did they win, by the way?) Similarity there is. But there also is, one has to admit, a good deal of originality in "The Music of the Night".
I counted 12-14 notes that were the same. Um.... Maybe Webber should have used quotation marks or a footnote. :-) How many identical notes do there have to be to be counted as plagiarism? Wooden Heart -- Muss 'i denn O How Happy You Have Made Me -- O Wie Voll ist Mir Am Abend Mack the Knife -- Mackie Messer (more of a translation) How Gentle is the Rain -- Mozart Concerto
I guess everyone is speaking about how this aria sounds like the music from Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber- and there are are some similarities but remember even Stravinsky said he "stole" from Mozart- also I find John Williams' theme from Star Wars reminds me of one of the themes in Puccini's Manon Lescaut.
iduefoscari: I assume you're a big Verdi fan with that name- thanks for the suggestion to listen to the Bruckner symphonies, 6,7 & 8. I'll check them out! Molto grazie! By the way, "Tu, tu amore, tu" is the aria from the love duet in Puccini's Manon Lescaut that contains the "star wars" theme- it's toward the end of the duet
What he did before it to make it his own? Sorry, the "Night time sharpens heightens each sensation" part etc. was also stolen, this time from the song "Come To Me Bend To Me" from the musical "Brigadoon". ALWebber was a thief in the night.
@bdmusik mmm, I'm not convinced by your argument re: "Rent" and "Miss Saigon" They simply used the same source materials as Puccini ( the Murger novel and the Belasco play respectively) but I don't think you can say they are deeply influenced by Puccini musically (not counting Rent's brief musical quote of La Boheme- clearly done with a "wink")
Yes -Rovingeye there are some similarities between "Music of the Night "and" Quello che tacete" a bit like monozygoticTwins.Also your referal to John Williams and Star Wars.Have you ever listened to any of the Bruckner symphonies?Start with the Sixth.Here you will find embryonic Lawrence of Arabia"" Doctor Zhivago"" The Big Country".For the John Williams or Hans Zimmer maybe try the seventh or eight symphonies . But the difference between these and ALW is that the twins are not identical.
I like this better than Music of the night, but I just wish it was a complete Aria and not just part of scene in the Act. Also this is for a Tenor and "Music of the night" can be sung by Tenors but it is sounds better with a Baritone or what I like to call a Bari-tenor.
That's one of the issues with the Opera as a whole. As a complete piece, it is among Puccini's best works, but it lacks the standout moments of, say La boheme (Musetta's Waltz) or Tosca (Scarpia's Te Deum). It really needed a few more arias!
-.- Music or tunes can be in one's memory without them fully remembering it. Who's to say that ALW knowingly lifted a few lines from this peice? Maybe this is just the tune that came to him when he was writing the song, and he didn't realize where it had came from until it was brought to is attention. Really, we've heard one side of the story, how much have we heard of Mr. Lloyd Webber's side?
Common people, if we are going to focus on analyzing who is stealing from who we will NEVER find away to enjoy music. Yes, the climax part does use the same pitch (alghouth in different key), but we see this everywhere. Please just enjoy the music and stop attacking their creators.
it is clear however than Webber took clear "inspiration" from the song. The entire emotive section of Music of the Night is present here. Change a few dynamics and voice type, and have your orchestrator write the rest and, sure, it's a very different song "by a long shot"
The truth is apart from "Music of the night" and one other tune, which is also "questionable" in its origin the rest of the Phantom score is fourth rate Gilbert and Sullivan and that is being generous !
when you have as many well known tunes as ALW, It is not surprising that there is bound to be a sequence of notes somewhere in history that match one of his well known tunes. Its also highly likely as a composer to subconsciously 'knick' tunes.
I sat through a performance of "Evita" once. It was excruciating. it made me realize that ALW doesn't have "many well known tunes". He wrote a couple, and then rewrote them, and rewrote them, and rewrote them.
There are similarities. Given the limitations of the musical scale, inadvertent "plagiarism" is going to be a possibility. Or he may have deliberately lifted. It doesn't matter to me; most composers are influenced by others' compositions. Both pieces are beautiful music.
@bdmusik you may have a point suggesting that some musicals are easier to as a result of people already knowing the subject matter... BUT the through sung musical is certainly not "opera" in the classical sense (ie: the composer is not the only central creative artist &story/lyrics are as equally important as the music) if you're looking for hard, concrete and immediate influences forget Puccini and try recent musicals JC Superstar/Evita/ p'raps Sweeney Todd...
@bdmusik you may have a point suggesting that some musicals are easier to market as a result of people already knowing the subject matter... BUT the through sung musical is certainly not "opera" in the classical sense (ie: the composer is not the only central creative artist &story/lyrics are as equally important as the music) if you're looking for hard, concrete and immediate influences forget Puccini and try recent musicals JC Superstar/Evita/ p'raps Sweeney Todd...
Actually, the Puccini estate and ALW reached a settlement as to the plagiarism claim. I doubt ALW would have settled if he had not plagiarized. This is plagiarism pure and simple -- melody, harmony, rhythm, are all the same (as well as tempo and dynamic). Not even a close call.
While I believe Webber's theft of the motif is evident, I do not believe we can know if such theft was intentional.Webber may have attended this opera, internalized this motif, and then employed it in his Music of the Night, thinking the motif's beauty to be his own. An example of this may be found with John Williams in his Imperial March. Williams is famous for using Romantic-era leitmotifs in his works, notably in Star Wars. Compare his Imperial march to the popular "Swan Lake" suite.
Somehow I think Puccini would find all this amusing, given the fact that a lot of Butterfly was, shall we say, "inspired" by Debussy. Bottom line, comparing Puccini and Webber is (to paraphrase the words of another great artist) like comparing champagne and cognac. No--Coca Cola!
@scumblejack Hmmm, i know what you mean, but it's stretching to call that a steal. We're dealing with such simple chord progressions and melodies here, that it's hard to draw a line. Composers will inevitably explore similar material. I'd call the example in this video a 'steal', intentional or otherwise. Your example I'm not so sure about. It's certainly not identical.
Honestly, I highly doubt that Andrew Lloyd Webber intentionally stole this melody. What if he hasn't even seen or heard this Opera? Is it really impossible for two people to think of a similar musical idea? It's not note for note anyway. Look at George Harrison, he had almost the same idea for one of his songs as an old 50s song, doesn't mean he stole it. Composers all know that figuring out whether a melody in your head is already taken or is yours is really hard.
At the end of this clip it kind of does, but not to the degree where people say ALW ripped of Puccini. There are only so many notes and intervals in a music scale that there are bound to to be similarities eventually.
***** I would have to say that the musical industry is also just like any other field, when money and profit is involed, it is inevitable that people would do whatever they can to get a share. Whether Lloyd-Webber intentionally stole the musical "motif" from Puccini, or was it simply coincidental, only he and God would know the truth. How musical ideas of composers come about depend on a multitude of reasons, but very often, when a certain composer write in a particular style, he or she would most likely have been under the influence of the music they have listened to in their own upbringing. So it would be likely that some composers would have conjured up melodic phrases that coincided with bits and pieces of previously published materials by other composets without knowing it, because something they have listened to a long time ago in their early life, have resided in their subconscious, and suddenly reappeared in the composers heads and they would not be immediately aware of the fact that they have regurjitated other's work. I am not trying to defend Lloyd-Webber, or saying anything in his favor, but just stating my point of view. It is thus so hard to proof whether he had plagerized, and the case could not have been concluded beyond any doubt by the court, but instead had to be settled privately between the Puccini family and Lloyd-Webber. In this particular case, only the two successive recurring sequences of the melodic phrase: "la-'do-'re-'do-ti", that can be identified as musically identical. For this original Puccini's version, he went on to develop the phrase into "la-'do-'mi", instead of what Lloyd-Webber did, which was continuing on with yet another "la-'do-'re", then followed by a declining phrase, "'do-la-mi-so", which already diviated from the Puccini theme. In light of such a brief moment of "identical musical themes", together with the slight alternation by Lloyd-Webber, dividing up the long quarter notes of "la-'do-re" into shorter, repeating eigth notes of "la-'do-'do-'do-'re", the result makes it arguable to label it as plagerism, because it is not possible to proof without any doubt. Therefore, the universal practice is to identify something as plagerism only if the identical musical theme lasts over four bars (or measures), and with exact melodic elements in exactly the same rythmical representation. So under that definition, when considering this case, since the length of similar melodic themes only lasted for two bars, and the rythmical appearances of the notes are not the same, legally it cannot be classified as plagerism. But if you ask anybody with a bit of musical sense to say with their conscience, I would say most of them, including myself, would not hesitate to say that it is very likely Lloyd-Webber had stolen the theme from Puccini, and it would be very hard to pursuade me or others of the same musical sense and level of conscience to believe otherwise. He may have get passed the judicial system, but the musical notes ring out the truth loud and clear.
ppgppgppgppg: not attacking the creators- I like "Sir" Andrew Lloyd Webber's music- particularly a few "numbers" from Sunset Blvd.- Let's say some contemporary music is "reminiscent" of older music, intentionally or not!
Lol, I'm sure both families of these musicians are hurting for notoriety and $$$, sarcasm. This is so unbecoming for both sides. Creativity is fluid, inspiration strikes where it will, and this is hardly enough to warrant a lawsuit, but in the sue-happy culture have today, anything is possible. I think Roger Waters had more of a claim to a lawsuit personally.
In Jazz they call it "quoting." Take a cool phrase, turn it into a completely different song. That's bad? To call that "plagiarism" is just to get caught up in rhetoric. When writers adopt someone else's phrase, they don't stop the book to tell you where they got it. It's up to the intelligent reader to recognize it and appreciate it.
He wins in what way? In that "music of the night" is better known to the public? True, but that doesn't make it better. I happen to greatly prefer the "original." In the grand scheme of music I consider Webber to be dwarfed by Puccini (and Verdi, Donizetti etc) but to be fair they are different animals. THere's a difference between "popera/stage musicals" and *real* opera.
Um, that's not plagiarizing, if it is, then a bunch of musicians, film makers and artist should be in jail. It's basically one bar of music repeated twice, so 8 notes. Artist take inspiration from other things all the time, even using the same or similar motifs, i was expecting the whole bloody thing to sound the same, not 7 seconds
Then may I humbly suggest that you are a tad , hard of hearing,. I met Puccini's grand- daughter over 20 years ago . And we got into discussion about " La fanciulla del West". She asked me with a stern look if I knew Andrew Lloyd Webber. And I said no. Then she told me she was suing him . Just as her grandfather would have. BUT composers are always using bits and pieces of other composers "tunes". I could give you a hundred examples. Even another Bernstein was capable of it. Lennie was also was fond of Puccini arias.. Then we have the blockbuster film scores. Just ask John Williams how indebted he is to Bruckner. As another half a dozen composers are.
