Some critic got on Leonard Bernstein's case and accused him of plagiarizing a tune from Beethoven. The melody in question is the song "There's a place for us" in the musical "West Side Story."

It comes from the slow movement of Beethoven's "Emperor Concerto." It appears very briefly, then it's gone.

Bernstein responded to the outraged critic with a bit of outrage of his own, saying, "Of course that's where I got it! Composers have been borrowing from each other for centuries. They do it all the time. And besides, that melody of Beethoven's is far too lovely to be used only once!"

He's absolutely right.

Way to go, Lenny!

This—CLICKY (then click on "Listen")—runs about seven minutes (mentions the story I heard about Bernstein and Beethoven) and can give a clue to singer-songwriters whose melody-writing skills might be a bit limp. Even the big kids borrow from each other.

If you swipe a tune directly from Paul McCartney or Tom Paxton, you might wind up getting sued for copyright violation, but somebody put a new, very nice set of words to a well-known tune by Tchaikovsky and came up with "John o'Dreams." I don't think Tchaikovsky's going to sue. Check out some classical music. Lots—LOTS—of good melodies there. And a good melody is not permanently branded "folk" or "pop" or "classical." A good melody is an "equal opportunity" thing. What you do with it determines what it is at that moment. "There's a place for us" is a Broadway show tune. But that's not the way it started out (assuming that Ludwig made it up and didn't get it from somewhere else).

And you don't have to swipe them wholesale. Pick a tune you like that more or less fits the set of words you've written, or a tune you like and would like to write a song to fit, and dink around with it some. Vary it a bit. Play around with it. That's what Handel, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, and all those other guys did.

You never know what you might come up with.

Don Firth