“Lifting a melody without credit is plagiarism”
Mozart and Beethoven did this any number of times.
Mozart never wrote anything I found interesting and Beethoven was a dick - which pretty much covers the plagiarism in my mind.
But my god, that man could write in bursts. And the stuff he wrote that mattered was all him. How old are people in 5th grade? It must be almost 35 years since I first heard the tenor solo and I still haven’t found anything more demanding of my attention.
And actually, I forgot something. I don’t hold those guys to the same standard because you’re forgetting something: media.
I wrote a piece when I was 14 or so, and later on I started wondering if I had stolen it. If I’d heard it at a chamber music festival, or something. But then again, I thought it might be some something I wrote before I knew you could write down music....like 3rd or 4th grade. Because even now, I still remember a few of those.
But everything else I can keep straight....because I have recordings. It’s just that one damn piece that makes me crazy because I don’t know who wrote it: me or someone else.
Back then, they might hear a piece once and then go 20 years with their own junk in their head and suddenly have that melody come to mind disguised as their own creation. If they didn’t remember hearing that piece, they wouldn’t know the difference.
It would happen to me all the time if I’d lived back then.