[78-L] The Lost Chord was Re: Obscene Jim Reeves record

[David Lennick]

On 4/17/2011 9:11 PM, Steven C. Barr wrote:
> From: "Steve Shapiro"<steveshapiro1 at juno.com>
>>
>> This is even more than I am prepared to pay for the Lost Chord.  Not the
>> song, just the chord itself.  Once I find it, I'll copyright it and
>> license it for the next 17 years./steve
>>
> Interesting point here...! Could someone copyright a chord...or a note...
> and then claim that anyone else who subsequently recorded
> that same chord/note was infringing their copyright and thereby
> owed them royalties?
>
> Steven C. Barr
>
I don't know about chords, but Miklos Rozsa heard a familiar 4-note motif he'd 
used in the score "The Killers" and successfully sued and got his name attached 
to the "Dragnet" theme. Of course Rozsa swiped the Spellbound terror theme from 
the opening of Vaughan Williams' 4th Symphony, and the main theme from a Howard 
Hanson symphony, but..

I was hearing Dohnanyi's Serenade again the other day and marvelling that he 
never sued Leonard Bernstein over a note-for-note theft of themes in the first 
movement that he used repeatedly in Fancy Free and On the Town. I have very 
little regard for Lenny and that's one of the reasons.

dl