At the request of the churchwarden, I've been composing a setting of the Gloria for the church in my village. The Gloria is for use in the more 'informal' services ( ) and so I went for something with a catchy refrain. However, on Thursday I discovered that my first two bars, at least in terms of melody, are identical to the first two bars of another Gloria, one that I'd never heard before in my life. Should I go back to the drawing board?...

If you leave it as it is, the chances are that if you hadn't heard it before, none of the congregation will have heard it either. Composers have always "borrowed" from each other. But if you're unhappy with it being the same as something that already exists, could you not just make some alterations to the first two bars? They don't have to be big changes that will impact hugely on what follows, just something to mark it out as different from the existing one. I don't think you should go back the the drawing board.

With just a few notes to play with and an obvious rhythm to use it is going to happen! Perhaps make some small changes as has been suggested. If it was good enough for the great masters then it will be good enough for you. Mendelssohn had to do it at least once. Didn't "O Rest in the Lord" sound like Auld Robin Grey?

And it's not as if you're going to have it published, so copyright etc won't be a major issue.

One of our young orchestra members discovered that he'd accidentally composed Bach for one of his GCSE pieces!

Reincarnation does exist then!

It turned out I had done a whole piece on some relatively unknown hymn tune for one of my GCSE pieces- until someone else pointed it out (and then it become blindingly obvious to me where the tune came form) I was doing quite well- I had written pages and pages of various ideas (not linked together) and my teacher came over to hear my work, and started singing along to it. Damn!

"...and a happy New Year!!!"

There is always someone who recognises it! My son wrote a song and was really pleased with it until his cousin pointed out to him that it had already been written by someone else!





I would change the particular part of the Gloria, even if it's just a bit of tweaking, because you're obviously not completely happy, and if only one person said afterwards 'did you know that the first two bars....?' you would wish you had done something about it.

There is an alternative approach: take a couple of bars from loads of different people and stick them all together and see if people notice!