Actually, it was made for the Phantom sequel first. It appears as "The heart is slow to learn" in his 50th birthday concert. For a while it looked like the Phantom sequel wasn't happening, so I suppose he thought he might as well use it elsewhere. It being his melody, and all. I was a little surprised that he still used if for LND after that but I prefer the LND version, personally.

Its not the first time he, or others, have done this. Whistle Down the Wind song Tire Tracks, is a different version of the music from the US version of Tell Me on a Sunday (English Girls if i remember). The title track on Sunset Boulevard, is again a style variation on music used in the soundtrack of Gumshoe (not very well known really). As mentioned, it is his melody, and as Richard Stillgoe once commented, music that doesn't get used in one show can easily spring up in another. In an interview ALW said something about always feeling the now LND music for him never fitted into the overall music language/style of The Beautiful Game.

I do like the lyrics to Love Never Dies.

The same is also true (although over a much longer tie period) for all the material that was reused from "The Likes of Us". Lets face ir who wouldn't reuse material if they thought the original would never be performed.

Uhm, the musical theatre literature is full of rejected trunk songs that were written for a show, but never used elsewhere, until theu were used in concerts for example. Of course many composers reuse tunes they've written for something else. But ALW seems to be determined to use everything he has ever written, no matter how distant the original situation a tune was writter for is to the situation in which it is reused. At times it comes close to bizarre, as when tunes that originally were intended as parody ends up as the sort of song it originally was parodying, like some songs from Cricket.

Ballad of Billy McCaw becoming Next Time You Fall In Love.
Turning becoming Odessa becoming Sunset Boulevard.

But, I wouldn't say there is really anything wrong with it unless it doesn't work. Sometimes a tune can turn out to work better in a new context than the one it was originally written for.

I agree. But ALW appears to do it more often than most, and at times that is because ALW occationally writes tunes that are so generic that he can make them fit anywhere jyst by tweaking the orchestrations a little.

It's a testament to how good of an orchestrator he is. Of course, it's a common trick in musicals to re-orchestrate a song to make a reprise with a different emotion.

I wonder though, does Webber really do it more often, or is he just the one that is noticed the most, because other composers' music isn't heard unless it makes it into a show.

Yes, but it is less common to re-orchestrate songs and make them appear in a different show. Very different things.



The argument was that it is other composers' music that is heard even though it hasn't made into a show, because the cut songs are often presented as that and (unlike ALW's songs) not reorchestrated to fit new shows.

Have we heard many ALW songs that were cut from a show and not been recirculated in a new show?

This spring I heard Joseph and at one off the songs (cant remember what song.) I suddenly got an anoying feeling that I heard that tune and way off singing before, took me a way to figure out that it probebly was from Bystopher Jones, or at least something very simular.

But I guess it shows a good sence that if you have a tune thats goods and works but not just the right for that musical that you can give it a second life in another musical.

It mostly shows that ALW, rather than writing a tune with a particular character and situation in mind, starts out with writing a tune and then searches for a character and situation the tune can fit.

I think the recycling of tunes is acceptable as long as the tune doesnæt allready belong to a published, official score. For example, it seems that it was acceptable for Sondheim to write new lyrics to Jule Styne's trunk song Why Did I Have To Wait So Long to create You'll Never Get Away from Me for Gypsy, because it had not been published only used as the composer's private entertainment. But Sondheim later found out that the tune already had been published as a part of an obscure TV musical as I'm In Pursuit of Happiness. I think he wouldn't have agreed to use the tune if he had known it was already an esablished part of another score, however obscure. It affects the integrity of the play.

Does it really make a difference? Whether it was published or not does not change the song, nor its original writing. It may not affect the perception of it, but I don't see how being published or unpublished affects the inherit merit of reusing a song/melody originally written for another purpose. Whether it works or not is irrelevant to it's origin.

Webber makes his fit. For example, "As Long As You're Mine" in Wicked sticks out badly, because it does not match the rest of the score. I haven't heard an instance of ALW reusing a tune that sticks out like that which I can recall.

He also seems to at least not allow the same melody to be part of two shows at once. "Our Kind of Love" was removed from Beautiful Game before Love Never Dies opened. "The Ballad of Billy MaCaw" had been removed from Cats well prior to the insertion of "Next Time You Fall In Love" in Starlight Express, and then removed from Starlight to be replaced with a third version of "Only He" for the Ballad to be reinstated in Cats.