See -the Plagiarism - Amid the Winter's Snow

Do you remember yesterday, when I said that it hadn't snowed very much here in Fairmont, Minnesota?
Well that has changed.

It has been snowing all morning. And I've been watching it.  I stood in the entry way of the Hy-Vee grocery store this morning, playing Christmas songs on my baritone at one of The Salvation Army's kettles.  As I played I watched thorough the doors as it began to snow.  At first it was just a few little flakes, small and hard to see, but that quickly changed into thick fluffy snow.  Several people commented that "Now it feels like Christmas."

But something's been bothering me this morning.

One of the Christmas songs that I played was See Amid the Winter's Snow (also sometimes known as a Hymn for Christmas Day) with lyrics by Edward Caswall (1814 - 1878) and music by John Stainer (1840 - 1901).





Now it's a nice enough little song... but apparently it worked it's way into my unconscious thinking  - and when I wrote my Christmas carol this year - Lord of Heaven Come Near  - I "borrowed" a couple of measures without realizing it.

The first two measures of the chorus in See Amid the Winter's Snow  are exactly the same as measures 7 and 8 of my Lord of Heaven Come Near - You can use these to links to compare them.

Ooops!  I didn't intend to lift those measures....


But I don't feel to bad about it.  1) my melody is very different than Stainer's- even with these two measures.  His melody is a straight forward melody in common time (4/4).  Mine is, as someone has described it, an "erratic" melody that switches back and forth between 4/4 and 3/4.

And  2) this kind of musical similarity happens all the time.  I can't sing Give Thanks by Don Moen without hearing Go West by the Village People (though I prefer the Pet Shop Boys' cover...)