Recycling music and Saint Saens

from w
Yesterday I was listening to the radio - not ABC this time but Radio Magic, and they played the 1970s reggae 'If I had the words' which has only four lines of text so it was repeated a dozen times. It's a great song with words that might suit Valentine's Day (though I think it's better to love a turtle than all that stuff about roses and moonlight!) Of course this music didn't start in the 70s but came from the final movement of a symphony by Camille Saint Saens, Symphony No 3 in C minor, Opus 78, a very loud section that shakes the roof off. I expect the writers of the new song got permission from the copyright holders or else it had run out! Would Saint Saens approve I wonder! The score of the symphony is on-line if you want to find the section Maestoso. It's a link from the wikipaedia notes on Saint Saens Organ Symphony. Go to http://www.dib.indiana.edu/variations/scores/aef8378/index.hotml and of course the tune is recognizable to those who saw the movie 'Babe' where it was the background music when the little pig was going to the slaughter-house! The music below includes a page from a 1997 song-book for schools. So music is recycled, happily it seems. I play - or rather - play freely - never the real notes- the reggae version occasionally during church worship and recently at a funeral where I was surprised when a gentleman came up afterwards and said thank you for the Saint Saens!