Borrowing thematic material

We all know that in the past, almost all composers borrowed themes from each other, did variations on them etc.

I was wondering... is it legal to do so now? Could we do variations on a theme from a famous movie? If we credit the original composer and all of course.

I'm not expert on this, but if the composer is alive or died less that 50 years ago, you can't use his music, for instance a variation on Starwars theme, unless you have a license and you paid for it (and Williams agreed) ... but that's difficult :D

Do variations on a Pachelbel theme is perfectly legal I guess

Yes, in the 1970's, American Copyright Law made it illegal to create derivative works of existing, copyright-protected original works with some exceptions. It is not fair use to take a full fledged theme and create variations of it. This would be classified as a derivative work and derivative works require permission from the holder of the original copyright.

I don't agree with the limitations this imposes on creativity, especially since any collection of notes on a page should have no such expectation to "not" be used as a source of inspiration for additional creation. This is how creativity works in the first place, because we simply do not create anything from nothing at all. 

I guess I should mention that I'm not looking to make any money, just as an artistic statement.

There's a famous example of this. Greeting Prelude by Stravinsky. The orchestra played "Happy Birthday" for his birthday. He didn't know what it was but liked the melody. He wrote Greeting Prelude (which is a variation on the theme), and got slammed by royalties for it. :P He didn't know it was copyrighted.

PD pieces are 100% exempt from all copyright laws. Certain editions may or may not be, though, so don't take that statement and run with it with your eyes closed.

I guess I should mention that I'm not looking to make any money, just as an artistic statement.

Yeah, that doesn't matter. Your legal options are to freely pull from public domain music or get permission to use the non-pd music you want.

No no no, you see, their song goes "da dum dum dum dada dum dum" and my song goes "dum da dum dum dada dum dum"....

I would say that if is for very personal purposes, you can use whatever you like, but in case of a public performance or such, well, don't mess with people like Disney because they have a tall building full or expensive lawyers.

No no no, you see, their song goes "da dum dum dum dada dum dum" and my song goes "dum da dum dum dada dum dum"....

:lol: :lol: :lol: